Healing Grief

When a loved one passes unexpectedly, the person left behind can lose their bearings. After the sudden loss of her mother, Chelsea Hanson, a nationally recognized grief educator and founder of With Sympathy Gifts and Keepsakes, didn't know where to turn for help, what to do next, or how to put the pieces of her life back together. Hanson's The Sudden Loss Survival Guide gathers everything that she learned during her own recovery process and provides an indispensable road map to aid those who've experienced a life-changing loss.

Grief isn't always the result of something finite, marking a death or complete end. Soul-shattering grief can also be activated by a dramatic shift in an important relationship, such as a divorce or significant breakup, a life-changing medical diagnosis, or a broken connection with an addicted child. How do we grieve people who are still alive, but no longer who they once were to us? Most people will experience this type of traumatic event over the course of their lifetime, yet the complications of these situations often leave grievers feeling alienated or ashamed.

In this compassionate, insightful guide into the often-misunderstood realm of the spirit world, you will gain a deeper understanding of the afterlife and tools for connecting with angels, spirit guides, and souls on the other side. Susan Grau shares her spiritual journey—including her decades of experiences as a Soul Healer and certified counselor, struggles with loss, and personal trauma—as an inspirational roadmap for those seeking enlightenment and healing.

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.

Divided into five chapters, this volume is a journey through the life cycle of wilting, falling, rooting, rising, and blooming. It is a celebration of love in all its forms.

When social worker Lisa Keefauver became a widow in 2011, she was alarmed to discover that even though 100 percent of us experience loss, we’re living in a grief illiterate world. In her work as a therapist and in her search for help in the wake of her own loss, Keefauver began to see how the misguided stories we consume about grief lead to unnecessary suffering. Responding to the problematic narratives that grief is something to move on from after completing the five stages like some sort of to-do list, Keefauver became a grief activist.

So often, we think that grief lives only in our hearts and minds. But what about the emotions that weigh us down and the grief that gets stuck in our body? Our emotions need motion, and Healing Through Yoga is a unique, simple, and powerful way of healing. Grief Yoga founder Paul Denniston takes you through the stages of Awareness, Expression, Connection, Surrender, and Evolution with clear and compassionate instruction, poses, exercises with easy-to-follow photos, and meditations specifically designed to move you through that particular step.

With a skeptical eye and a profound passion for understanding the inexplicable, Liz studies psychic mediums, takes classes on ghost hunting, attends a séance, attempts spoon bending and volunteers for an organization that scientifically researches mediums. When this organization holds a weekend conference, she finally gets a behind the scenes view into this world, where everything she has been studying culminates in one of the biggest WTF’s Liz has encountered. But is there actually enough evidence to prove we survive . . . that her dad is still with her?

In the immediate aftermath of a loss, sometimes it is all we can do to keep breathing. With his signature clarity and compassion, Thich Nhat Hanh will guide you through the storm of emotions surrounding the death of a loved one. How to Live When a Loved One Dies offers powerful practices such as mindful breathing that will help you reconcile with death and loss, feel connected to your loved one long after they have gone, and transform your grief into healing and joy.

You were one of the lucky ones. You found a partner or friend with whom you shared a deeply profound connection. But now that your partner has died, what felt like luck may have turned to wretched despair. How do you go on? How do you live without your champion and other half? The answer is that you mourn as you loved: heroically, grandly, and fully. In this compassionate guide, you’ll find empathetic affirmation and advice intermingled with real-life stories from other halved soulmates. Learn to honor your loved one and your grief even as you find a path to a renewed life of purpose and joy.

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.

Leanne Friesen thought she knew a lot about bereavement. She had studied it in school and preached at memorial services. But only when her own sister died from cancer did she learn, in her very bones, what grieving people don't need—and what they do. In Grieving Room, Friesen writes with vulnerability, wisdom, and somehow even wit about the stark and sacred lessons learned at deathbeds and funerals, and pushes back against a world that wants to minimize our sorrow and avoid our despair.

Kaur constantly embraces growth, and in Home Body, she walks listeners through a reflective and intimate journey visiting the past, the present, and the potential of the self. Home Body is a collection of raw, honest conversations with oneself - reminding listeners to fill up on love, acceptance, community, family, and embrace change. Themes of nature and nurture, light and dark, rest here.

Embark on a journey of healing as we explore the depths of pet loss together. In the midst of sorrow, find solace and compassionate guidance to navigate the intricate path of grief.

When Harvard-trained physician Dr. Annie Brewster was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001, she realized firsthand that the medical system to which she’d devoted her entire career was failing patients. The experience was dehumanizing. Her doctors weren’t listening. And the confusion, fear, and shame she felt around her diagnosis was preventing her from truly healing, claiming her story, and living her fullest, richest life. Here, Dr. Brewster and journalist Rachel Zimmerman each share their own personal stories, acting as expert guides as you move forward on your healing journey.

Conscious Grieving is a book for anyone seeking guidance and support after loss. Renowned grief therapist Claire Bidwell Smith combines her deeply personal experience of loss with her long career spent working with thousands of people to introduce a new approach to grief, one that promotes hope and even transformation.

Divorce is one of the most stressful, emotionally draining things you can go through, and it’s something that can stay with you for the rest of your life if you’re not careful. Rather than feeling scared of this, what if you were to feel empowered and inspired to make sure you don’t become just another statistic? The betrayal, feeling of abandonment, and self-recriminations that follow so naturally from a toxic divorce can quickly change who you feel you are as a person.

"I'm sorry, it's cancer." Four words with the power to upend your entire existence and thrust you into an emotional whirlwind. As these words unravel, they unleash trauma, chaos, and threats to every facet of life—from health and body image to relationships, job, career, and future dreams. Thoughts swirl: What did I do so wrong to deserve this? How am I going to survive? Is my body going to be mutilated?

Look around you. Someone you know is grieving something: a death, a divorce, injury, property loss. Maybe that person is you. In The Lightworker’s Guide to Healing Grief, author Tina Erwin explores the effective use of practical grief tools to help anyone heal grief.

"I'm not picking up a heartbeat." These are the most dreaded words an expectant mother can hear. As joy and anticipation dissolve into confusion and grief, painful questions refuse to go away: Why me? Did I do something wrong? How will this affect my ability to have a family? What do I say to my children without scaring them? With the warmth and compassion of a Licensed Professional Counselor and writing as a mother who has suffered the loss of a baby and a 16-year-old son, Pam Vredevelt offers sound answers and advice.