In When the Ache Remains, Lisa Olivera blends her own personal experience of living with depression with therapeutic wisdom in a moving exploration of the emotional pain each of us lives with, offering readers guidance on finding beauty and aliveness alongside the aches we carry.

Emotional pain, of all kinds and magnitudes, is part of life. We’ll never be able to find ourselves free of it; no meditation or amount of therapy will cure us of the harder parts of being alive. The practice of turning toward the ache with care – reverence, even – might be one of the most meaningful gifts we can give ourselves. It might even save us.

Lisa has confronted this reality for years as a therapist, weaving her exploration of it throughout her popular newsletter, Human Stuff. She asks questions like, how do we confront and tend to the painful parts of being human without letting that pain entirely overtake us? How do we find joy even when depression visits, even when we lose someone we love, even when the hurt of the world is ever-present? How do we cultivate aliveness in the midst?

When the Ache Remains shares the practice of bringing wholeheartedness to our pain in a tender and wise exploration of how ache shapes life, how we can alchemize our grief into medicine, and how presence is accessible even in the midst of difficulty. Blending deeply personal narrative, humanistic psychology, lessons from nature, words of nourishment, and her naturally poetic undertone, Lisa invites readers on a journey alongside her as she uncovers the impact of our aches, and the process of learning to tend to them in more open, integrative, and loving ways.

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