A Write Teacher(s) Review: If You Feel Too Much

Dear Bookworms,

The world is full of hurting people. Everywhere you go there are individuals caught in the traps of drug use, depression and hopelessness. A few years ago, a young man named Jamie Tworkowski came face to face with this reality when he met a woman struggling with the weight of these very things and he allowed that experience to change his life. He not only made the decision to show up and stand by her in her distress, but to take the message of hope that she needed so badly and bring it to the world so that others like her could know that they too are not alone.

As a result, he founded To Write Love on Her Arms, “a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire, and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.”

This book, If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For, is a collection of thoughts and messages by Jamie. Organized by date, the book assembles essays, letters and musings from 2005 through 2014, the years encompassing (so far) the creation and life of TWLOHA.  It reads intentionally like a journal, an assemblage of the reflections inspired by the moments of life, whether significant or seemingly mundane.

One thread though seems to be present in all of them, tying them together into a cohesive whole, that of acknowledging the real pain that exists in the living of this life, but of seeing the real beauty that exists in it too. In page after page of this book, Jamie reminds us that while pain is real, it only defeats you when you give up and believe the lie that you are alone. His words are thoughtful, beautiful and haunting, and they reach out to you like a friend.

I leave you with this quote, taken from the essay that got Jaime started and, it seems to me, perfectly captures the tone and feeling of this book.

                She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She’s had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn’t have it. i hold it carefully, thank her, and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

Keep reading!

Live, Love, Learn

Elise and The Write Teacher(s)