Surrendering to Joy

The Joy Series #2

by Suzanne Falter

"One of the most remarkable books you'll read this year. Or any year..." — Publisher's Daily Review Sometimes the worst crises become our greatest healers. That’s what happened to author Suzanne Falter after the sudden, strange death of her daughter Teal at age 22. Immediately, Suzanne began to write. She had to just to make sense of Teal’s death. Since then, these essays that have been shared hundreds of thousands of time on Facebook. But then, that’s what Teal would have wanted. Because she was, in fact, a healer. In Surrendering to Joy, Suzanne charts her path over the year following Teal’s death. With searing, raw honesty, she covers the most important things in life – love, forgiveness, humanity. Compassion. She writes about the incredible outpouring of love around the world after Teal’s death. And about forgiving her difficult mother just before her death a few months later. And about realizing she has been a drama junkie, and how to deal with uncertainty. Her readers have described the book as intimate, healing, wise … like having a chat with an old friend. And that is its essence. Each page is, indeed, blessed with some kind of unusual grace. This is a story of letting go. Dancing through a dark tunnel, fumbling along from one signpost to the next, and believing for no good reason that at any moment an unexpected light will shine. Of course, the light was always there from the beginning, shining quite beautifully. I’d simply forgotten where to look for it. So I found myself with nothing to call my own in my 53rd year. That was the year I lost my career, my home, the relationship I had been pinning my hopes on, my mother, and my marriage of 23 years. And then I lost Teal. "One of the most remarkable books you'll read this year. Or any year..." -- Publisher's Daily Review Sometimes the worst crises become our greatest healers. That’s what happened to author Suzanne Falter after the sudden, strange death It took the sudden death of my beautiful, life-loving, jubilant 22-year- old daughter for me to truly dissolve and be reborn. And to find my way back to a state of grace, and a deep and abiding joy. Knowing Teal, that is just the way she would have wanted it; she always had a better idea of how her mother should do things. It was only after her death that I realized she was exactly right. * * * The cause of Teal’s death remains unknown. A housemate found her collapsed in an empty bathtub after a cardiac arrest. EMTs managed to restore her heartbeat, but she never regained consciousness and was taken off life support six days later. Teal was an epileptic, but doctors will never know if a seizure was the cause of her death. Researchers estimate one in one thousand epileptics pass away from mysterious sudden deaths each year. But I believe Teal died because she was meant to become a healer from the afterlife. Several months before her death, Teal called me to say, “In six months something really big is going to happen that will give me my healing gift.” She had received this information in a meditation.

134 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 13, 2013

About the author

Suzanne Falter is an author, speaker, blogger and podcaster who has published both fiction and non-fiction, as well as essays. She also speaks about self-care and the transformational healing of crisis, especially in her own life after the death of her daughter Teal. Her non-fiction books also include How Much Joy Can You Stand? and Surrendering to Joy . Suzanne is also the host of podcast Self-Care for Extremely Busy Women.

Suzanne’s essays have appeared in O Magazine, The New York Times, Elephant Journal, Tiny Buddha and Thrive Global among others. Her fiction titles include the Oaktown Girls series of lesbian romances, and the romantic suspense series, Transformed. Her non-fiction work, blog, podcasts and her online course, Self-Care for Extremely Busy Women, can be found at suzannefalter.com and on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest.

She lives with her wife in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much of this book’s wisdom shines through and touches my heart. I feel like Suzanne reminds me in fresh, new ways of what my soul already knows. Once in a while her insights totally bowl me over. Reading this book made me feel like I'm on the right path, because it's my path, my journey. Suzanne’s words soothed me, helped me to feel the perfection of this eternal moment.

[Amy Ingalls · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won this book in a giveaway. My heart goes out to the author on the loss of her beautiful daughter. I am impressed that she was able to learn from this experience and share all that she has been through in such a positive way. I especially liked the idea of being authentic, kind, and forgiving to yourself.

[Norma · Rating 1 out of 5]

Beware. Very dangerous reading

This book did not deserve any stars and I did not finish it. Beware of this book It is NOT truth