To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity

"In this spellbinding book, poet and novelist Browning spares no detail in telling the story of her descent into profound grief as one loss piled upon another. Though small, this effective and plainspoken memoir is densely packed with tales of harrowing experiences that require emotional, intellectual, and spiritual investments on the part of the reader. Browning's journey of recovery will be of help to anyone looking for courage in difficult times."

-Publishers Weekly

"A laconic, beautiful, and deeply insightful account about coping with loss."

-Kirkus Reviews

"Browning's essay explores the confluence of natural and interior landscapes in a manner both beautiful and searing."

-Foreword Reviews, {5 Stars}

"Browning brings us inside the disoriented unfolding of a life taking new shape after trauma. This is not a 'tie a neat bow around it' trauma and recovery story with a too-simple happy ending, but a messy, honest look at a life that will never be the same."

-Narratively

"Impressively candid and articulate, extraordinarily honest and insightful, exceptionally well written, organized and presented, To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity is an inherently compelling read from cover to cover. Thoughtful and thought-provoking from first page to last, To Lose the Madness is unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library collections."

-Midwest Book Review, *Reviewer's Choice

"To Lose the Madness is poignant, it is granular and gritty, it sings without avoiding the grit. From the depth of a despair often not spoken for, Browning offers her reader a compassionate voice of witnessing for herself and for anyone who has been touched by this kind of suffering. She speaks courageously of healing that comes not by getting rid of pain, but by moving into relationship with it, carrying it, lifting out of it at times, and dipping back into it other times. As she attests, 'The wounds don't define us; how we went about surviving does.' What makes Leslie's way of going about it authentic and reliable is that she speaks not only for the 'lotus ... of hope' arising out of her suffering, she also speaks openly and honestly for the 'mud' out of which that hope arises."

-Gary Whited, award-winning author of Having Listened

"This is Browning's most personally revealing book to date―and perhaps her best . . . It is a book that offers a brief but deep glimpse at a writer's soul, and, in doing so, a glimpse at our own."

-Theodore Richards, award-winning author of Cosmosophia

"To Lose the Madness, teaches much about 'trauma, loss, and radical authenticity' with wisdom, awe, and grace. While her journey is unique, it reveals the universality of brokenness and the yearning for connection. I'm grateful for Browning's willingness to explore her own suffering―and transcendence―so honestly and poetically; the resulting generous, sage essay is a guide for everyone. -Iris Graville, author of Hiking Naked
"To Lose the Madness is an essay built from the bones of the earth. Browning offers a stripped-down, belly-to-the-ground, howling manifesto to authenticity, the truth that resides beneath layers of flesh and soil. It is a roadmap of hard-won scars and suffering, the kind of suffering that carves a life like glaciers carve landscapes. Where it has been, a riverbed of beauty and self-knowledge has been left."

-Jason Kirkey, author of The Salmon in the Spring

"L. M. Browning's To Lose the Madness is rife with the paraclete, one who comes alongside, to console and to encourage. But this is no trending self-help pablum complete with formulas for accelerating grief or sidestepping trauma. Instead, this is a courageous gift of self-disclosure, complete with unvarnished truth about human suffering and our search for meaning. This is a road trip with a friend, one who's been there, and who knows the only way home is through."

-James Scott Smith, author of Water, Rocks and Trees