Surviving Grief

Coping with loss is difficult, but that doesn’t mean you have to suffer alone. Based on the proven-effective acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) treatment, Moving Through Grief provides simple and effective techniques to help you get unstuck and start living a rich and fulfilling life again, loss and all. ACT is all about embracing what hurts and committing to actions that will improve and enrich your life.

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.

After a significant loss, it’s common to feel like we’re going crazy. The sudden absence of someone we love is not only devastating, it’s disorienting. The first year or two of grief is often unbelievably painful and confusing. We’re in shock, often for weeks or months. Time seems out of whack. We feel powerless, helpless, and ineffective. We can’t think straight; we can’t get anything done. Our moods swing wildly, and we say and do crazy things. We cry, and we cling to objects that belonged to the person who died. We have bizarre dreams.

His life was one devastating blow after another, losing multiple family members over the years to suicide, growing up in foster care, and being bullied. How does one pull themselves out of a storm like that? Surviving Loss: My Journey of Hope follows a man who often has reason to ask Why me? Many people ask themselves the same question when life pummels them, but this is a story of hope and coming out the other side, of recognizing the gifts and blessings between the pain and struggle.

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.

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.

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.