Heidi Priebe's writing has always lived at the intersection of psychology and personal essay, and This is Me Letting You Go is a strong example of what she does best: stripping the sentimentality from grief without stripping the feeling from it. This audiobook, narrated by Devon Sorvari, runs just under three hours, and it is exactly the right length for a collection of essays that asks its listener to sit with uncomfortable truths rather than race past them. Priebe is not interested in reassurance. She is interested in accuracy, and the difference between those two things is what gives this collection its particular force.
The premise is deceptively simple: letting go is something most of us do badly, repeatedly, and with surprising little self-awareness. Priebe examines the cultural narratives we inherit about love and loss, the ones that frame clinging as devotion and surrender as failure, and she picks them apart methodically. The essays work best when she is most specific, when she names the precise feeling of knowing you should walk away from something and finding every conceivable reason not to. That specificity is what separates this collection from the broader wellness-writing genre it nominally belongs to.
Priebe structures the collection as a series of honest, often uncomfortable interrogations of the self. She asks why we stay, why we hold on to people long past the point when the relationship has stopped serving either party, and crucially, why that choice often has less to do with the other person than we like to admit. One reviewer noted that the book helped them take accountability for how they reached the end of a relationship, and that observation captures something real about the text's orientation. Priebe is not writing a book about how other people have hurt you. She is writing a book about what you did with that hurt, and what you're still doing with it.
This is not always comfortable listening. There are passages where Priebe's directness feels almost clinical, where she names patterns of behavior with a precision that can feel exposing. But that discomfort is the point. The essays do not traffic in the kind of gentle validation that makes you feel understood without requiring you to change anything. They traffic in something harder: recognition without absolution. Readers who arrive hoping for comfort will find clarity instead, which is both more and less than what they were looking for, and more useful in the long run.
What Works
Sorvari's narration is a significant asset here. She reads with a kind of quiet authority, never overselling the emotional stakes, never softening the edges of Priebe's sharper observations. For an essay collection that depends on the reader trusting the narrator's intelligence, this kind of measured delivery is essential. A more expressive or overtly emotive reading style would have tipped the balance of these essays toward therapy-speak, which is precisely what Priebe's prose works to avoid. Sorvari seems to understand this, and the result is a listening experience that feels like being in conversation rather than being lectured or consoled.
The audio format also suits the essay structure particularly well. Because each piece is relatively self-contained, this is a collection you can absorb in shorter sessions, returning to individual essays as needed without losing continuity. The listening experience rewards pausing. Priebe's sentences are dense enough that a single paragraph can take a few minutes to unpack properly, and the audio format allows for that kind of reflective pacing in a way that reading quickly on a screen often does not.
Things to Know Before Starting This is Me Letting You Go
Readers who arrive at this collection expecting a structured self-help methodology will find something different: this is not a framework for recovery, and it does not offer a sequence of steps. If you need scaffolding, you will need to supply your own. Priebe gives you the diagnosis, the context, and something close to a philosophy of release, but not a program. For some listeners this will feel liberating; for others, it may feel like a book that names the problem clearly and then leaves you to solve it yourself.
There are also moments where the essays' collective emphasis on self-accountability tips toward something that could read as minimizing external harm. Priebe is careful to acknowledge difficult circumstances, but her primary focus remains on what the individual does with those circumstances rather than on validating them as causes. Listeners who are processing experiences of genuine harm may find that orientation useful, or they may find it premature. Both responses are legitimate, and they say something about where you currently are rather than about the quality of the work.
Who It's For
Listeners who are somewhere in the middle of a loss, not at the crisis point but not through it either, will find the most traction here. Priebe writes particularly well about the specific misery of half-endings, the relationships that don't end cleanly, the people we keep returning to because the ambiguity feels safer than closure. If that particular experience is familiar, this audiobook will feel like it was written specifically for you.
Skip it if you are in the acute phase of grief and need comfort first. This is not a comforting book. It is a clarifying one, and there is a difference. It is also not the right choice if you are looking for clinical frameworks or evidence-based therapeutic techniques. Priebe writes from a place that blends personal insight with cultural observation, and while she draws on psychology, this is not a clinical text. Think of it as the conversation you need to have with yourself eventually, delivered by someone who has thought it through more carefully than most.
Before You Listen
Does the audiobook version of This is Me Letting You Go work better than reading it on the page?
The essay format lends itself to audio quite naturally. Because each essay is self-contained, you can listen in short sessions and return to individual pieces without losing your place. Devon Sorvari's pacing also gives the denser observations room to land in a way that screen-reading often doesn't allow.
How does this audiobook compare to Priebe's other work?
This collection sits comfortably alongside Priebe's writing on personality and relationships. It is more personal and essayistic than her more structured pieces, which may appeal to readers who find her longer-form analysis occasionally too categorical.
Is the audiobook appropriate for someone currently in crisis, or is it better suited to a later stage of processing?
Better suited to a later stage. Priebe's approach is analytical and self-reflective, which requires some emotional distance from the immediate event. Listeners still in acute pain may find the book's emphasis on self-accountability difficult to receive before they have had time to stabilize.
