Excerpted from Widowed By Dr. Joyce Brothers
Six years ago I devised an exercise I called "the widow game" to help Trudy, a woman I had known for several years. Trudy complained that her husband was so unutterably dull that she was considering divorce or, at the very least, taking a lover. She spent hours fantasizing how great life would be without him. It was a classic case of what is commonly termed the "seven-year itch." which afflicts women as well as men.
Excerpted from On Grief and Dying: Understanding the Soul's Journey By Diane Stein
This is a book for all who grieve, and for all who die. It is also a book for all who live: women and men, widows and widowers, those who have lost a child, a lover, a parent, a grandparent, a pet. It is a book for all who have felt loss, who have lost a home, been robbed of a treasured object, lost a body part or a cherished way of life to illness or disability. It is for those who have
Excerpted from Surviving the Death of a Sibling: Living Through Grief When an Adult Brother or Sister Dies By T.J. Wray
My husband's birthday is just days away and the only thing left to buy is the card. All I want is a simple card with a heartfelt, loving message, but I'm having a difficult time finding one among the thousands of cards in the Hallmark store. The salesclerk, a tiny woman with rimless glasses, seems annoyed to have a lone customer frustrating her efforts
By Margarita Nahapetyan
Having a broken heart can be really dangerous for health, and in fact, it can lead to a deadly outcome, report U.S. scientists who found why some individuals do suffer from the condition.
Rows in the family and bad news about a loved one can all contribute to the condition, medically called Takotsubo cardiomiopathy, and popularly known as "broken heart syndrome." It was first described by Japanese scientists in
Excerpted from It Must Have Been Moonglow: Reflections on the First Years of Widowhood By Phyllis Greene
There is a beautiful book, The Hours, by Michael Cunningham, that won the Pulitzer Prize. It was inspired by Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and until I had seen the new video with Vanessa Redgrave, the book was confusing to me. But once I was oriented about who was who, I immersed myself in the characters and the magnificent writing and similes. The end, though, did
Excerpted from The Empty Room: Understanding Sibling Loss By Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn
My parents made this easy. It was they who had set the shroud of silence on the subject of my brother. They never talked about what had happened. And they would talk about Ted only on rare occasions, when I was alone with one of them. None of us brought up my brother when the three of us were together. I didn't even know if they would talk to me for the book. My mother, at first, greet
Excerpted from The Grieving Teen: A Guide for Teenagers and Their Friends By Helen Fitzgerald
If you are grieving a terrible loss, you may be wondering what's happening to you. You may be in a kind of daze, lost in your sorrow and not knowing what tomorrow will bring. You may feel that you are losing your mind.
If this even comes close to how you're feeling right now, it will help you to know that others your age have been where you are today, s
Excerpted from Finding Hope When a Child Dies: What Other Cultures Can Teach Us By Sukie Miller, Ph.D.
It's not that we blame God for the death of our children, exactly. Its more that we blame God for His refusal to answer our questions about their deaths, questions that haunt us from the moment the child dies and continue to do so through all our subsequent years. Because of this, in the course of our grieving, it is not uncommon for some people to feel resentment towa
Excerpted from Death, Grief and Mourning: Individual and Social Realities By John S. Stephenson, Ph.D.
The individual who is dying is in a state of transition between the living and the dead. Being in the stage of life known as "dying" has ramifications for both the individual and the larger society. In studying the dying process, we will focus on both the psychological and sociological dimensions of dying. Historical studies of dying provide us with an understanding of
Excerpted from On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss By Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D., David Kessler
An unimaginable, indescribable loss has taken place. It has inflicted a wound so deep that numbness and excruciating pain are the material of which it is made.
Everyone experiences many losses throughout life, but the death of a loved one is unmatched for its emptiness and profound sadness. Your world s
Excerpted from The Rooms of Heaven; A Story of Love, Death, Grief and the Afterlife By Mary Allen
I'm sitting here trying to picture Jim Beaman, to conjure up his physical presence, tune him into memory like an image on a TV screen. I can almost but not quite see him. What I get is vague, hazy. Some dial needs to be turned to bring the picture into focus and there isn't such a dial, as far as I know. Maybe there's some kind of special meditation, some trick of metaphysi
Excerpted from The Good Death; The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life By Marilyn Webb
Even families with the best intentions and the greatest resources find themselves exhausted trying to tend to the rigorous needs of the dying. They need help in making good medical or care decisions, they need help interacting with physicians and sorting through their treatment options, and-when they do make tough decisions-they need the power to implement them.
Excerpted from Remembering Mother, Finding Myself: A Journey of Love and Self-Acceptance By Patricia Commins
"This is the mother-love, which is one of the most moving and unforgettable memories of our lives, the mysterious root of all growth and change; the love that means homecoming, shelter, and the long silence from which everything begins and in which everything ends."
- C. G. Jung, Aspects of the Feminine
Death
Excerpted from Heartwounds; The Impact of Unresolved Trauma and Grief on Relationships By Tian Dayton, Ph.D.
As described in the introduction, forgiveness is a process, not an event. The very fact that it's a process is what makes it so worthwhile: It forces us to honestly confront feelings that are clogging up our emotional systems and work through them.
Maybe we're forgiving something small-ourselves for not getting something done on time or f
Excerpted from Good Grief By Lolly Winston
I stand with my arms at my sides and watch as she fills the bag with Ethan's coats. Oh! The suede jacket with the lamb's-wool lining that we dubbed the Marlboro Man coat. She tucks the arms inside the suitcase carefully, as though she's making hospital comers. You don't need a coat when you're dead. It's that simple.
I reach into the closet, pull Ethan's ski sweater off a hanger, and curl it against my