“This Sweet Life: how we lived after Kirby died” is now available!
Buy it on Amazon or through your local bookseller!
Ginny Brown, Kirby’s mom and SEEK’s founder, and Jean Brown, Kirby’s sister, detail their experiences after Kirby died in a poor imitation of a sweat lodge at a self-help event: learning about Kirby’s horrible death and all that went wrong, dealing with their grief, and getting through the trial of James Ray.
The “Sedona sweat lodge deaths” attracted a lot of media attention and curiosity. Documentaries, podcasts, televisions shows continue to explore this event and what went wrong. Now, you can hear the story as told by the people who lived it.
Ginny and Jean’s memoir offers a warning to other seekers of self-improvement, to make sure that the person in charge is acting responsibly. It is also a guide for anyone dealing with especially difficult grief. And finally, the story is a portrait of an inspiring, vibrate woman whose loss impacted so many people and is still felt nearly 11 years later.
Watch our Virtual Book launch. Other book discussions are available on our YouTube Channel and Facebook Page.
Also available now, our This Sweet Life Book Club Discussion Guide. Download it now for use with your book club!
What others are saying about “This Sweet Life”:
You are about to take a journey that will spark your heart and soul, and most likely leave you speechless. After reading 2200 nonfiction books and working behind the scenes in the personal development industry for twenty-five years for Tony Robbins, Ginny & Jean Brown’s, This Sweet Life is far beyond a must read.
~ Gary King, author of The Happiness Formula
A beautiful, heart-breaking book that exposes the dangerous side of the self-help industry. It tells the story of Kirby Brown who died after being deprived of water, food and sleep and then put in a sweat lodge by James Arthur Ray, a man who was not qualified to run a sweat lodge, ignored pleas for help once participants were inside the lodge and left the scene immediately afterwards. I was shocked to read that he is still working in the self-help industry. This book poses important questions about how the $10 billion industry should be regulated and paints a picture of how charismatic figures can manipulate innocent people. Thought provoking and rage-inducing in parts, it’s also a tribute to Kirby, written with the love of a mother and sister.
~ Marianne Power, author Help Me!… One Woman’s Quest to Find Out if Self-Help Really Can Change Her Life
While the Sedona sweat lodge deaths have received extensive media coverage over the years, This Sweet Life shows for the first time what the tragedy was like for family members of the victims. It offers a moving tribute to the radiant spirit of Kirby Brown as well as a chilling example of how a woman’s admirable determination to better herself was fatefully exploited. There is a dark side to the quest for enlightenment that few books dare to explore but the curtain is finally pulled back here as the authors courageously chronicle how an unregulated self-improvement industry can have deadly consequences.
~ Annette McGivney, author Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures, and The Search for Heaven on Earth
This Sweet Life is a captivating account of seeking and finding truth amid grief and loss. Kirby Brown’s death in a sweat lodge organized by self-help guru James Arthur Ray — and his subsequent conviction on three counts of manslaughter — made headlines, but this first-person narrative by Kirby Brown’s mother and sister brings the events to life. It’s a beautiful memorial to a life of seeking — and leaves us with the deeply important message of the SEEK Safely mission: If a program or advice is powerful enough to transform our lives for the better, it is powerful enough to harm us as well, so we must empower consumers and promote professional standards within this psychologically powerful, financially lucrative and legally unregulated self-help industry.
~ Christine B. Whelan, Ph.D., Clinical Professor, University of Wisconsin – Madison