Anne Lamott tells the story of her own search for meaning in life in her nonfiction book Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair. Through her own stories and stories she has heard from others, Lamott helps her readers understand how bad times will change them as well as how people will resent and misunderstand their attempts to find meaning in their losses. She offers both a serious and humorous look at the way it is the stitches in life that help to hold humans together.

Lamott opens her book by describing what she hopes her story will achieve. Her intent is to help the reader find meaning in the grief, turmoil, and loss that invades everyone’s life. Lamott goes on to relate some highlights from her life. She describes her diagnosis as an overly sensitive child, her attempts to live as the world wanted her to, and her decision to stop trying to be successful and start trying to find real meaning in her life.

Lamott moves on to discuss her own battle with individual loss as she tells the story of the death of her best friend Pammy. She describes her obsession with a shirt that Pammy had given her and tells how she finally came to terms with laying the shirt to rest. Lamott also takes on the subject of collective grief when she tells the story of the teens that accidentally destroyed many homes and hundreds of acres of wildlife with a camp fire. Even though the boys caused grief for their community and their parents felt they should leave town, the community bonded together and encouraged them to stay.

Ripped curtains are used as an analogy for Lamott’s own process of recovering from alcohol addiction. A talented friend of Lamott’s takes a pair of curtain panels damaged by Lamott’s dog. She sews and patches the panels together until she makes what Lamott describes as a curtain that is both homely and beautiful. Similarly, she says it was friends with special talents who helped sew the pieces of her back together, making her a useful person. Her church has served as a darning egg to help Lamott keep her shape as she continues to patch and repair herself.

This study guide is based on the Kindle version of the book, copyrighted 2013.