The Light Streamed Beneath It

A Memoir of Grief and Celebration

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Pub Date 12 Oct 2021 | Archive Date 4 Oct 2021

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Description

A modern gay memoir exploring love, death, pain, and community that will resonate long after the last page.


A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when comedian and writer Shawn Hitchins loses two great loves, five months apart, to sudden death. In this deeply poignant memoir that combines sober self-portrait with tender elegy, Hitchins explores the messiness of being alive: the longing and desire, scorching-earth anger, raw grief — and the pathway of healing he discovers when he lets his heart remain open.


Never without an edge of self-awareness, The Light Streamed Beneath It invites the reader into Hitchins’s world as he reckons with his past and stays painfully in the present. As he builds an embodied future, he confronts the stories that have shaped him, sets aside his ambition, and seeks connection in what he used to deflect with laughter — therapy, community and chosen family, movement, spirituality, and an awareness of death’s ever-presence.


A heartrending and hope-filled story of resilience in the wake of death, The Light Streamed Beneath It joyfully affirms that life is essentially good, as Hitchins weaves his tale full of tenacious spirit, humor, kindness, and grit through life’s most unforgiving challenges.

A modern gay memoir exploring love, death, pain, and community that will resonate long after the last page.


A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when...


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ISBN 9781770415614
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Featured Reviews

This memoir is coming at just the right time, and I can already picture how meaningful it will be for those who read it, relate to it, and find strength from it. The writing is gorgeous and honest, and the cover is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

I'm grateful I got to read this 5 star book!

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I read this book in less than 24 hours. The Light Streamed Beneath It perfectly encapsulates grief and loss and growing spiritually from loss. The way Hitchins writes makes you, the reader, feel as if you are sitting in the room as he learns from these deaths. I commend Hitchins for having the strength to write this book, as there are so many invaluable lessons to pull away from it.

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