Filled with unexpected good news about growing older, Winter’s Graces highlights eleven qualities that ripen with age—including audacious authenticity, creative ingenuity, necessary fierceness, self-transcending generosity, and a growing capacity to savor life and to ride its ups and downs with humor and grace. Decades of research have established that the catastrophic conditions often associated with late life, such as severe dementia and debilitating frailty, are the exception, not the rule. Still, the mistaken idea that aging equals devastating decline persists, causing enormous and unnecessary suffering, especially for women. Drawing on decades of experience as a psychology professor and psychotherapist, Susan Stewart, PhD, weaves together inspiring folk stories that illustrate the graces of winter and recent research that validates them, along with a wealth of user-friendly tools and practices for amplifying these graces and bringing them to life. Written primarily for women over 50 seeking good news about growing older, Winter’s Graces offers adults of all ages a compelling vision of aging that celebrates its many gifts, acknowledges its challenges, and reveals how the last season of life can be the most fulfilling of all.

AN AVALANCHE TOOK HIS SON. WHAT FOLLOWED WILL GIVE YOU LIFE. Will Kautz has written a love letter to anyone who has ever suffered a heartbreaking loss. Take a journey into the human soul and experience the hunger and the joy of a brilliant, penetrating, transformational work that will uncover your humanity and clothe you with wisdom and grace. "Beautiful, heart wrenching, amazing, powerful" E.D., British Columbia "This is one of the most inspiring works I have ever read...passionate and discerning, it discloses what we want and why we're afraid of having it. My wife found me in tears. The last chapter blew me away." J.M., Florida "This book reminds us that there is sanity in the midst of all that isn't sane and hope when despair seeks to make us its own. If we do nothing more than bear our imperfect witness to that truth, life is worth the living." R.K., Connecticut "It's been a long time - maybe never - since I've read something so deep and powerfully written, so truthful to its core. This work is beautiful in every sense of the word, even in spite of or because of the wrenching loss that occasioned it." S.B., New Hampshire

A heartening and engaging guide to the surprising gifts of later life, based on ancient stories, recent research, elder's lived experience, the world's spiritual traditions, and the author's thirty-plus years as a psychology professor and psychotherapist.

"Does Grace Grow Best in Winter?" addresses the issue of suffering from the standpoint of the sovereignty of God. It teaches that we need to learn that suffering exists, and we need to learn to suffer.

Grace thinks about all of the things for which she is thankful. Includes facts about Thanksgiving.

"It was not long after I left the hospital in 1967 that I fell into a deep pit of depression. I was but a young girl, yet I was facing an overwhelming future - a life of total and severe paralysis. I was in desperate need for answers. . . . A young friend who often cam by my home for visits stopped by one day with a special book in hand . . . . Together, we read that book through the weeks of winter . . . . I eagerly look forward to each chapter - discovering sense in sovereignty and delighting in a new grasp on God's grace. . . . May I be the friend who stops by in your life this day? You have in your hands that same special book that I read back in that first winter of my disability. Grace grew then for me. And through grace, you will grow too!" - Joni Eareckson Tada, from the Foreword. MARGARET CLARKSON of Willowdale, Ontario, was a poet, hymn-writer, and author. She has written hundreds of articles and several books. Here she offers a thoughtful, biblical exploration of the "why" of human suffering.

'Thought-provoking, absorbing, superbly written ... Deirdre Purcell at her best' Patricia Scanlan A winter cruise sounds like a dream come true. But this gift from Grace's ex-husband is less a selfless act and more an effort to keep their highly destructive daughter Leonie away from his new family over the Christmas season. Despite her reservations, Grace accepts, hoping that a change of scene will be a good thing for herself and Leonie. Though what she really longs for is some time alone, away from her responsibilities as a mother and carer. Their cruise holiday has barely begin when Leonie's beauty attracts the attention of Ben, a fellow passenger. But as Ben does his best to get to know Leonie, Grace finds herself developing an unexpected bond with the young novelist, one which awakens feelings in her that she had thought buried forever. Then, it's discovered that Leonie has gone missing -- and what happens next will change the course of Grace's life...