The Power of a Broken-Open Heart
Life-Affirming Wisdom from the Dying
Julie Interrante, MA

What if life, beneath the surface, were composed of a series of painful transitions with the potential to break open our hearts? And what if our broken-open hearts could ease our approach to living and eventually to the transition we call dying?

Building on her decades of work in hospice care, in this illuminating book Julie Interrante weaves together insights from the ailing and dying with her own discoveries to reveal the importance of embracing pain. Whether sparked by the loss of a friend or loved one, a pet or long-held belief, a job or a marriage, a home and community, or a physical capacity, pain breaks open the heart, catalyzing great courage, trust, and creativity for living life joyfully. It also heightens our attunement to nature’s cycle of seasons, as well as our own, which moves us full tilt into our living and our dying.

The Power of a Broken-Open Heart is not an instruction manual. Nor is it a set of religious guidelines. Rather, it is a down-to-earth exploration of vulnerability and change. Ultimately it offers a new lens on the gift of life transitions.

Julie Interrante, MA
has a Master of Arts in Consciousness Studies from the Holmes Institute in Los Angeles, California. She is the Senior Minister of the Albuquerque Center for Spiritual Living and founder of The Compassionate Arts Project where she teaches the Art of Compassion. She has more than twenty years of experience serving as Chaplain in both acute care and home hospice care settings.

Julie is the co-author of Caregiver Therapy and contributing author to What Helps The Most When You Lose Someone You Love both available through Abbey Press.

A gifted speaker and teacher, Julie brings humor, compassion and a deep respect for life to all that she does. A playful grandmother, she makes her home in New Mexico with her husband, Ross and their two dogs, Daisy and Maggie.