1-Sentence-Summary: The Year of Magical Thinking talks about the process of grief, loss, and how trauma can affect a healthy mind and soul by leaving it empty of joy, all by delving into the life of Joan Didion who learned to overcome these feelings after her husband died and her daughter fell ill.
Read in: 4 minutes
Favorite quote from the author:
Life is a beautiful, yet fragile experience. We often go through the mundane without having to deal with major changes or disruptions from our daily routine, when all of a sudden it hits us: we too have a limited time on this planet, and so do our dear ones.
Our family, friends, co-workers, and everyone else we get in touch with play a significant role in our journey and development. For this reason, we grow attached to the people in our life and when something grave happens to them, we suffer deeply.
The Year of Magical Thinking presents this life scenario from the perspective of Joan Didion, a woman who faced the passing of her husband and a grave illness that her daughter developed, all in the same year. We’ll learn from her how loss and grief affect one’s life and how to deal with those negative feelings.
Here are the three most important lessons from the book:
- Sometimes life throws all the storms at us at the same time.
- The loss of a loved one can seriously impact our thinking processes.
- Among the two types of grief, which are normal and pathological, the author experienced the second one.
Although losing someone dear to us is painful, all of us experience this negative life occurrence at some point. Perhaps hearing someone else’s story can help us navigate grief better. For this reason, we’ll explore these lessons in detail.
Lesson 1: Joan’s loss story was a grim experience that anyone would have a hard time digesting
Joan was married to John for over four decades. Their life was a beautiful journey shared by two writers who worked from home and experienced everything together. However, on one occasion just the night before Christmas eve, their daughter Quintana fell ill. What seemed like the common flu turned into pneumonia.
Just days later, Quintana was unconscious in a hospital bed, fighting for her life. What aggravated the situation was that she was newly married, awaiting a life of joy and abundance. Her parents were contemplating the situation on a casual night on the 30th of December.
Suddenly, John’s heart stopped working. Joan called the ambulance, and in what she calls an inexplicable chain of actions, John ended up dead on arrival at the hospital. She heard the heartbreaking news as she was filling out the hospitalization papers. She was in shock.
Her daughter was still ill but woke up three weeks later to the saddening news. The family had a tough time processing John’s death, but Quintana fell ill over and over again. Ultimately, she too died months later. Joan was completely overwhelmed.
Lesson 2: Losing our significant other will cause neurological, psychological, and lifestyles changes
Losing our dear ones is one of life’s toughest challenges, and even if we know that it’s going to happen, nothing can prepare us for what it truly feels like. For Joan, the loss of John and Quintana’s illnesses were two of the most tragic events to ever happen to her, and they occurred at the same time.
The feelings of grief hit her at once, and it was nothing short of disastrous. First, she felt like she could reverse the death of John, so she would stop herself from throwing shoes or clothes away that he normally needed to run errands. Then, she blamed herself for taking a job at Life Magazine.
She thought that if she had chosen something else, her life would’ve turned out different and John would still be there with her. Learning that he had a hereditary disease one year after his death helped her alleviate regret. However, the “vortex effect”, as Joan would call it, was still there.
Her memories of John and the life they shared were growing stronger by the minute, and so everything she saw, from rose petals to wall paintings and names of places reminded her of him. It was a loss that caused her to live in grief and never get over this situation. Psychologists call this pathological grief.
Lesson 3: There are two types of grief: normal and pathological
Grief is a complex process and everyone finds different ways to cope with it. However, there are certain common symptoms that we all experience when losing someone loved. The usual stages of grief are:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
These are the stages of normal grief. People go through them at their own pace and cope with each phase how they know best. It can take months to several years to heal from the disastrous effects of such losses, but eventually, normal grief alleviates.
Pathological grief is much worse, and this is what Joan had experienced. She was never able to move on from her trauma, due to multiple reasons. First, the funeral was postponed for months, to wait for Quintana to heal and attend it. Then, the relationship she had with John was a co-dependent one.
This made her healing impossible, so she was never able to find love or joy again. Sadly, her relationship journey was so close as they were both working and living together, that she didn’t know how to adapt to the sudden change. She found comfort in reading and writing, which ended in two books about loss and grief.
The Year of Magical Thinking Review
The Year of Magical Thinking delves into the saddening story of Joan Didion, an American writer who was living quite a fulfilled life, until her daughter became gravely ill and ultimately died, just when she was dealing with the recent passing of her husband John. The book speaks of the hardship she had to endure during the grieving process and how she chose to cope with loss. The lessons here are insightful, and the story presented can only make us wonder about how we spend our days, how often we cherish our dear ones and realize how fragile life is.
Who would I recommend The Year of Magical Thinking summary to?
The 60-year-old widow dealing with the loss of her husband, the 70-year-old person who is grieving over a family member, or the 45-year-old person who is a fan of autobiographies.
Last Updated on October 6, 2022
