About Radical Acts of Love:
How we find hope at the end of life
Canongate UK, 2020
Doubleday Canada, 2020
“In this profound and moving book, oncology nurse Janie Brown recounts twenty conversations she has had with the dying, including some close to her. Each conversation uncovers a different perspective on, and experience of death, while at the same time exploring its universalities. Offering extremely sensitive and wise insight into our final moments, Brown shows practical ways to facilitate the shift from feeling helpless about death to feeling hopeful; from fear to acceptance; from feeling disconnected and alone, to becoming part of the wider, collective story of our mortality.”
— Doubleday CANADA
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An Excerpt from the Audiobook
Many have found the audiobook, narrated by Janie Brown herself, a comforting and inviting format for these stories that open the heart. Available on Audible.com, Audible.ca, AppleBooks and other audiobook platforms.
Thanks to the Toronto Internal Festival of Authors 2020 www.festivalofauthors.ca for commissioning the award-winning animator, illustrator and filmmaker Axel KInnear www.axelkinnear.com to create this beautiful animation of the audiobook excerpt. It was premiered at the 2020 festival.
Praise for Radical Acts of Love
“With Radical Acts of Love, Janie Brown demonstrates the power of a book to transform, in fact to turn things upside down. She turns death into life, despair into hope, sorrow into joy, and pain into love with these twenty astonishing encounters with the dying. We all know somewhere in the back of our minds that a deeper understanding and acceptance of death is supposed to release us into an even fiercer embrace of life—this wonderful book made me, for the first time, truly feel and believe it. Unforgettably wise, kind and wonderful."
— Stephen Fry, Writer and Broadcaster
“Janie Brown opens the door to gaze upon the end of life with lyrical honesty and a big heart. This is a tender, wise, tough, inspiring book, a gift of compassion and understanding.”
— jack kornfield / Author of A path with heart
“Janie Brown has spent a lifetime opening her heart to the profound mystery of death, which, she writes, can be, and is, a radical act of love.”
— Zoketsu Norman Fischer / poet, soto Zen priest, author of The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path
“Among those who know this work, Janie is regarded as a master teacher.”
— Michael Lerner / President and Co-Founder Commonweal.org
“There is no one on earth who cannot benefit from reading this book. The insights, perspectives and wisdom in Radical Acts of Love can transform our approach to the end of life from fear to a sense of adventure.”
— Rachel Naomi remen / author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s blessings
“An extraordinary book, tender, true and wise.”
— Roshi Joan Halifax / Upaya Zen Center, santa Fe / author of being with dying
“Janie Brown’s extraordinary empathy and intuition coupled with her decades of clinical experience sets her book apart from others on the subject of how to help the dying and their loved ones. Radical Acts of Love does holy work.”
— Barbara Gowdy / aUthor of Little sister And The White Bone
“The most surprising and beautiful travel guide to a journey we will all have to make. Janie Brown has accompanied many great souls through their final days on earth, and what she has learned she offers us now in this exquisite book about life.”
— Chris Cleave / Author of Little Bee and Everyone Brave Is Forgiven
“For a book that concerns itself with so many ways of coming to terms with death, this remarkable book is hugely life-affirming. It makes you think not just of how you might want to approach death, but of how you might want to live. These conversations from the heart of dying are bold, gracious, often witty and full of love. They accompany you in the dark. Then they let the light in.”