ABOUT THE BOOK:
Keith Wakefield became a chaplain because of Guns N’ Roses. As a child burdened by the fear of failure, he was driven to make sense of his anxieties in a raw, honest way, inspired in no small part by the heart-on-his-sleeve stylings of Axl Rose. As an adult, Wakefield chose chaplaincy to help people facing the darkest moments of their lives get in touch with the things that give them strength, whatever they are. Every day, he sits alongside people facing overwhelming loss and confronting the rest of their lives after shattering diagnoses. Every day, he tests his own capacity for personal growth and struggles to figure out how to bring what he learns from one patient to the next. By drawing readers into those moments, he offers an intimate view of his discovery of the many paths to healing.
Stay with Me, I Want to Be Alone is both a deeply personal spiritual memoir and an evocative account of a day in the life of a chaplain in a busy city hospital. It reveals the gritty details and the dizzying emotional extremes of a life spent providing grief support and spiritual care—from boredom to hilarity to panic, from devastating sadness to the beautifully sublime. Vulnerable and curious, at times snarky and even irreverent, Wakefield’s lyrical voice rings with the clarity and hope of a true spiritual traveler.