Few could guide us as well through dark moments toward wholeness. It takes a master storyteller and an extraordinarily sensitive soul to speak about loss and happiness in proximity to one another. Maria Sirois, by drawing on personal experience, research, and a lot of heart, can help us all navigate through life's most difficult experiences, so that we can find our way to safety, and even to happiness. -Tal Ben-Shahar, author of Happier Maria Sirois is a born storyteller and "A Short Course in Happiness After Loss" is full of them, many from unlikely places, like the ground beneath her feet. Maria can extract a story from a rock in the road and such is her talent that we will happily bend down with her when she picks it up, turns it over, and tells us why this particular rock is so important. In the process, she tells us why we're important, too. This is a delicious book, full of truth and generosity and the kind of no-holds-barred honesty that characterizes Maria in person and on the page. -Phyllis Theroux, author of The Journal Keeper What a wonderful book this is! Full of insight drawn from the author's clinical practice, A Short Course in Happiness After Loss deserves a place on your shelf next to When Things Fall Apart, Broken Open, and The Year of Magical Thinking. Beautifully written and tenderly observed, Maria Sirois' meditation on loss and resilience will help you through your darkest hours and fill your heart again with joy. -Mark Matousek, author of When You're Falling, Dive This book tells us how to love truly, fully, and completely in the face of suffering and loss. Maria Sirois writes of her own losses and the losses of others she accompanies in her work as a therapist and teacher. This is a book of beauty and grace, a book that teaches us that happiness waits patiently for those who seek it. -Sherri Mandell, author of The Blessing of a Broken Heart Stunned by the death of her 48-year-old brother, Maria Sirois asks how we summon our strengths to survive the agonies of this world. And she answers her question with stories of resilience from her own deeply felt experiences, amplified by poetry and the spiritual wisdom of the great sages. A trustworthy guide, she earns our confidence through courageous self-revelation. Rather than tuning out encounters with loss and suffering in her life and the lives of others, Maria has gathered them close, allowed them to transform her, and she has developed a set of profound lessons to teach what she has learned along the way. She reminds us, "We suffer. None of us is spared." In her short course, Maria gives us permission to confront suffering directly, while reminding us of our resilience, capacity to love, and our ability to endure. -Richard M. Berlin, author of Practice and Secret Wounds Wise, real, and clear, this book offers a way into what we all have to do sooner or later - live alongside death. The words are not prescriptive, giving a pat recipe for managing loss and pain. Instead, with compassion rooted in experience, Maria unwraps little bubbles of hope with each story, honoring the raw truth of grief and the possibility of life waiting in the wings to resurface. If you're trying to figure out how to live in the face of death, and need a rudder to hold onto, grab this book. -Megan McDonough, author of Radically Receptive Meditation