Grief & Loss
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When someone we care about experiences a major life loss, for many of us it's instinctive to want to help. After all, we feel awful about what happened as well as what our friend or family member must be going through. So, we write a note, send flowers, or drop off a casserole. These are all kind, helpful gestures, but what then? The grief journey takes a long time, and early on, most grievers are left to their own devices, lonely and struggling. How do we continue to effectively support our grieving loved ones in the coming weeks, months, and even years? This little book will help you understand how to really be there for grieving people. It will explain the basic principles of human presence and empathy and give you guidelines for reaching out to and spending time with those in grief. The beautiful thing is this: All you have to do is stay for the cup of coffee. You don't need to supply answers or give advice. You don't have to have special training or skills. All you need to do is be aware of simple concepts like hospitality and holding space. When you are genuine and present at regular intervals, grieving people can themselves be genuine in the presence of a caring lis
Hard times come for all in life, with no real explanation. When we walk through suffering, it has the potential to devastate and destroy, or to be the gateway to gratitude and joy.
Elisabeth Elliot was no stranger to suffering. Her first husband, Jim, was murdered by the Waoroni people in Ecuador moments after he arrived in hopes of sharing the gospel. Her second husband was lost to cancer. Yet, it was in her deepest suffering that she learned the deepest lessons about God. Why doesn't God do something about suffering? He has, He did, He is, and He will. Suffering and love are inexplicably linked, as God's love for His people is evidenced in His sending Jesus to carry our sins, griefs, and sufferings on the cross, sacrificially taking what was not His on Himself so that we would not be required to carry it. He has walked the ultimate path of suffering, and He has won victory on our behalf. This truth led Elisabeth to say, "Whatever is in the cup that God is offering to me, whether it be pain and sorrow and suffering and grief along with the many more joys, I'm willing to take it because I trust Him." Because suffering is never for nothing.
The national bestseller From the author of the bestselling More Beautiful Than Before comes an inspiring book about loss based on his most popular sermon. As the senior rabbi of one of the largest synagogues in the world, Steve Leder has learned over and over again the many ways death teaches us how to live and love more deeply by showing us not only what is gone but also the beauty of what remains. This inspiring and comforting book takes us on a journey through the experience of loss that is fundamental to everyone. Yet even after having sat beside thousands of deathbeds, Steve Leder the rabbi was not fully prepared for the loss of his own father. It was only then that Steve Leder the son truly learned how loss makes life beautiful by giving it meaning and touching us with love that we had not felt before. Enriched by Rabbi Leder's irreverence, vulnerability, and wicked sense of humor, this heartfelt narrative is filled with laughter and tears, the wisdom of millennia and modernity, and, most of all, an unfolding of the profound and simple truth that in loss we gain more than we ever imagined.
NPR SciFri Book Club Pick
Next Big Idea Club's "Top 21 Psychology Books of 2022"
Behavioral Scientist Notable Books of 2022
A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning.
In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O'Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. O'Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of grief on the brain, and in this book, she makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm, and guides us through how we encode love and grief. With love, our neurons help us form attachments to others; but, with loss, our brain must come to terms with where our loved ones went, or how to imagine a future without them.
The Grieving Brain addresses:
Why it's so hard to understand that a loved one has died and is gone foreverWhy grief causes so many emotions--sadness, anger, blame, guilt, and yearningWhy grieving takes so longThe distinction between grief and prolonged griefWhy we ruminate so much after we lose a loved oneHow we go about restoring a meaningful life while grievingBased on O'Connor's own trailblazing neuroimaging work, research in the field, and her real-life stories, The Grieving Brain combines storytelling, accessible science, and practical knowledge that will help us better understand what happens when we grieve and how to navigate loss with more ease and grace.
A moving and universal picture book about empathy and kindness, sure to soothe heartaches big and small--now a New York Times bestseller and a perfect gift for any special occasion When something sad happens, Taylor doesn't know where to turn. All the animals are sure they have the answer. The chicken wants to talk it out, but Taylor doesn't feel like chatting. The bear thinks Taylor should get angry, but that's not quite right either. One by one, the animals try to tell Taylor how to act, and one by one they fail to offer comfort. Then the rabbit arrives. All the rabbit does is listen . . . which is just what Taylor needs. With its spare, poignant text and irresistibly sweet illustration, The Rabbit Listened is about how to comfort and heal the people in your life, by taking the time to carefully, lovingly, gently listen.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage--and a life, in good times and bad--that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. One of The New York Times's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later--the night before New Year's Eve--the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion' s attempt to make sense of the "weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.
Since its debut thirty years ago, this favorite by one of the world's most beloved grief counselors has found a place in the homes and hearts of hundreds of thousands of mourners across the globe. Filled with compassion and hope, Understanding Your Grief helps you understand and befriend your painful, complex thoughts and feelings after the death of someone loved. Befriending grief may sound counterintuitive, but actually, your grief is your love for the person who died in a different form, and like that love, it's also natural and necessary. Perhaps above all, Understanding Your Grief is practical. It's built on Dr. Wolfelt's Ten Touchstones, which are basic principles to learn and actions to take to help yourself engage with your grief and create momentum toward healing. This second edition maintains the content of the first edition but builds on it by adding concise wisdom on new topics such as the myth of closure, complicated and traumatic grief, grief overload, unmourned grief, loneliness, the power of ritual, and more. Excellent as an empathetic handbook for anyone in mourning as well as a text for support groups, Understanding Your Grief pairs with a guided journal.
This companion workbook to the second edition of Dr. Wolfelt's bestseller Understanding Your Grief helps you explore the many facets of your grief through guided journaling. After you read a section in Understanding Your Grief, the journal asks you questions about what you've just read. It invites you to consider, clarify, and jot down your thoughts and feelings. A good grief journal is a safe place of solace--somewhere you can express yourself no matter what you are experiencing. If you're grieving a death or a significant loss of any kind, this journal and its companion text will help you understand and embrace your grief, actively mourn, and move toward healing. You'll find that the journal can also be used to help honor the person who died and/or work through any lingering relationship issues. As you express your emotions in this journal, you will feel them beginning to soften as well as become more integrated into your ongoing life. Write as much as or as little as you'd like. Even just a little engagement with this journal will help you befriend your grief and give you healing momentum.
United Methodist pastor Elise Erikson Barrett draws on her own painful experiences, as well as on interviews with others who have gone through the devastation of miscarriage, in an effort to help women grieve and, in time, to think theologically about pregnancy loss. Barrett also offers some much-needed practical advice about breaking the news to others, coping with insensitive comments, and grieving what is often a private loss, unmarked by the world.
When a loved one dies, you don't get over it, but you can move forward. The bad news is that we never fully "get over" the loss of those we hold most dear; we bear those scars to the grave. The good news is that God is at work in us turning our loss and pain into something beautiful. God can take the scars and the mess and the heartache of our lives-- yours and mine--- and use it to give new life, new life to us and new life to others. God is not in the business of zapping our loved ones and stealing them away from us. But in a world where death waits for every person, God stands ready. God stands ready to receive our beloved dead as they cross over; and God stands ready to guide us through the saddest days, to walk with us through our grief, and to take us into places we never could have imagined places of hope and renewal. If God could take a cross and broken body and make of them redemption, God can take your pain and heartache and fashion them into new life. This book is composed of the reflections that point to broader lessons that will help those who find themselves passing through grief, as well as the pastors, counselors, and friends whose job is to accompany the traveler.