Handbook for the Heartbroken

In a heartbreak-illiterate world, Handbook for the Heartbroken offers solace and support through losses of all kinds.

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After experiencing serial heartbreaks over a 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. But by trying to power through these messier seasons of life, we’re denying ourselves the very answers to our healing and growth.

Handbook for the Heartbroken shares the grounded guidance Sara discovered during her own season of 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 offers gentle lessons and supportive practices for anyone experiencing falls from grace, both past and present - the end of a relationship or job, the death of a loved one, infertility or abortion, a financial crisis, or any other form of loss.

“Heartbreak is an inevitable part of everyone’s life journey,” writes Sara. “It’s by returning to our essential qualities like patience, openheartedness, and trust that we can truly heal.” Handbook for the Heartbroken weaves together personal stories, anecdotes from students and clients, spiritual teachings, practices, and journaling prompts - giving us the tools to fully embrace the harder seasons of life and “become fully wise, mature, integrated human beings.”