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My guest is Eva Hagberg Fisher. Her new book, How To Be Loved, is a luminous memoir about how friendship saved one woman\u2019s life, for anyone who has loved a friend who was sick, grieving, or lost\u2014and for anyone who has struggled to seek or accept help. Eva Hagberg Fisher spent her lonely youth looking everywhere for connection: drugs, alcohol, therapists, boyfriends, girlfriends. Sometimes she found it, but always temporarily. Then, at age thirty, an undiscovered mass in her brain ruptured. So did her life. A brain surgery marked only the beginning of a long journey, and when her illness hit a critical stage, it forced her to finally admit the long\u2011suppressed truth: she was vulnerable, she needed help, and she longed to grow. She needed true friendship for the first time.

How to Be Loved is the story of how an isolated person\u2019s life was ripped apart only to be gently stitched back together through friendship, and the recovery\u2014of many stripes\u2014that came along the way. It explores the isolation so many of us feel despite living in an age of constant connectivity; how our ambitions sometimes pull us apart more than bring us together; and how a simple doughnut, delivered by a caring soul, can become the essence of what makes a life valuable. With gorgeous prose shot through with empathy, pain, fear, and the secret truths inside all of us, Eva writes about the friends who taught her to grow up and open her heart\u2014and how the relentlessness of suffering can give rise to the greatest joy.

Special Guest: Eva Hagberg Fisher.