We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption

by Kaira Jewel Lingo (Author)

In ten concise chapters, you'll learn powerful ways to meet life's challenges with wisdom, resilience, and ease.

We all go through times when it feels like the ground is being pulled out from under us. What we relied on as steady and solid may change or even appear to vanish. In this era of global disruption, threats to our individual, social, and planetary safety abound, and at times life can feel overwhelming. Not only are loss and separation painful, but even positive changes can cause great stress.

Yet life is full of change: birth, death, marriage, divorce; a new relationship; losing or starting a job; beginning a new phase in life or ending one. Change is stressful, even when it is much desired or anticipated--the unknown can feel scary and threatening. In We Were Made for These Times, the extraordinary mindfulness teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo imparts accessible advice on navigating difficult times of transition, drawing on Buddhist teachings on impermanence to help you establish equanimity and resilience.

Each chapter in We Were Made for These Times holds an essential teaching and meditation, unfolding a step-by-step process to nurture deeper freedom and stability in daily life. Time-honored teachings will help you develop ease, presence, and self-compassion, supporting you to release the fear and doubt that hold you back.

Author Biography

Kaira Jewel Lingo is a much-loved Dharma teacher who has been practicing mindfulness since 1997. She lived as an ordained nun for 15 years, during which time she trained closely with her teacher, Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. Speaking five languages, she shares Buddhist meditation, secular mindfulness​,​ and compassion ​practice ​internationally, providing spiritual mentoring to individuals and communities working at the intersection of racial, climate, and social justice. ​Her teaching focuses on activists, educators, artists, ​youth and ​families, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and includes the interweaving of art, play, nature, ecology, and embodied mindfulness practice. Kaira Jewel teaches in the Plum Village Zen tradition ​​and in the Vipassana tradition. She lives in New York.