When I first published Mud and Dreams, the levels of anxiety and depression, hostility and loneliness, were rising dramatically among all groups. That was before the pandemic, before so many other things that have driven us further apart.
Conditions are even more desperate today.
Now more than ever, we need to recognize the beauty and goodness that is all around us and our reasons for hope. We need to be assured that while the things of life can be hard, difficult, scary, irrational, unjust and unfair, that we are stronger than we thought we were, and that fundamentally there is always cause to love life and to celebrate the tender, rapturous, beautiful intimacies that also are our inheritance.
With its scientific and poetic grounding in the human themes of gratitude, kindness, hope, humility, and resilience, Mud and Dreams brings us back to what has always sustained us, brings us together and helps us fall deeper in love with life. I hope you will consider sharing Mud and Dreams with your families, colleagues and friends.