Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation
Kindle
$11.99
Available instantly
Audible Logo Audiobook
$0.00
with membership trial
Paperback
$12.99
Audible Logo Your audiobook is waiting!
Enjoy a free trial on us
$0.00
  • Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
  • One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
  • You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
  • $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.
Learn more about membership
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company
List Price: $19.95
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible’s Conditions Of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice.
Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company

Caravan of No Despair: A Memoir of Loss and Transformation Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Mirabai Starr (Author, Narrator), Sounds True (Publisher)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 382 ratings
See all formats and editions

On the day her first book came out—a new translation of Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross—Mirabai Starr’s daughter, Jenny, was killed in a car accident. “My spiritual life began the day my daughter died,” writes Mirabai. Even with decades of spiritual practice and a deep immersion in the greatest mystical texts, she found herself utterly unprepared for “my most powerful catalyst for transformation, my fiercest and most compassionate teacher.”

With Caravan of No Despair, Mirabai shares an irreverent, uplifting, and intimate memoir of her extraordinary life journey. Through the many twists and turns of her life—including a tangled relationship with a charlatan-guru, her unexpected connection with the great Christian mystics, and the loss of her daughter—Mirabai finds the courage to remain open and defenseless before the mystery of the divine. “Tragedy and trauma are not guarantees for a transformational spiritual experience,” writes Mirabai Starr, “but they are opportunities. They are invitations to sit in the fire and allow it to transfigure us.”

Previous page
  1. Listening Length
    8 hours and 9 minutes
  2. Author
    Mirabai Starr
  3. Narrator
    Mirabai Starr
  4. Audible release date
    November 6, 2023
  5. Language
    English
  6. Publisher
    Sounds True
  7. ASIN
    B0CMR4BHHL
  8. Version
    Unabridged
  9. Program Type
    Audiobook
  10. See all details
Next page

Read & Listen

Switch between reading the Kindle book & listening to the Audible audiobook with Whispersync for Voice.
Get the Audible audiobook for the reduced price of $7.49 after you buy the Kindle book.

Product details

Listening Length 8 hours and 9 minutes
Author Mirabai Starr
Narrator Mirabai Starr
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com Release Date November 06, 2023
Publisher Sounds True
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B0CMR4BHHL
Best Sellers Rank #69,991 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
#230 in Biographies of Religious Figures
#1,178 in Religious Leader Biographies
#1,435 in Mental & Spiritual Healing

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
382 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

K. Helbert
5.0 out of 5 stars A heart opening and heartbreaking account, beautifully done. Thank you Mirabai!
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2016
Verified Purchase
This book is beautiful. Full of lush language and stunning prose, but most of all, it is a fully authentic and unflinchingly honest and true story of the heart. Mirabai's journey pulls us in at the opening line. From the death of her little brother and how his death changed her parents, thereby shaping her own life, throughout her life's journey, to ultimately her own crushing loss of her amazing and vibrant daughter. Those who have experienced the crushing, indescribable weight and the burning fire of grief will recognize themselves here. Those who know the trauma and grief of sexual abuse will see themselves here and know they are not alone. Those who have lived with parents seeking their own way without a map will recognize the journey. Those who have sought the Divine under rocks and in sacred texts, in churches and in the sky seeking with all heart and soul will all see themselves here. So much in this book resonated with me and my own journey. To experience that sense of knowing, of understanding, of connection with another who has lived, felt, and even in some points had the same thoughts as ourselves in our own lives is a gift. When we can recognize our own stories in those of others, we feel not so very alone on this journey that at times can be so isolating and seemingly unbearable. We can know that we can bear it and we are not alone. Thank you Mirabai for sharing your stories and your beautiful Jenny with us all. Readers, you should definitely get this book and pass it on.
7 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Robert McDowell
5.0 out of 5 stars STARR-STRUCK
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2016
Verified Purchase
A mystic is someone you will follow anywhere—not without questions, not without doubts—and trust with your spiritual and physical life. In this age of faux gurus and self-help barkers, it is difficult to connect with someone authentic. Mirabai Starr is truly a mystic in the deepest sense of that overused yet magical, exhilarating word.

The greatest spiritual teachers have always come into their authenticity through healthy doses of reluctance. Buddha wanted to know; he wanted that more than he wanted to teach. Jesus begged God to lift his burden from him. Joan of Arc wanted only to serve her country and return to her village. The Dalai Lama often reminds interviewers that he is just a man who loses his temper, yells at people and does things every day he regrets. Starr is right at home in this illustrious company. Her new book, Caravan of No Despair, consistently delivers what memoirs have such a hard time doing—presenting not just what happens, but also recreating real, suffering, sleepwalking and exhilarated human beings.

One of the world’s most sought after inter-spiritual speakers and the celebrated translator of renowned mystics such as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and Hildegard of Bingen, Starr has led an inspiring, richly textured and cinematic life. Born to radical, politicized Jewish parents steeped in the 1960s antiwar and civil rights movements, buffeted by the deaths of her beloved older brother and first love, enduring the break-up of her parents, spending a girlhood of communal living in south America and New Mexico, and surviving more than a decade attached to an abusive mentor and teacher, Starr’s story would be memorable if it ended there.

