After my son died I learned that I could not be in control of grief — I had to surrender to it

Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke expected life to continue on a successful trajectory until her infant son was diagnosed with leukaemia and died shortly afterwards, shattering her world. She later found peace in total surrender

Anna Lembke: ‘It was out of the heart of human helplessness that I made a spiritual pivot.' Picture: Steve Fisch

After the death of her infant son, academic Dr Anna Lembke stood in his empty bedroom and felt she had no choice but to surrender control of her life to a higher power.

Speaking to the Irish Examiner from California on a mid-October Friday morning, the author of bestselling Dopamine Nation and now of a new book, Radical Surrender says: “I aggressively pursued my own self-creation, doing well at school, trying to get into a good college — making it to Yale and Stanford Medical School, and marrying my husband. Life was going according to plan.”