How To Be Sad

Helen Russell has researched sadness from the inside out for her entire life. Her first ever memory is the day that her sister died. Her parents split up soon after, and her mother wasn't given the help she needed to grieve. Over time Helen's also had a sketchy relationship with her body, with food, and with infertility. She's had professional and personal setbacks as well as relationships that have imploded in truly spectacular ways. Even the things that brought her the greatest joy - like eventually becoming a parent - have also brought challenges.

While devoting a career to writing books on happiness, Helen kept coming up against a major stumbling block: just how many people are terrified of 'sad', something that's been proven to make people feel worse. How To Be Sad is a memoir about living with sadness, as well as an upbeat manifesto for change in how we express our emotions, good and bad. Interweaving Helen's personal testimony with the latest research on sadness - from psychologists, geneticists, neuroscientists and historians - as well as the experiences of writers, comics, athletes and change-makers from round the world, the book will explore why we get sad, what makes us feel this way and how it can be a force for good.

How to Be Sad is about how we can look after ourselves, and each other, as well as the ways in which we can get smarter about sadness. Needed now more than ever, this is an uplifting and thought-provoking guide for anyone who has ever been sad. In other words, a guide for everyone.