I Was in Your Shoes

Grief can be one of the most mysterious expressions of inner life.

How can a person who has been emptied out by loss manage to be reborn and fill their world with meaning? How can they, certain that they have lost joy and the desire to live forever, restore inner balance and feel the colors and taste of life?

How does suffering turn into wisdom?

This book is opened for a reason with the words of psychologist F. Vasilyuk: “Grief, perhaps, is one of the most mysterious manifestations of inner life.” It is about something for which there is no worse thing: two mothers face severe, rarely curable diseases that fall upon their children. The events described span 2016 to 2018, but the heroines’ memories constantly carry the reader back several decades. In terms of form, the book is quite unusual: it is a living dialogue between co-authors—there are exchanges of SMS messages, letters, and pages from their diaries.

But beyond that, from the very first pages the reader becomes a witness to how suffering is melted into poetry and prose.

We hope the authors’ experience will open a path toward understanding and hope—that in every crisis, no matter how deep it is, in any seemingly unbearable grief and pain, there is always a way out into a new creative life.