The Gift of a Broken Heart

A searing and poignant memoir of parental love, unthinkable loss, and the power of grief to open our hearts and connect us to others.

Grief can be profoundly disorienting and traumatic. Yet it can also open our hearts, strengthening our empathy, affection, and compassion for others. It may even open us up to new forms of joy. In this heartrending memoir, business executive and Buddhist Bryan Welch movingly recounts his own journey through deep grief at the unimaginable loss of his 25-year-old son. In unflinching detail, the book describes the pain of parents grappling with their adult son’s addiction, and his eventual death from the disease.

As Welch begins the monumental process of recovering from devastating parental grief, his vulnerability transforms into unexpected feelings of warmth, kinship, and compassion toward other people. This, as much as debilitating grief, is part of his son’s legacy, and he begins exploring practical, psychological, and spiritual ways of honoring that legacy and sustaining a more compassionate, less egotistical view of the world.

Grief is a part of every human life. We desperately try to avoid it, but it can also provide profound guidance for how we can experience life, and love, more deeply. This book explores how our own vulnerability as human beings can help us heal the traumas that separate us from one another, and may even lead us toward a more loving and connected world.

Author Biography

Bryan Welch is a business executive, writer, farmer, and entrepreneur. For nineteen years, from its founding, he ran Ogden Publications, Mother Earth News, Mother Earth Living, Utne Reader, and several other leading media brands focused on sustainability and natural health. More recently, he served as co-CEO of Silk Grass Holdings, a family office developing 32,000 acres of regenerative organic farms and wildlife preserves in Belize. He was founder and CEO of B The Change Media, a multi-platform media company focused on business as a force for good in the world, and was also CEO of Mindful Communications, a media and corporate meditation-training company and Foster Care Technologies, a B Corporation that provides software that improves placements of children in foster care.

Welch has served on the boards of the Silk Grass Farms, the Magazine Publishers Association, the Social Venture Network, Down Home Ranch Foundation, and several nonprofits. He has also served on corporate boards of directors and advisory boards of companies involved in natural foods, agriculture, food-processing, ecommerce, corporate training and the media. He holds a master’s degree from Harvard University, where he studied at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School. As a Buddhist, Welch is a long-time meditator and advocate for mindfulness practices.