Coming Back to Life, Third Edition : The Evolving Guide to the Work That Reconnects

The Work That Reconnects empowers people to transform despair into constructive, collaborative action. Coming Back to Life, Third Edition is the essential guide to using the Work in group settings to create life-sustaining and equitable human culture while addressing systemic racism, injustice, and oppression.

A timeless manual for transforming despair into active hope

In the face of overwhelming interconnected social and ecological crises, the Work That Reconnects has inspired and empowered hundreds of thousands of people to transform despair and apathy into constructive, collaborative action. Coming Back to Life, Third Edition is the essential guide to using the Work in group settings, facilitating the creation of a life-sustaining and equitable human culture.

This fully revised 25th anniversary edition further illuminates and deepens the extraordinary practice of the Work, with a particular emphasis on inclusivity and addressing wide-spread systemic racism and injustice. Authors Joanna Macy and Molly Brown:

• Completely expand and update the context, foundations, and core concepts of the Work, from Business as Usual to the Great Unraveling, to the Great Turning
• Illustrate its central framework—a spiral journey through gratitude, honoring our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth
• Outline powerful perspectives, teachings, exercises, and rituals, evoking the interconnectedness of all life and awakening a desire to contribute to the Great Turning
• Offer specific guidance for anti-oppressive and trauma-informed facilitation of the Work That Reconnects.

Grief, anger, and fear are natural responses to the harsh realities of our time. By honoring these feelings through the revolutionary practices of the Work That Reconnects, space is created for compassion and forgiveness, along with the courage to take creative action on behalf of life.