Overview

What if your greatest heartbreak became the beginning of your healing? On the morning she was scheduled to fly to Italy, Dr. Karen Wyatt received a phone call no physician ever wants to hear: a thirteen-year-old boy under her care had died unexpectedly. Overwhelmed by guilt and haunted by the suicide of her father decades earlier, she boarded the plane anyway-dragging not just a suitcase but an unbearable weight of grief. What unfolded in Rome, Florence, Siena, and Assisi was no ordinary vacation. Amid candlelit chapels, ruined amphitheaters, and Renaissance masterpieces, Wyatt found herself pulled into an unexpected pilgrimage memoir of grief and healing. Each stop became a novena of mourning, as history, art, and sacred spaces whispered truths her broken heart needed to hear. Wild and Holy is a grief memoir and Italy travel narrative that explores how beauty and suffering walk hand in hand. It is about the wild nature of grief-unpredictable, devastating, and raw-and its holy invitation to transformation. With honesty and reverence, Wyatt reveals how loss became her teacher, how guilt gave way to grace, and how even the ruins of life can hold the seeds of renewal. Whether you are grieving, supporting others, or simply seeking meaning, this healing journey offers companionship and hope. It reminds us that love is never lost-and that joy can rise again from ashes. ""Wild and Holy felt like being welcomed into someone's soul. Karen shares her grief with such unflinching honesty that you'll find pieces of your own story reflected in hers. This isn't a book about getting over loss; it's about how grief can transform us in ways we never imagined: sometimes brutal, sometimes breathtaking, always deeply human. I closed the final page feeling not just less alone, but somehow more whole."" -Andy Chaleff, author of The Last Letter and Dying to Live

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Karen Wyatt, MD, is a family physician and hospice doctor whose career has been devoted to caring for patients facing the end of life. Her deep experience at the bedside led her to explore the lessons dying patients teach about love, forgiveness, purpose, and letting go-insights she first shared in her award-winning book 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying. She has since authored The Journey from Ego to Soul and The Tao of Death, and she hosts the long-running End-of-Life University Podcast, where she has interviewed hundreds of thought leaders about mortality, spirituality, and conscious living.Known for blending medical expertise with spiritual wisdom, Wyatt writes with honesty and compassion about the hardest human experiences. Her work invites readers to see grief not as an end, but as a sacred teacher guiding us toward healing and meaning. Wild and Holy is her most intimate and transformative book yet.

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