Broken Open

How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

By: Elizabeth Lesser

Narrated by: Susan Denaker

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This inspiring guide to healing and growth illuminates the richness and potential of every life, even in the face of loss and adversity.

In the more than twenty-five years since she co-founded Omega Institute—now the world’s largest center for spiritual retreat and personal growth—Elizabeth Lesser has been an intimate witness to the ways in which people weather change and transition. In a beautifully crafted blend of moving stories, humorous insights, practical guidance, and personal memoir, she offers tools to help us make the choice we all face in times of challenge: Will we be broken down and defeated, or broken open and transformed? Lesser shares tales of ordinary people who have risen from the ashes of illness, divorce, loss of a job or a loved one—stronger, wiser, and more in touch with their purpose and passion. And she draws on the world’s great spiritual and psychological traditions to support us as we too learn to break open and blossom into who we were meant to be.©2004 Villard; (P)2008 Random House

Critic reviews

"Elizabeth Lesser bravely and beautifully explores one of the most compelling questions of life: how do we emerge from suffering and challenge with real, encompassing wisdom and love. Broken Open is personal, pragmatic and enlightening."
—Sharon Salzberg, author of Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience

"Never again will a painful experience wipe me out. This book shows how you can transform any difficult transition into a time of great strength and awakening."
—Jane Fonda

“There's more food for philosophical mastication--and more sparkling good sense--in one lucid chapter of Broken Open than in a library of ordinary books on similar subjects.”
—Tom Robbins

“Elizabeth Lesser has written a most extraordinary book that examines our relationship to the changing nature of life. Lesser, a brilliantly gifted writer, has created a treasure chest of personal stories that bring wisdom, insight, compassion, and common sense to the experiences familiar to so many of us as the years of our lives unfold within their immortal cycle of endings and new beginnings.”
—CAROLINE MYSS, author of Sacred Contracts and Anatomy of the Spirit

The most inspiring book

This book can really really change your spiritual path . Well done
So inspiring
I am forever grateful .

Good content; ok narrator

Elizabeth Lesser's framing of how we can learn from bad experiences should be required reading for everyone in their 20's. We'd all ignore it perhaps, but maybe some of it would stick as we mature and grow. If you have never considered what your "take-aways" or lessons learned are from really bad experiences, then read this book. Even if you understand this at your core, then read this book. I enjoy the framework that she uses especially in the last portion of the book to talk about what is possible. The parts that I didn't enjoy about listening to the book were twofold. I felt as if the narrator was talking in too "airy-fairy" a voice and was sing-songy. It made the text sound preachy and I don't think that was Lesser's intent. She seemed to modulate herself about halfway through the book, or maybe I just numbed out to the irritation because I wanted to get through the content.
The second thing that I didn't appreciated as much was the metaphor of a hero's journey that Lesser applied to her own life. I think she was trying to apply perhaps, some objectivity? But I think it came off as seeming smug or not really taking accountability for the harm she inflicted on others. Calling her extra-marital affair a journey with her "Shaman Lover", I thought was a bit affected. Come on Ms. Lesser, you cheated on your husband- simply put. Your other descriptions of what it was, were very well written and you did accept accountability, but I felt put off by some of the labels that didn't seem quite as useful as the rest of your writing.
Having said ALL of that, I still recommend reading the book, but this may be one that is better read than listened to.

I am listening to this yet again, pen in hand.

Lovely to listen to these stories and words of transition and transformations for the timing and agelessness of wisdom. Classic!

inspiring

I was confused with the death in session at first but once you fully immerse yourself into her lesson it comes together at the end understanding the Phoenix process and why death and creation is connected

Horrible narrator

I love this book and print, and referred it to several people who are going through difficult time. I thought I'd relisten to it on audible, to pass my driving time. And the narration is completely awful I can't even sit through it. She sounds so forced fake, I find myself getting distracted by how horrible her narration is.