KW Hungry Minds

I've wanted to open up a discussion about living with pain since we did our grief series. So many people talked about grieving their lost health and freedom, lost to chronic pain. Others talked about caring for someone who is or was battling chronic pain. We see the effects of our society's struggle with chronic pain in the hospitals and on the streets. It's something that touches all of us but something we so rarely talk openly about.

We are going to frame our discussion around the 5 parts of Christiane Wolf's book *Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind *- a poorly titled book (in my opinion) that digs into the emotions around pain and the grief that it can bring. We will talk about the topics in the book, share our own stories, and end the meeting with a short (10 minute) guided meditation. Location for this series will be added soon but it will be some place private. Please message Tess if you would like an ebook or audiobook copy.

Here are the subtitles for this section of the book:

PART 1: Caring for Yourself
1. You Are Not Your Pain
2. The Pain Story
3. The Box We Call Pain
4. Self-Compassion for pain.

Working on starting up a more regular book club style discussion mixed in with visiting our local restaurants. It's a bit too soon to pop a book on you for this one, so we'll just get together to talk about what we are reading, why we read or don't read, and places we like to eat at. A fun social time focused around the joys of eating and reading!

We are continuing on our discussion of chronic pain which we focus around the book *Outsmart Your Pain *by Christiane Wolf. You don't have to have attended a previous session to come out to this one. We will talk about the topics in the book, share our own stories, and end the meeting with a short (10 minute) guided meditation. Location for this series will be added soon but it will be some place private. Please message Tess if you would like an ebook or audiobook copy.

Here are the subtitles for this section of the book:

PART 2: Making Peace
1. Ending the War with Your Body
2. Finding Your Internal Support Group
3. Collecting Pearls