Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey by Florence Williams

Florence Williams, a nonfiction writer whose work focuses on the environment, health, and science, explores the science of heartbreak after her 25-year marriage ends unexpectedly.

This book is both memoir and science journalism. Williams uses herself as the study subject while investigating conventional wisdom and scientific research on heartbreak and grief. She ingests psychedelics, attends divorce workshops, undergoes genetic testing on her blood,electrical shocks, hikes and camps in the wilderness both with groups and alone, and researches therapeutic modalities on her way to growing comfortable with uncertainty and finding beauty in the everyday after divorce.

Personally, I found that the merging of science and personal story validated my experience in a way that pure memoir alone cannot. There’s something about the scientific angle that makes me take myself and my pain more seriously, which in turn allows me to find compassion for myself and my situation. Self-compassion can help the healing along.

“In cataloging my failings, I’d missed an important step, although I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t yet realize it was okay to be broken, that it was even, perhaps, essential to becoming a more porous animal capable of far more real love than I had known was possible. It would still take some time for me to learn that our flaws are not the problem; rather, it is the failure to forgive them—in ourselves and in others—that trips up our hearts.”