A candid memoir about trauma….a frank chronicle of healing . . . will resonate with readers in emotional pain.” —Kirkus Reviews
"Any reader will recognize the moments of pain . . . in all their stunning emotion and shocking physicality. Jarvis offers a portal to self-compassion and a passage to hope." —Booklist
“Her life shattered by the sudden loss of her beloved mother, Meghan Riordan Jarvis walks us barefoot through her grief, across sacred shards of loss, guilt, and hopelessness. From End of the Hour we emerge with the fierce tenderness that love and loss require of us. What a gift.”—Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed, founder of Together Rising
"A glorious depiction of what it means to be human in this world. Meghan Riordan Jarvis expertly expands the conversation about trauma, both for the patient and the clinician. This smart, warm, and relatable book challenged my assumptions about what it means to care for ourselves and others. I know it will do the same for everyone who reads these pages." —Claire Bidwell Smith, author of Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief
"Jarvis’s End of the Hour is the rare feat of a book that is at once wise and humble, hilarious and heartbreaking, entertaining and educational. Jarvis’s story, a behind-the scenes look at what happens when a therapist’s personal losses bring her to her knees, demystifies trauma and offers readers a radiant dash of hope. This book is packed with powerful scenes of Jarvis drowning in the dark waters of grief, and, more importantly, of how she resuscitated herself by surrendering to treatment and support. A page turner that will help readers find the shore of their own lives and the will to paddle forward."—Christie Tate, author of Group
“The truth of being human is that there is no level of practice, knowledge, or training that can serve as armor against the experience of loss. In the same way, grief can settle in your bones and blanket your life with prickling heaviness, Meghan Riordan Jarvis has written a memoir that you will also feel in your bones. End of the Hour is honest about the deep, dark waters of grief, but you will be grateful for how its vulnerability, warmth, and expertise offer a sense of hope, a life raft to hold onto tightly.”—Marisa Renee Lee, author of Grief is Love
"This is a beautifully written memoir and poignant journey from loss to hope..." —Steve Leder, author of For You When I Am Gone
2023-08-25
A mental health professional faces her own fragility.
Psychotherapist Jarvis, host of the podcast Grief Is My Side Hustle, draws on her own experiences and those of her patients in a candid memoir about trauma. Jarvis was 9 when a friend’s brother drowned, a devastating event that incited profound feelings of loss and fear. Those feelings were exacerbated at home: Her father was away each weekday working in New York City; her mother cried every night. “It felt like we were all hanging on by a thread,” Jarvis writes; she felt “constantly on the verge of panic.” At first, she took to self-comforting by overeating, but by the time she was 13, she had devised another method of dealing with pain. “People were impressed with my caretaking skills,” she writes, “and, from the outside, it seemed like I was in total control. Underneath the surface I was all anxiety, self-doubt, and self-loathing.” Those symptoms led her to seek therapy when she was 23, and she was diagnosed with “anxiety and intermittent depression.” Because of her positive experience with her therapist, she trained as a therapist herself. With her own practice, married, and the mother of three children, Jarvis fell apart after the deaths of her parents: Two years after her father’s death and two months after her mother’s, she could no longer function. “I had lost more than my bearings,” she writes. At a treatment center, she was diagnosed with complex trauma, which happens “when a person who has experienced past trauma lingers again in fear without support or relief. Compound trauma happens when more than one overwhelmingly bad thing happens in a short span of time.” Her mother’s death, she realized, “had swept away everything in my life that was stable, leaving behind old and new pain.” The author’s forthright memoir will resonate with readers in emotional pain.
A frank chronicle of healing.