Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully with Serious and Life-Limiting Illness through Mindfulness, Compassion, and Connectedness

by Susan Bauer-Wu, Joan Halifax (Foreword)

Accessible meditations, reflections, and practical advice to help patients and their loved ones navigate the emotional landscape of serious illness.

Dealing with chronic illness can be an isolating and challenging experience. Whether it’s you or someone you love, it’s common to struggle with feelings of fear, sadness, or anger as you navigate the uncertainty of a diagnosis. This revised, expanded edition of Leaves Falling Gently empowers readers to embrace the present moment, find peace within themselves, and deepen interpersonal connections. With accessible meditations, reflective prompts, and mindfulness practices that resonate deeply with both patients and their loved ones, it offers a nurturing roadmap for navigating the complexities of health challenges.

The book’s three parts—Mindfulness, Compassion, and Connectedness—each contain prompts for meditations, reflective writing, and daily practices that are rooted in Buddhism and can benefit everyone. Frequent reminders to “pause now” encourage us to be where we’re at and move at a pace that is comfortable.

Backed by research and clinical studies, and interspersed with stories from the author’s own experiences working in end-of-life care, this heartfelt guide is a welcome offering for all of us to treat ourselves and those around us gently in order to live more fully.

Genres: Health, Nonfiction, Buddhism, Meditation, Medical

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2011

Reviews

[Naomi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good introduction to life with serious illness, Susan Bauer-Wu's work integrates mind-body work, particularly the research and teaching lead by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This is accessible to people with no particular spiritual path, and meant for folks living with serious and intense pain.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Empathy, compassion, comfort. It's a gentle approach to a heavy topic. A good roadmap, a good resource. Sometimes the best support is the support you can pick up and put down at your own pace and this book gives you that for sure. Generally written, should appeal to a wide audience of caregivers to people living with serious illnesses. Eye opening without being overly religious or preachy. Although there is a lot of emphasis on meditation.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a very comforting book... helping to focus on the tasks of later life when stricken with incurable disease or eminent death. It gave meditations and suggestions for cultivating mindfulness compassion and connectednes. In the back there is a list of helpful resources. Since the process of meditation fosters mindfullness and compassion it was easy to assimilate in my thoughts and practice. Very hopeful and reassuring.