To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity (Little Bound Books Essay Series)

As featured in the TEDx Talk "Writing on Life" by Leslie Browning | In this career-defining work, Browning explores the breaking point every mind has after finding her own limit during a gauntlet of traumatic events. Pulled out of this blast-crater moment in her life by a friend, she is brought away from the insanity and deep into the snowy Sangre de Cristo Mountains where, standing in front of a herd of wild buffalo, she comes face to face with the terms we all must come to surrounding the loss we face in this life. Offering no answers and seeking no pity, Browning lays herself bare in this radically authentic offering. She carries restricted subjects such as miscarriage, mental illness, and suicide out of the silence by offering her own private journey as an example of the power of transcendence.

L.M. Browning is an award-winning author of eleven books. In her writing, Browning explores the confluence of the natural landscape and the interior landscape. In 2010, Browning debuted with a three-title contemplative poetry series. These three books went on to garner several accolades including a total of 3 pushcart-prize nominations, the Nautilus Gold Medal for Poetry, and Foreword Reviews' Book of the Year Award. She has freelanced for several publications and has a bi-annual interview column in The Wayfarer Magazine in which she has interviewed dozens of notable figures such as Academy Award-Nominated filmmaker Tomm Moore and Peabody-winning host of On Being Krista Tippett. Balancing her passion for writing with her love of learning, Browning is a graduate of the University of London and a Fellow with the International League of Conservation Writers. In 2011, she opened Homebound Publications, an independent publishing house with five divisions. 

In early 2018, following the release of her powerfully-vulnerable memoir "To Lose the Madness: Field Notes on Trauma, Loss and Radical Authenticity" and the TEDx Talk she presented at Yale University's TEDx Conference based on her own journey with successive trauma, Browning founded the RadicalAuthenticity.Community website, a community of storytellers who, by sharing our own journey with emotional struggle, help to normalize mental illness and dispel the stigma surrounding it. She is currently working to complete a B.A. in Creative Writing at Harvard University's Extension School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

visit her at lmbrowning.com