When my marriage broke up the first
thing I did was surf Amazon looking for books on divorce. I also
asked divorced friends for recommendations. Here are the books that
made a real difference in my life:
Crazy Time; Surviving Divorce and
Building a New Life by Abigail Trafford.
Crazy Time is my bible of divorce. It
refers to that period after separation or divorce when you aren’t
yourself, when you do crazy things you never thought were possible.
My view of myself and my marriage was totally changed by this book.
Trafford explains that marriages fail when the power balance between
the spouses changes. She writes compellingly with great insight, but
in a chatty style with a lot of anecdotes. If you can’t
understand what went wrong in your marriage, and want to prevent the
same thing happening again, this is the book for you.
Broken Open; How Difficult Times can
Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser
Lesser uses her own life story, and
those of others, to explore what she calls the "Phoenix
Process," or how positive life change that can emerge from very
difficult life events. She cites stories of those who have gone
through a divorce (as she has), lost a child or suffered a terminal
illness. She brings in thinkers such as Tibetan Buddhist Pema
Chodron, the late philosopher Joseph Campbell and Ram Dass to
illustrate how meditation and belief in a spirit that works through
people can help break through fear and hopelessness. I was
transformed by this book—which gave me hope that I too could change
through the “crucible” (as she calls it) of divorce. The book
gave shape and meaning to what I was going through.
