Relationship Loss Grief

The novelist Charles Bock was a reluctant parent, tagging along for the ride of fatherhood, obsessed primarily with his dream of a writing career. But when his daughter Lily was six months old, his wife, Diana, was diagnosed with a complex form of leukemia. Two and a half years later, when all treatments and therapies had been exhausted, Bock found himself a widower—devastated, drowning in medical bills, and saddled with a daunting responsibility. He had to nurture Lily and, somehow, maybe even heal himself.

Individuals approaching the end of life, and their loved ones, face many challenges - but as hospice nurse Karen Whitley Bell reassures us, this difficult time also offers an opportunity to explore and rediscover a richer meaning in life. Drawing on her years of experience, Bell has created a comprehensive, insightful guide to every aspect of hospice care and the final stages of life. For people in hospice care, as well as their friends and families, this is an indispensable reference, a trustworthy source of comfort and spiritual healing.

"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.

Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non - life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker.

The death of someone we hold dear may be inevitable; being paralyzed by our grief is not. A growing body of research has revealed our capacity for resilient grieving, our innate ability to respond to traumatic loss by finding ways to grow - by becoming more engaged with our lives, and discovering new, profound meaning.

For both professionals and laypeople, this book weaves personal stories with practical care guidelines, including: living with a life-threatening illness, signs of the dying process, the stages of grief, living wills, and other end of life issues. The Final Act of Living: Reflections of a Long-Time Hospice Nurse is an end of life book; a resource that flows like a novel, yet has the content of a textbook.

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....

Alle wollen alt werden, niemand will alt sein. Der Widerspruch ist absurd, das Leiden daran real. Wie lernen wir, so gut wie möglich damit zurechtzukommen? Geht das, alt werden und ein erfülltes Leben führen? Mit ihren über 80 Jahren hat sich Elke Heidenreich mit dem Altwerden beschäftigt. Herausgekommen ist dabei ein Buch, wie nur sie es schreiben kann. Persönlich, ehrlich, doch nie gnadenlos, mit einem Wort: lebensklug. Sie denkt über ihr eigenes Leben nach, und das heißt vor allem, über ihre Beziehungen zu anderen Menschen. Im Alter trägt man die Konsequenzen für alles, was man getan hat.

Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen, practical advice on how to have these conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising.

In Diary of a Death Doula, psychic medium and near-death experience researcher Debra Diamond presents the story of life as a hospice "Death Doula," revealing 25 critical life lessons from those at the threshold of the afterlife, and those who have already crossed over, ultimately revealing a new way of understanding death.

Learn how to grieve in a healthy way, and move on with your grieving process with this guided meditation and relaxation program, from certified hypnotherapist, Joel Thielke. It's as easy as turning on the tracks and falling asleep! The Sleep Learning System is specially designed to work with your subconscious mind during your sleep cycle.

A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression.

For twenty years, Jill Bialosky has lived with the grief, guilt, questions, and confusion unleashed her by twenty-one-year-old sister Kim's suicide. Now, in a remarkable work of literary nonfiction, she re-creates with unsparing honesty her sister’s inner life, the events and emotions that led her to take her life on this particular night. In doing so, she opens a window on the nature of suicide itself, our own reactions and responses to it—especially the impact a suicide has on those who remain behind.

In Growing Up in Heaven, New York Times best-selling author and world-famous medium James Van Praagh brings to light the amazing journey of children who have passed from earth to heaven. Growing Up in Heaven follows the path of a child's soul - their time spent in heaven and their connection to the living.

The death of a child is that unimaginable loss no parent ever expects to face. In Beyond Tears, nine mothers share their individual stories of how to survive in the darkest hour. They candidly share with other bereaved parents what to expect in the first year and long beyond.

Finding Your Way after the Suicide of Someone You Love is a compassionate and practical guide that addresses the intensely personal issues of survivors of suicide (SOS). This gentle and faith-affirming resource helps survivors know what to expect, especially during the first year following a suicide. It includes personal stories of survivors and suggestions on how to move beyond survival to live life again.

When their only child was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at the age of two, Maryanne O'Hara and her husband were told that Caitlin could live a long life or be dead in a matter of months. Thirty-one years later, Caitlin lost her battle with this devastating disease following an excruciating two-year wait on the transplant list and a last-minute race to locate a pair of healthy lungs. The sudden spiral of events left Maryanne in an existential crisis, searching to find an answer to the eternal question: Why we are here?

Rediscover sustained moments of joy as you seek a new way of being in the world. Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief guides and lightens the journey to positivity for those who feel the pain of loss, whether it is the loss of a loved one, a job, a marriage, a house, a pregnancy, a nest egg - anyone or anything that we loved and that is no longer in our lives. In this audiobook, author and fellow griever Emily Thiroux Threatt provides you with strategies to embrace the process of learning how to start living again.

These three ‘Consolations', written by Seneca to his mother and two friends, have been described as ‘the crowning achievement in the canon of ‘consolation letters'. But sentimental they are not, for they emerge from the writer's deep-seated commitment to Stoicism, where individuals are exhorted to inhabit qualities of virtue, positivity, resilience, and indifference. This recording opens with Seneca's consolatory letter to Marcia, who, after three years, was still mourning the death of her son.

When the Bough Breaks presents a breakthrough concept of mourning, documenting the process of evolution from initial grief to an altered outlook on life. Excerpts from interviews with fifty parents who lost a child from age five to forty-five trace the road from utter devastation to a revised view of life, resulting in a work that is a tribute to resilience and the indomitable human spirit.