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    To Love and Let Go: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Gratitude
    To Love and Let Go: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Gratitude
    To Love and Let Go: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Gratitude
    Audiobook8 hours

    To Love and Let Go: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Gratitude

    Written by Rachel Brathen

    Narrated by Rachel Brathen

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “Rachel beautifully illustrates that loving fiercely and grieving deeply are often two halves of the same whole. Her story will break you down and lift you up.” —Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Love Warrior and founder of Together Rising

    While on her way to teach a yoga retreat in March 2014, Rachel Brathen collapses at an airport, brought to her knees by excruciating stomach pains. She is rushed to the hospital on the tiny island of Bonaire, and hours later forced to undergo surgery. When she wakes up from anesthesia, her boyfriend is weeping at her bedside. While Rachel was struck down with seemingly mysterious pain, her best friend, Andrea, sustained fatal injuries as a result of a car accident. Rachel and Andrea had a magical friendship. Though they looked nothing alike—one girl tall, blond, and Swedish, the other short, brunette, and Colombian—everyone called them gemelas: twins.

    Over the three years following Andrea’s death, at what might appear from the outside to be the happiest time—with her engagement to the man she loves and a blossoming career that takes her all over the world—Rachel faces a series of trials that have the potential to define her life. Unresolved grief and trauma from her childhood make the weight of her sadness unbearable. At each turn, she is confronted again and again with a choice: Will she lose it all, succumb to grief, and grasp for control that’s beyond her reach? Or can she move through the loss and let go?

    When Rachel and her husband conceive a child, pregnancy becomes a time to heal and an opportunity to be reborn herself. As she recounts this transformative period, Rachel shares her hard-won wisdom about life and death, love and fear, what it means to be a mother and a daughter, and how to become someone who walks through the fire of adversity with the never-ending practice of loving hard and letting go.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateSep 17, 2019
    ISBN9781508298564
    Author

    Rachel Brathen

    Rachel Brathen is the New York Times bestselling author of Yoga Girl and a world-renowned yoga instructor who teaches workshops and leads retreats around the globe. She is the founder of YogaGirl.com, an online platform for yoga, meditation, and healing, as well as Island Yoga, the largest yoga studio in the Caribbean. Rachel runs two non-profit organizations: Sgt Pepper’s Friends, an animal rescue foundation based in Aruba, and Yoga Girl® Foundation, benefitting women and children in need. Find her on Instagram @Yoga_Girl and on her popular podcast, From the Heart: Conversations with Yoga Girl. Born in Sweden, she lives in Aruba with her husband and daughter.

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    Reviews for To Love and Let Go

    4.5/5

    51 ratings10 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This book is life changing, thank you Rachel Brathen.
    • 5/5
      This book changed my life. Beautiful, painfully raw, and healing all at the same time. In this book Rachel said she was here to change the world. She’s been changing my world for years and this book simply ties it all together. Give yourself the gift of reading this book.
    • 5/5
      This book was an emotional journey of the best kind ? I cried countless times throughout these words, and I wouldn’t trade any of it. Rachel serenades the reader into a deeper understanding of the things that matter the most. Thank you for sharing your heart with us, Rachel!
    • 5/5
      This is the kind of book I never knew I needed. Thank you, it came at the right moment. I recommend the audio book, I love Rachel's voice, soothing and powerful at the same time. Enjoy :-)
    • 5/5
      Rachel never fails to touch me with her words. Whether you have experienced grief or not, you will definitely get something out of this book.
    • 5/5
      Amazing BOOK! I felt related to many of the stories ? listening to this book brought a lot of my own shadows and emotions to the surface! It just beautiful
    • 2/5
      2.5 -3 stars. I think you have to be the author's real true fan to enjoy it fully. For me, it just feels and reads like everything she's ever said on her podcast, written down and in form of a book. I heard all of these stories already and it's a bit (how to call it) boring? to be reading the same stories all over again. Some paragraphs are beautiful while others are a bit cringeworthy and it all feels very self-serving.
      It's a memoir and it's Rachel's story. Not for everyone, I'd say, you have to really dig the way she perceives the world. And I just cannot stop thinking about white privilege, there. I said it aloud.
    • 5/5
      Beauty coming from the heart. So much imagery I felt like I went through this with her. I got to connect with my own journey and found her discoveries to help uncover some of mine too. Thanks Rachel.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful story, loved how Rachael read her book herself. Highly recommend!
    • 5/5
      Cried the whole way through, this book touches me deeply every time.