“Rachel beautifully illustrates that caring fiercely and grieving deeply are often two halves of the same whole. Her story will break you down and lift you up.” —Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Occasions bestseller Love Warrior and creator of Together Growing

While on her way to teach a yoga exercise retreat in March 2014, Rachel Brathen collapses at an airport, taken to her knees by excruciating stomach pains. She is rushed to a healthcare facility on the small isle of Bonaire, and hours later forced to about To Love and RELEASE: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Gratitude undergo procedure. When she wakes up from anesthesia, her sweetheart can be weeping at her bedside. While Rachel was struck down with apparently mysterious pain, her best friend, Andrea, sustained fatal injuries due to a car accident. Rachel and Andrea acquired a magical friendship. Though they looked nothing as well—one girl high, blond, and Swedish, the other short, brunette, and Colombian—everyone called them gemelas: twins.

Over the 3 years following Andrea’s death, at what might appear from the exterior to be the happiest time—with her engagement to the person she loves and a blossoming career that takes her all over the world—Rachel faces some trials which have the to define her life. Unresolved grief and stress from her youth make the weight of her sadness intolerable. At each switch, she actually is confronted over and over using a choice: Will she eliminate everything, succumb to grief, and understand for control that’s beyond her reach? Or can she move through losing and let go?

When Rachel and her hubby conceive a kid, pregnancy becomes a period to heal and an opportunity to end up being reborn herself. As she recounts this transformative period, Rachel shares her hard-won intelligence about lifestyle and death, like and dread, what it means to be a mother and a little girl, and how to be someone who walks through the open fire of adversity with the never-ending practice of adoring hard and allowing go.