Grief is a road that each person must walk ... Grief is pain unlike any other ... Grief is a journey ... Grief is a normal reaction to loss. God has promised to be with us in our grief. This book is a companion for the journey through pain to recovery. A JOURNEY THROUGH LOSS is an indespensible companion, allowing readers to express their emotions on their journey through loss – toward receiving God's healing grace.

In this “volume of rare sensitivity, penetrating understanding, and profound insights” (Rabbi Earl A. Grollman, author of Living When a Loved One Has Died), Dr. Kenneth Doka explores a new, compassionate way to grieve, explaining that grief is not an illness to get over but an individual and ongoing journey. There is no “one-size-fits-all” way to cope with loss. The vital bonds that we form with those we love in life continue long after death—in very different ways. Grief Is a Journey is the first book to overturn prevailing, often judgmental, ideas about grief and replace them with a hopeful, inclusive, personalized, and research-backed approach. New science and studies behind Dr. Doka’s teaching upend the dominant but incorrect view that grief proceeds by stages. Dr. Doka helps us realize that our experiences following a death are far more individual and much less predictable than the conventional “five stages” model would have us believe. Common patterns of experiencing and expressing grief still prevail, yet many other life changes accompany a primary loss. For example, the deaths of parents, even for adults, modify family patterns, change relationships, and alter old family rituals. Unique to this book, Dr. Doka also explains how to cope with disenfranchised grief—the types of loss that are not so readily recognized or supported by society. These include the death of ex-spouses, as well as non-fatal losses such as divorce, the end of a friendship, job loss, or infertility. In addition, Dr. Doka considers losses that might be stigmatized, including death by suicide or from disease or self-destructive behaviors such as smoking or alcoholism. And finally, Dr. Doka reminds us that, however painful, grief provides opportunities for growth.

This spiritual companion for mourners affirms their need to mourn and invites them to journey through their very unique and personal grief. Detailed are the six needs that all mourners must yield to and eventually embrace if they are to go on to find continued meaning in life and living, including the need to remember the deceased loved one and the need for support from others. Short explanations of each mourning need are followed by brief, spiritual passages that, when read slowly and reflectively, help mourners work through their unique thoughts and feelings. Also included in this revised edition are journaling sections for mourners to write out their personal responses to each of the six needs. This replaces 1879651114.

An original, thought-provoking meditation on the corrosive legacy of slavery from the 16th century to the present.--Elizabeth Schmidt, "The New York Times."

With her signature warmth, hilarity, and tendency to overshare, Leslie Gray Streeter gives us real talk about love, loss, grief, and healing in your own way that "will make you laugh and cry, sometimes on the same page" (James Patterson). Leslie Gray Streeter is not cut out for widowhood. She's not ready for hushed rooms and pitying looks. She is not ready to stand graveside, dabbing her eyes in a classy black hat. If she had her way she'd wear her favorite curve-hugging leopard print dress to Scott's funeral; he loved her in that dress! But, here she is, having lost her soulmate to a sudden heart attack, totally unsure of how to navigate her new widow lifestyle. ("New widow lifestyle." Sounds like something you'd find products for on daytime TV, like comfy track suits and compression socks. Wait, is a widow even allowed to make jokes?) Looking at widowhood through the prism of race, mixed marriage, and aging, Black Widow redefines the stages of grief, from coffin shopping to day-drinking, to being a grown-ass woman crying for your mommy, to breaking up and making up with God, to facing the fact that life goes on even after the death of the person you were supposed to live it with. While she stumbles toward an uncertain future as a single mother raising a baby with her own widowed mother (plot twist!), Leslie looks back on her love story with Scott, recounting their journey through racism, religious differences, and persistent confusion about what kugel is. Will she find the strength to finish the most important thing that she and Scott started? Tender, true, and endearingly hilarious, Black Widow is a story about the power of love, and how the only guide book for recovery is the one you write yourself.

'This is the most startlingly honest book about grief I have ever read. Its immediacy hits you on the first page and takes you on an unforgettable journey. No one has set out so clearly the stages we go through as we try to come to terms with facing the enormity of death.' - Dame Penelope Wilton, DBE 'Sasha writes exquisitely and honestly, the sheer rawness of what she has gone through and is still going through, sitting in balance with the calm and clear-sighted objectivity of the therapist, who is also her.' - Hugh Bonneville One person, two perspectives on grief. Plunged unexpectedly into widowhood at just 49 years old, psychotherapist Sasha Bates describes in searing honesty the agonisingly raw feelings unleashed by the loss of her husband and best friend, Bill. At the same time, she attempts to keep her therapist hat in place and create some perspective from psycho-analytic theory. From the depths of her confusion she gropes for ways to manage and bear the pain - by looking back at all that she has learnt from psychotherapeutic research, and from accepted grief theories, to help her make sense of her altered reality. Languages of Loss starts a necessary and overdue conversation about death and loss. It breaks down taboos and tries to find humour and light amidst the depressing, bewildering reality. It is an essential companion to help support readers through the agony of those early months, giving permission for all the feelings, and offering various methods of living with them.This book's overriding message is that everyone's experience of grief is different, but knowing more about the theory, and learning a new vocabulary, while not necessarily easing the grief, can help you feel less alone, and at some point enable you to reflect back and see how far you have come. 'This is a useful as well as a moving book. The writing is energetic, down-to-earth and bracingly honest, and many readers will feel consoled and enlightened by Bates's take on her experience.' - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times 'Bates's skill as a psychotherapist is married to her deft ability to use language and metaphor to create this vital treatise on loss. As much as Languages of Loss is an essential text on grief, it is also a story of love.' - Sunday Business Post Review 'This book will give anyone grieving the death of their partner an insight into their experience, and help those around them understand the difficult and painful process of grief.' - Julia Samuel, author of This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works