Barry Michels2026A memoir
On Learning to Live with an Open Heart
A therapist who taught others to face fear is told he has the disease that killed his father. Instead of closing up, he tells people, writes poems, and lets his heart open wider.
The core idea
Barry Michels is a psychotherapist who wrote The Tools and Coming Alive with the psychiatrist Phil Stutz. This short memoir tells what happened after he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2023, the same disease that killed his father. After a first stretch of despair, Stutz pushed him to write, to study his own psyche and to ask what the illness had come to change in him. Michels chose to tell his patients, friends and family instead of hiding the news, and found that saying it aloud brought people closer. The book moves between plain prose and his own poems, uses the language of the Tools, such as Outflow, to meet fear day by day, and follows a lifelong atheist into a felt relationship with a higher force. Its title comes from a Rilke poem about meeting each parting before it arrives.
The book is not a guide to the illness. It is about stance. Michels could not change the diagnosis, so he worked on how he met it: out loud rather than in secret, turned toward other people rather than away, and making things rather than only bracing.
Readers who know The Tools will recognise the vocabulary. Here it is no longer taught to a patient. A therapist uses it on himself, in the hardest case he has had.
Endings are not only at the end. They run through every year, and each one is a chance to practise.
HourLife's reading of the Rilke line the title borrows.
He says the diagnosis aloud, to patients, friends and family. Secrecy shrinks a life; telling brings people in.
Outflow, from the Tools: send love and thanks out with no thought of a return, and the loop of dread loosens.
Stutz tells him to write. Poems start to arrive, and pain becomes material he can use and share.
Interactive · the small partings practice
Choose something in your life that is ending, large or small. Name it plainly, say it aloud, send something outward, and write down what stays. It takes about five minutes, and you can keep a private ledger of the partings you have met.
Plain words, the way you would say it to a friend.
Read your sentence aloud, once, slowly. To yourself is fine; to someone you trust is better. Hearing it in your own voice is the step.
Name one person or thing you are grateful to in this ending. Then spend thirty seconds picturing them and sending them goodwill, wanting nothing back.
One thing this parting cannot take from you: a memory, a skill, a love, a lesson.
Your parting, met early
HourLife's exercise, built from the book's ideas of telling, Outflow and Rilke's line. The steps are ours, not the author's. Everything stays in this browser.
This is a reflection exercise, not a substitute for professional care. If grief or fear is overwhelming you, talk to a doctor or therapist, and if you are in danger, call your local emergency number.
Concept anatomy
The memoir moves in an arc. HourLife's sketch of it, drawn from the book's description and its reviews, runs from the diagnosis to a wider heart.
Lewy body dementia, the disease that had killed his father.
Fear of losing speech, writing and the work with patients.
Stutz asks him to study his own psyche: what has this come to change?
He tells patients, friends and family instead of hiding it.
He turns the fear outward, and poems start to arrive.
Deeper bonds, and a lifelong atheist's sense of a higher force.
The numerals are HourLife's stages, not the book's chapters.
The title comes from a Rilke poem. Michels takes it to mean that death is woven through life, and that each small loss met on purpose is practice for the last one. Here is that reading in three moves, in HourLife's words.
Community insights
Nº 01HourLife takeaway
Michels was a famously private therapist, yet he chose to tell his patients, friends and family about his diagnosis. He saw saying it aloud as the only way he knew to face it with courage. The telling drew people in rather than pushing them away.
Nº 02HourLife takeaway
Phil Stutz did not lead with comfort. He pushed Michels to study his own psyche and to ask what the illness had come to change in him. The book treats that question, not the prognosis, as the part he could work with.
Nº 03HourLife takeaway
Michels had spent years trying to look solid for his family. What they wanted was the honest, frightened version of him. Letting them see it became a turning point, and he came to see vulnerability as the best part of himself.
Nº 04HourLife takeaway
Outflow is part of the Tools vocabulary Michels leans on: sending love, gratitude or generosity outward with no thought of a return. He uses it to break the loop of dread that the diagnosis set off, and to rejoin the wider current of life around him.
Nº 05HourLife takeaway
The title comes from a Rilke poem. Michels reads it as a reminder that endings run through every life, and that meeting small losses and surrenders on purpose prepares you for the final one.
Nº 06HourLife takeaway
After the diagnosis Michels began writing poetry, and it kept coming. The book sets his poems between its prose sections. Writing became a way to turn pain into something he could use and share.
Nº 07HourLife takeaway
Michels holds that his ability to love is not shrinking, even as the disease threatens memory and thought. He also argues that moments of tenderness, humour and recognition still get through, even late in dementia.
Nº 08HourLife takeaway
A lifelong atheist, Michels describes a growing sense of a conscious higher force at work in his life. Reviewers note that he does not present it as soft consolation. He experiences it as something that asks more of him.
Nº 09HourLife takeaway
The book does not promise recovery. Its argument is about stance: turning toward people, toward the work you can still do and toward the time you have, instead of closing down.
Action steps
Pick one person you trust and say, out loud, the news or fear you have kept to yourself. Keep it to two or three plain sentences.
Take one difficulty you are facing and write: if this had come to change something in me, what would it be? Leave the answer rough.
Write down five endings in your life right now, large or small: a season, a role, a body that does less, a child leaving home. You cannot meet what you have not named.
Gather a short list of music that steadies you, the way favourite music eased things for Michels. Keep it one tap away on your phone.
Set a ten-minute timer and write a short poem about something you are losing or afraid to lose. It does not need to be good. It needs to be true.
Each day, picture one person and send them goodwill or thanks without expecting anything back. Then do one small thing for them.
Before bed, name one thing that ended today, however small: a conversation, a light, a plan. Let it go on purpose.
Once a week, when someone you trust asks how you are, answer truthfully instead of saying fine.
Three mornings a week, write for ten minutes about what you notice, feel or fear. Read it back at the end of the month.
Meet each small goodbye with an open hand, and the last one will not find you closed.HourLife note after Barry Michels
Pick setup actions and daily habits from Ahead of All Parting: On Learning to Live with an Open Heart, choose a start date, and download a printable checklist with real calendar pages.
Barry Michels is a psychotherapist who wrote The Tools and Coming Alive with the psychiatrist Phil Stutz. This short memoir tells what happened after he was diagnosed with Lewy body dementia in 2023, the same disease that killed his father. After a first stretch of despair, Stutz pushed him to write, to study his own psyche and to ask what the illness had come to change in him. Michels chose to tell his patients,...
HourLife’s key takeaways include: Say the hard thing out loud, and it loosens its grip on you. A diagnosis can be a question as well as a verdict. The people who love you often want your fear more than your strength.
It's a strong pick for readers exploring Grief & Meaning, Spiritual Growth, and Therapy & Mental Health. HourLife distills its core idea into key insights and practical actions worth trying.
Tell one person what you are carrying — Pick one person you trust and say, out loud, the news or fear you have kept to yourself. Keep it to two or three plain sentences.
About five minutes. The HourLife summary distills Ahead of All Parting: On Learning to Live with an Open Heart into its core idea, 9 community insights, and 9 practical actions you can apply right away.
One idea from one book and one small habit from another, every week or once a month, on the day and around the hour you pick, where you are. Nothing else, and one link stops it.
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The core idea, key takeaways, and how to apply Ahead of All Parting: On Learning to Live with an Open Heart, as one clean, readable page.
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