Handbook for the Heartbroken

In a heartbreak-illiterate world, Handbook for the Heartbroken offers solace and support through personal and collective losses of all kinds—including the end of a relationship or a job, death of a loved one, a natural disaster, infertility, abortion, a financial crisis, or any other form of loss.

Heartbreak sends us reeling—we can feel alone and adrift. After her own experience of serial heartbreaks over the span of five years, Sara Avant Stover felt deeply impacted by our culture’s dysfunctional relationship with loss—especially for women. “We’re encouraged at every turn to hurry up and get on with it,” she says. “But by trying to power through these messier seasons of life, we’re denying ourselves the very answers to our healing and growth.”

With Handbook for the Heartbroken, Sara offers the grounded guidance she needed during her own falls from grace to help you navigate loss and turmoil. Blending her expertise in Internal Family Systems and various wisdom traditions, she examines the three main phases of heartbreak: devastation, transformation, and rebirth. With each phase, she shares gentle lessons and supportive practices for anyone experiencing the unthinkable, including:

• An exploration of nuanced emotions associated with heartbreak and grief—ranging from early stages of shock, anger, and pain to healing spaces of forgiveness and restoring trust
• Relevant and relatable stories from the author and her clients, creating a road map for your unique healing journey
• Practices and journal prompts to create a safe container to digest your experiences of heartbreak, both past and present, more fully
• An invitation for finding a way forward both as individuals and as members of a community to draw on support of trusted friends and family

“Heartbreak is an inevitable part of everyone’s life journey,” says Sara. “It’s by returning to our essential qualities like patience, openheartedness, and trust that we can truly heal.” Handbook for the Heartbroken can be your trustworthy friend through the hardest seasons of life, helping you embrace change and “become a fully wise, mature, integrated human being.”