Why would anyone write a book about suffering? Earnest in her pursuit, Dr. Jennifer Clark draws upon her near 25 years of practice as a Hospice and Palliative Medicine physician to convince us otherwise. Clark adeptly navigates the ups and downs, the twists and turns, and the pitfalls and plateaus of human development, asking us to reimagine the pilgrimage of the human condition.
With suffering as her compass, Clark takes us on a journey through the difficult terrains of fear and shame, ignorance and judgement, isolation and longing. In doing so, we are given a choice to see these painful experiences differently. Vital to human development, these sufferings reveal the direction we must take to progress through the milestones of dependence, independence, interdependence and transcendence.
In its timely publication, Suffer. offers insight to the possibility of a self-actualized life in this post-pandemic world. Using a modernized version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Clark flips the paradigm of suffering on its head. Guiding us through lands where storytelling meets science and mystery embraces material, Clark empowers and encourage us to "Suffer. Suffer, well."