But all this was only her beginning. What followed was her search for her life soul mate, her adoption of two daughters and her gradual acceptance and embrace of a life of service. That acceptance, as it does in the lives of all leaders, hinged on a signature moment or turning point. For Starr, the death of her daughter, Jenny, created that moment. As a world traveler, experimentalist and Jewish agnostic, everything Starr had learned to that point became suspect. She doubted the existence of a higher power, distrusted her meditation practice and self-help gurus and wondered if there really was any compassion or sense to life in this realm. Her dark soul-night opened and expanded and stretched on and on, breaking her down and cracking her in pieces. The tale of her endurance swim to healing and acceptance is as inspiring as the story of her destruction, and her ability to overcome or make peace with her spiritual reluctance will comfort many and may provide an epiphany for others. If anyone in film reads this or is listening, where is the movie of this journey?

There are other delights awaiting the reader. Starr is also a poet capable of creating evocative sentences like this: “Friends had gathered like strands of grass and woven a basket of waiting.”; or “Each body that walked through that door belonged to a hand that kept me from drowning.”; or “The most vexing flavor on the grief menu was bargaining.”; or “Only in Taos, I said. A channeling maître d’.” No matter the stage she is sharing in her long journey, Mirabai Starr is always exquisitely beautiful and human. She is mystical, yes; she is more than us, she is less than us, she is one of us and she knows it. I cherish my heart/soul connection with this gorgeous book, and I bow to its author. You can trust her, I know, with your physical and spiritual life.
32 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Pat Nosko
5.0 out of 5 stars A book for the soul
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2024
Verified Purchase
Mirabai Star's experiences and her literary gift are enriching.
Helpful
 Report
love to read chick lit and beyond
4.0 out of 5 stars I would have given this beautifully written memoir 5 stars except.....
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2020
Verified Purchase
I was appalled that Mirabai Starr’s family therapist, Dr. Larry Sargeant of Taos New Mexico told her (in relation to her daughter Jenny dying in a tragic car accident during a bipolar manic episode) “Please understand Mirabai : if Jenny lived she would have been a torment to herself and to you for the rest of your life. And because Mirabai trusted her therapist she accepted his statement which she translated to mean “Mirabai, It is a blessing that Jenny died in that accident, because if she had not, your life would be a living hell forevermore. And later when Mirabai reflected if her daughter would have received medication for her serious mental health condition that would have meant she was in the “wasteland of psychopharmaceuticals”
As a psychotherapist myself and the mother of a young adult who has suffered from a serious mental illness for the past ten years, I am overwhelmed that such an ignorant and reductionistic statement would have been made and (understandably but again with no personal knowledge or experience of how the trajectory of very significant challenge, healing and treatment could or would play out) received.
I have great respect for Mirabai Starr’s writing and transformative personal journey however the unintended prejudice and prejudgement about the life of both an individual and family who are navigating the territory of serious mental illness as portrayed by a Phd family therapist is unconscionable and fosters deep misunderstanding of those with mental illness as well as those who are dedicated to their loved one with an SMI.
31 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report
Ed Grove
5.0 out of 5 stars This book is a wonderful gift for bereaved parents!
Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2020
Verified Purchase
I'm in the club you never want to join, the circle of mothers whose children have died. In 1997, my 17-year old son Logan was killed in a car accident. In addition to Logan's death, I've attended the deaths of 12 of my closest ones and been blessed with 7 SDEs (shared death experiences). I've written a book (Transforming Death: Creating Sacred Space for the Dying) and I'm now a grief facilitator. I've read MANY books on death and grief, and Mirabai Starr's Caravan of No Despair is my favorite and the one I recommend to all bereaved parents. She describes the various states of grief with vivid accuracy. This book is at once a testament to the love between parent and child and exploration of how to grieve well, so that meaning and medicine are made within.
4 people found this helpful
Helpful
 Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
Jacqueline
5.0 out of 5 stars Très bien !
Reviewed in France on August 22, 2019
Verified Purchase
Parait !
Report
Daniela Kocvarova
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional memoir
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 20, 2017
Verified Purchase
Much more than a story. Rich tapestry of love in all its disguises. Very human from the depths of despair to the heights of the Divine. Honest, raw, real, deeply moving but without sweeteners. Beautifully written with clarity and open, unflinching heart.
4 people found this helpful
 Report
Gita
5.0 out of 5 stars Just beautiful
Reviewed in Canada on November 19, 2015
Verified Purchase
As a recently grieving mother I reached out for some words of comfort, wisdom, anything and I found my way to Mirabai Starr's beautiful memoir "Caravan of no Despair". It offered infinitely more than my expectation of reading a memoir of a similar unbearable loss, it was a complete bearing of her soul and heart. I commend her bravery. More than anything rather than joining a Caravan of NO Despair I feel like I have joined a Caravan where the author holds sacred space for your despair. This book is beautifully written, it engages you instantly but I also felt the loving arms of Mirabai Starr reach out and embrace this reader to help comfort. I highly recommend this book, its a gift. I am grateful to have found it.
2 people found this helpful
 Report
KR
5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant, honest and redemptive.
Reviewed in Canada on February 6, 2021
Verified Purchase
I found the writer's personal account through the loss of her daughter, mental illness and mental health to be an honest and painful portrayal of bereavement and post-traumatic growth. Thank you.
Report
Heidi
5.0 out of 5 stars Whether you've experienced deep personal loss or not, this is an exceptional powerful & beautiful memoir
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2016
Verified Purchase
Absolutely superb book & so beautifully written. This has been the most helpful book for me in my grieving process. Truly beautiful, captivating, painful & open hearted.
5 people found this helpful
 Report