Building on her decades of work in hospice care, in this illuminating book Julie Interrante, weaves together insights from the ailing and dying with her own discoveries to reveal the importance of embracing pain. Whether sparked by the loss of a friend or loved one, a pet or long-held belief, a job or a marriage, a home and community, or a physical capacity, pain breaks open the heart, catalyzing great courage, trust, and creativity for living life joyfully. It also heightens our attunement to nature’s cycle of seasons, as well as our own, which moves us full-tilt into our living and our dying.