Susan Cain on BITTERSWEET: HOW SORROW AND LONGING MAKE US WHOLE

"Leonard Cohen is like my all-time favorite musician … I, all my life, have had this reaction to sad music, of not feeling sad at all when I listened to it. Instead, what I feel is a kind of sense of uplift, and a sense of wonder and awe that a musician could take pain and turn it into beauty. And most of all, a kind of sense of connection with the musician and with all the other people who are listening to it. It's a kind of like beautiful acknowledgement that the state of being human involves loss and involves sorrow." Susan Cain changed the way we think about introverts with her first bestseller, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and now she's going to change the way we approach some difficult feelings with Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Susan joins us on the show to talk about the thinkers and poets who influenced the new book, the veneer of effortless belonging, resolving her own grief, impermanence, collective creativity (and shifting our communal thinking), Susan David's concept of Emotional Agility, how writing this book changed her and much more with Poured Over's host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff segment featuring Margie and Marc.

Featured Books:

Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Gold by Rumi

Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).

A full transcript of this show is available here.