The author draws upon her own experience to explore the spiritual realities of survival. She endured a childhood marked by poverty and marred by a suicide attempt by her mother, eventually becoming a doctor in general practice. Her husband Leo had been a monk working in Africa while she was a nun and their marriage, in Abelard and Heloise manner, caused them to be at the centre of controversy. Her struggles as the leader of the Movement for the Ordination of Women were eventually successful leading her to ordination as the first woman priest by Archbishop Rowan Williams. She then faced her greatest challenge with the death of her husband. Una Kroll stresses the value of being aware of the common stages of bereavement, such as guilt at being a survivor and anger at God, while stressing the need to be responsive to individual experiences of grief.