Surviving Grief

Death is the last taboo in our society, and grief is still profoundly misunderstood. So many of us feel awkward and uncertain around death and shy away from talking honestly with family and friends. Grief Works is a compassionate guide that will inform and engage anyone who is grieving, from the expected death of a parent to the sudden unexpected death of a small child, and provide clear advice for those seeking to comfort the bereaved.

The pain of suicide loss is indescribable. It seems beyond survival. Yet with faith, perseverance, and the tools of brain science, there is a way through. It will take time. It will take struggle. But hope is real, for there are things you can do to make it to the other side. If you are struggling with suicide loss or you need to come alongside someone who is, Rita Schulte wants to help you move forward.

Tapping their personal histories and drawing on numerous interviews, authors Brook Noel and Pamela D. Blair, Ph.D., explore unexpected death and its role in the cycle of life. I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye provides survivors with a rock-steady anchor from which to weather the storm of pain and begin to rebuild their lives.

You've lost someone you love. Your heart is broken. Now you're facing a holiday or special occasion. What are you going to do? How do you handle this? Best-selling author, hospice chaplain, and grief counselor Gary Roe has given you a grief survival kit designed for the holidays. Speaking from both personal and professional grief experiences, he will empower you to navigate special days and seasons with new confidence.

Kate Spencer lost her mom to cancer when she was 27. In The Dead Moms Club, she walks listeners through her experience of stumbling through grief and loss, and helps them to get through it, too. This isn't a weepy, sentimental story, but rather a frank, up-front look at what it means to go through gruesome grief and come out on the other side.

Best-selling author, hospice chaplain, and grief specialist Gary Roe uses his three decades of experience interacting with grieving parents to give us this heartfelt and intensely practical book. In Shattered, Roe walks the listener through the powerful impact a child's death can have - emotionally, mentally, physically, relationally, and spiritually.

You know how devastating it is to lose a loved one. Coping with bereavement is a painful and bumpy journey with many twists and turns. It helps to have an outline or rough roadmap along this painful and bumpy journey, with a few short stories sprinkled in just to illustrate certain points. Give yourself time; handling and overcoming bereavement is all part of the journey.

Losing a guardian is one of life's hardest challenges to face. At the age of 14, I lost my mother to cancer. That early experience of loss and my journey through grief were the first steps towards a lifetime of studying the process of grief in order to guide people through their own difficult journeys....

Stunned and in disbelief, author Shelby Wagner, watched as the young nurses walked away after informing her that “Mr. Wagner didn’t make it!” A once-confident woman is shattered with grief, unable to accept that her husband is "gone". As visions of a lonely and uncertain future danced before her, she asked God why he had not taken her too. But God had plans for her. Wagner's story is provocative and captivating. Her insights and coping strategies are invaluable.

Humans are undeniably creatures of habit. So when sudden, unexpected plot twists pull the metaphorical rug from beneath our feet, it can sometimes feel impossible to regain our footing. Therapist and podcaster Jana Firestone knows this better than most, after losing her mum suddenly at the age of 21 and spending many years providing professional counselling to her clients during their darkest days. But in bearing witness to outpourings of grief, loss and pain on a daily basis, Firestone also experienced and observed remarkable resilience, transformation and hope.

Suicide would appear to be the last taboo. Even incest is now discussed freely in popular media, but the suicide of a loved one is still an act most people are unable to talk about or even admit to their closest family or friends. This is just one of the many painful and paralyzing truths that author Carla Fine discovered when her husband, a successful young physician, took his own life in December 1989. And being unable to speak openly and honestly about the cause of her pain made it all the more difficult for her to survive.

Being suddenly thrust into the world of parental grief is like being transported to a foreign land where you don't speak the language. With that in mind, Claire Aagaard has written When a Child Dies in a simple, straightforward manner, offering information, comfort, and hope for those who believe that none is possible.

While it's tough to understand what leads a person into addiction - to witness someone you love kind-of kill herself - the truth is that you can learn from it. By the time Céline died at age 30, she was Kermit The Frog green and she vomited blood more frequently than she was able to eat. In less than a decade, she had gone from summa cum laude Columbia graduate to NYU PhD student to unemployed, rambling, stumbling drunk saddled with a cirrhotic liver beyond repair.

The heartache of miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant death affects thousands of United States families every year. Empty Cradle, Broken Heart, Third Edition offers reassurance to parents who struggle with anger, guilt, and despair during and after such a tragedy. In this new and updated edition, Deborah Davis encourages grieving and strives to cover many different kinds of loss, including information on issues such as the death of one or more babies from a multiple birth, pregnancy interruption, and the questioning of aggressive medical intervention.

Surviving Sibling Loss: The Invisible Thread That Connects Us Through Life and Death is the gold standard of grief books, helping not only people who are grieving but also their therapists, partners, and friends better support their loved ones. The chapters are deliberately short and full of easy-to-find resources, and the book can be listened to again and again. This structure aids those who are struggling, who fatigue and lose focus easily under the weight of their grief.

What if you could use cancer to evolve more fully into love? David Maginley has been there - four times. His cancer led to a near-death experience and a career helping thousands face this disease. Through profound storytelling, David brings you to the core of the cancer journey to discover the hero within.

Diagnosed with cancer at age twenty-six threw all the life plans Emily had made out the window. In between attempting to fight Hodgkin's lymphoma and working, full-time Emily discovered she was in a deep state of grief. She realized in the middle of it all she had lost herself and would need to not only fight the cancer, but her mind in order to survive.

Every day, many people lose loved ones and face the grieving process. They suffer while coping with the loss of a child, spouse, parent, friend, or sibling. It is perhaps the most difficult and devastating challenge any of us face in our lifetime. In this book, the author supports the idea that you can survive and thrive after grief and loss. This is not a predictable five stages of grief book. In The Sun Still Rises, Shawn Doyle uses his heart-wrenching personal story of bereavement to supply you with tools, tips, and techniques for dealing with loss and grief.

The greatest fear I had during my grieving was that I was losing control, going crazy, and might make decisions that would harm myself, my family, and my friends. This included suicidal thoughts, which scared the hell out of me. I was desperate to find answers. Quickly, I found those answers would be hard to find, as resources for widowers are minimal and often of dubious value. In Widower to Widower, I've compiled the most vital information I could find on the widower experience into one book, so the listener does not have to search as hard as I had to do.

After losing her long-term partner, Mary Deal shares the turmoil and oftentimes bewildering depths of her grief. This memoir exposes the spectrum of emotions which those suffering loss experience. The author holds back nothing of her odyssey of despair. Her experiences and much she has learned to help herself provide other survivors a chance to see that they are not alone. Though everyone’s grief is different, all grief is surprisingly similar in its basis. Hope is found in familiarity with another’s grief and no one should endure the bereavement process alone.