“This lifetime is short. Love the people you know, suck of the juice of love and glory every single day. Rise to the occasion!”

MARIANNE WILLIAMSON is an internationally acclaimed author and lecturer. Six of her ten published books have been New York Times bestsellers. Her books include A Return to Love, A Year of Miracles, The Law of Divine Compensation, The Age of Miracles, A Course in Weight Loss, Everyday Grace, A Woman’s Worth, Illuminata, and The Gift of Change. Marianne has been a popular guest on television programs such as Oprah, Good Morning America and Charlie Rose.

In her new book Tears to Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment, Marianne Williamson offers an impassioned spiritual perspective on the epidemic of depression sweeping our society, and joins a growing chorus of voices addressing the overmedication of America. Williamson challenges the broad appropriation of deep sadness as a medical issue, claiming there is a “spectrum of normal human suffering” that calls for spiritual, not medical, intervention.

Based on a career of over three decades counseling people in depressing, even life-challenging situations (and drawing as well from her own deep periods of grief), in Tears To Triumph: The Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment, Williamson argues against what she calls the “pathologizing of deep sadness,” and reveals how the radical application of love and forgiveness serves as a spiritual solution to a spiritual problem.

Combining her customary references to A Course in Miracles with an in-depth inquiry into the spiritual responses to suffering within the stories of Buddha, Moses and Jesus, Williamson opens up a much-needed conversation about the fundamental sources of human suffering as well as its transcendence.

Tears To Triumph boldly states that “modern civilization has itself become a depressing phenomenon, predicated on principles that dissociate human beings from the feelings of connectedness and wholeness without which happiness cannot be found.” Williamson argues that psychic pain, like physical pain, exists for a reason; it should be listened to for the messages it conveys and addressed on a causal level. “The mind,” says Williamson, “is imbued with an immune system no less than is the body, giving it extraordinary abilities to heal itself.”

This groundbreaking book also explores the collective dimensions of our current epidemic of emotional suffering, suggesting that “overconcentration on an individual’s pain can obscure the larger social issues that breed depression among the larger population.” Some of the issues addressed in this book include:

• Emotional torment — why is such suffering a part of our experience? What does it mean? And how can we survive it and even transcend it?
• What is the response to suffering at the heart of all great religious teachings?
• Why is it important to be fully available to our suffering, as opposed to suppressing it or numbing it?
• Why has our suffering become a profit center for the pharmaceutical industry?
• What is the relationship between individual and collective suffering?
• What are the spiritual principles that deliver us from our pain, and how do we apply them?

Tears To Triumph is a clarion call not only to the reader, but also to society to heed the deeper message of our suffering and the suffering of others. Most importantly, it illuminates the path by which spiritual principles deliver us beyond deep sadness and emotional pain.