Bittersweet is a little more nebulous in strategy but, boiled down, is a defence of the melancholic personality, one of the types identified by Aristotle (also explored in Richard Holloway’s The Heart of Things). It felt like vindication for introverts everywhere. Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain (2022)Ĭain’s Quiet must be one of the best-known nonfiction books of the millennium. Alongside the classics of bereavement literature I have been rereading, I found these two books to be valuable companions in grief. There are measures we can take to mitigate sadness – a focus of the second half of Russell’s book – but it can’t be avoided altogether. Accepting sadness helps us to be compassionate towards others and to acknowledge but ultimately let go of generational pain. If there’s a key lesson I learned from the latest work by these authors, who are among the best self-help writers out there, it’s that denying sadness is the worst thing we could do. There’s been a lot of sadness in my life over the past few months.
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