A bold compassionate guide for overcoming heartbreak, providing a radical new therapeutic path to reframe grief and revolutionize how we can seek new love and feel whole again.
Love and loss are forever intertwined. We know heartbreaks are universal and unavoidable. We also know that it is within our power to transform pain into meaning and strength. But somewhere between the sad songs, the rumination, the pints of ice cream, the social media stalking, and the betrayal, we get lost.
Alice Haddon, a psychologist for more than twenty-five years, experienced heartbreak first-hand when she lost her mother. She began questioning whether the traditional therapeutic method built on weekly, fifty-minute, one-on-one sessions was the best approach for people dealing with profound loss. Searching for a better way, she crafted a collective therapy that would provide intensive 24/7 care to the heartbroken, giving them a sacred space and a kind community within which to recover. The goal was to bolster their resilience and build back their wholeness.
Her college friend, Ruth Field, an experienced self-help author, who had witnessed and shared plenty of bad breakup discussions with Alice over the years, joined the project, and the Heartbreak Hotel was born. A physical retreat space in the UK, the Heartbreak Hotel gave Alice and Ruth a place and a process in which to transform loss into contentment and power.
This remarkable book tells the story of the Heartbreak Hotel and takes us into the actual exercises conducted at the retreat. Bursting with compassion, humor, poignancy, sass, courage, and understanding, it teaches readers of all ages how to:
face their deepest hurt
ask for help
be kind and forgiving to themselves
embrace their pain without shame or judgment
lean on the collective
turn heartbreaks into an abundance of love, strength, and pride.
In addition, Ruth and Alice examine how society raises women to fall into love traps and bad habits of self-sacrifice and enabling, and they guide them to live more empowered, vibrant, and richer lives and to find better love in the future.