The five gifts

"It's a club that none of us wants to belong to--you are comfortably living your life when suddenly your world turns upside down. Everything normal is ripped apart. Where do you turn to pick up the pieces? It's a question many of us are asking in these troubling times. While there is no way to predict exactly how you would respond to catastrophic loss, this book offers a psychological roadmap through cycles of shock and trauma to discover meaning, renewal, and hope.

First a journalist and then a psychotherapist, Laurie Nadel recognized the need to help people whose lives were shattered by violence. She created emotional first aid tools to calm acute stress reactions after catastrophes and led a program for teenagers whose fathers were killed in the September 11th attacks. But it was when her own home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 that she discovered the Five Gifts that helped her rebuild her life.

In this practical and compassionate guide, Nadel distills wisdom from several spiritual traditions as well as the latest science on the positive benefits of the Five Gifts--humility, patience, empathy, forgiveness, and growth--gifts that can keep you moving forward when your life veers off course. Each chapter includes keys to calm your mind, body, and spirit, plus inspiring interviews from first responders and survivors of such major events as the Thailand tsunami, the Rwandan genocide, and the Boston Marathon bombing. It's impossible to predict how the heart heals or how long it will take.