Hopelessness to Healing

As the book’s subtitle suggests, its primary thematic focus is on the experience of moving from hopelessness to healing. In that context, the opening chapters serve as something of an introduction or stage-setting, defining what the author sees as positive perspectives and values that become damaged as a result of her experiences with chronic pain, and with loss. The middle chapters define the state of hopelessness that results from her encounters with that pain and with that loss, while the closing chapters define ways in which her healing processes enable her to reconnect with the perspectives and values she discovered in her childhood. This is where the information from the introductory chapters becomes important, since in the way the author portrays her experience, the journey from hopelessness to healing is one of coming full circle, its ending reconnecting with its beginning.

As the author portrays...