Bittersweet (Oprah's Book Club) How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

Now, her most recent book that I highly recommend you go and order right away, and you're going to want to, especially during and after this conversation, is called Bitter Sweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

But this new book, Bitter Sweet, what I find really interesting about this is, I find that as humans, and I'm speaking on my behalf, and I think a lot of my community feels this way as well, is that we've never been taught about what to do with pain.

And so anyway, it was really trying to understand like what that music was all about. That got me started on this inquiry of what bittersweetness is.

And I started looking at all these different traditions from all over the world and across time. And they're all telling us that the willingness to accept the fact that life is a mix of joy and sorrow is one of the great bonding agents we have, because we all are humans who are in that same state of being.

I hope everyone goes and uh uh downloads the playlist that's that's great I love that all right well question number four how would you define your current purpose yeah telling the truth of what it's like to be alive you know like hopefully like and talk talking about the things that people don't feel like you can chit chat about at the grocery store but the things that matter the most that's beautiful I love that

Her new book is called Bitter Sweet and it is about allowing ourselves to feel sadness, to grieve that it is in many ways healing.

And I slowly discovered that sadness is not a problem to be solved, but in Susan Cain's own words from her new earth shattering book called Bittersweet.

Her new book, bittersweet, how sorrow and longing make us whole is out today.

Pick up Bittersweet. You will not regret it.

her new book bitter sweet about sort of the melancholy side of life because I was speaking at the Naval Academy

Susan can who i love her new book is called bitter sweet and she's sort of talking about how melancholy is that kind of depressive outlet but there's also if done right a sort of love of beauty and

wonder and solitude and what it's so it's like if you're only getting the negative part of it you're probably doing it wrong but if it's actually kind of shaped you know it allowed you to create some

some inner world that you can retreat into and it connected like you can you can kind of choose to see it different ways i guess is where it comes down well that's kind of the David Foster Wallace

She lost her brother and her father to COVID in 2020, which I can only imagine how devastating that was.

And so it's both fitting and a bit haunting that she had been at work on this new book, Bittersweet, How sorrow and longing make us whole.

If the power of introverts was about the power of that sort of quiet reflective inward life, this is the power of a more melancholic outlook and why our culture has been so relentlessly focused on positivity and excitement and passion and hopefulness and that there's also something very powerful about reflection and meditation about coming to terms with getting up and close in person or with loss and sorrow and how we harness those difficult emotions to create value in our own lives.