When I met Mirabai Starr at an Interspiritual Conference in Arizona, I got the cliff-note version of her now latest book, Caravan of No Despair. This 275 page edition of her spiritual transformation fueled by her daughter’s death invites readers through her darkest despair as she holds our hands through the process.

Sewing her sentences together like a security blanket wrapping us in the warmth of one who learned the way, Mirabai narrates multiple, heart-wrenching losses -reminding us of our own. She translates her experience of ultimately surrendering to her pain -encouraging us to feel ours, and finally, describes her redemption, a sense of deep acceptance and peace that we too, might know. 

Mirabai’s caravan of loss begins with the death of her brother at a young age, the impact it has on her parents’ parenting, and the odyssey it sets in motion for her family: from New York to New Mexico, from neighborhood to commune, from culture to counterculture. Here, she meets death again in her first boyfriend. Then she loses contact with reality through periodic, uninterpretable, altered states. As an adolescent in need of a wise mentor, she is prey to a false one who inhabits her life for years before she grows to occupy it herself. Her words capture an all too familiar pattern for many truth-seeking girls. “He saw that I was special…And, most relevant of all, [he] offered to…personally shepherd me through my full ripening…All I had to do was put my trust in him one hundred percent…For the sake of all beings.”  

Only in reflecting on the words of her 14 year old daughter, the second child she adopted, does Mirabai understand that this loss was beyond her control. Jenny tells her, “I feel like I understand everything, and I don’t need to be here anymore…But don’t worry, Mom. My work here isn’t done.” (153) Though we know from the first page that this death is coming, we feel its immense shock nonetheless. As the circumstances surrounding it unfold, we are vicariously emptied. How does Mirabai bear her loss? How do we bear ours?

Identifying with a Jewish heritage, Hindu-based spiritual practices, Buddhist sutras, and a career teaching world religions and translating texts by medieval Christian mystics, Mirabai is a true Interspiritualist. But “…gradually or all at once, all these ripe spiritual fruits dry up and turn to dust…All conceptual constructs you had erected as scaffolding to climb up to God – using materials you had inherited from your parents, perhaps, or scavenged from the religious organizations you joined in your youth – begin to crumble.” (129) And then, left with nothing, Mirabai begins to distill her “unbearable anguish” by applying her own exegesis of Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross to herself. Perhaps not coincidentally, this book, her first translation, comes out on the day her daughter died.

St. John’s portrayal of the spiritual journey and Mirabai’s unmitigated devotion to her daughter gives her the strength to sit in the fire. “I simply sat with my loss and allowed myself to become acquainted with my desolation…the pain came at me like a freight train. Then I lay down in its tracks and investigated what it felt like to be run over…You are shattered, yes, said my inner voice. Do not be in a hurry to put the pieces back together. Go ahead and be nobody for as long as you can. And so I did.” (205) 

Mirabai gifts us her story. Her life becomes a sacred text through which we can learn to interpret our own. Through her telling, we see how we too might climb onto the caravan of no despair, not to escape, but to integrate our losses into light that heals the soul, brings peace, and benefits all. This book will penetrate your being. It did mine.

I invite you to explore my Resources for ideas on how you might integrate religion and spirituality .