Grief can be profoundly disorienting and traumatic. Yet it can also open our hearts, strengthening our empathy, affection and compassion for other people. It may even open us up to new forms of joy.

In his book, The Gift of a Broken Heart, Bryan Welch movingly recounts his own journey through deep grief at the loss of his 25-year-old son to addiction. In searing detail, the book describes the pain of parents trying to grapple with an adult child’s mental illness and, finally, his death in the throes of the disease.

As he begins to recover from devastating parental grief, Bryan becomes aware that his new vulnerability gives him unexpected feelings of warmth, kinship and compassion toward his fellow human beings. This, as much as debilitating grief, is part of his son’s legacy and he begins exploring practical, psychological and spiritual ways of honoring that legacy and sustaining a more compassionate, less egotistical view of his world.

Grief is a part of every human life. We desperately try to avoid it. But it can provide profound instruction about how we can experience life, and love, more deeply.

The Gift of a Broken Heart explores how the simple acknowledgement of our shared vulnerability can help heal the traumas that separate us from one another, and might lead us toward a more loving, less divisive human world.