Words of Hope and Healing

Grief is always difficult, but if yours feels especially painful, stuck, or complex, you may be experiencing complicated grief. Complicated grief is not an illness or disorder. It' s simply normal grief that' s been made more challenging by circumstances that overwhelm the person in mourning. If someone you love has died of suicide, homicide, or accidental causes; if the death was violent or premature or ambiguous; if you are struggling with additional life issues right now, such as health challenges (physical or mental), family problems, or financial stress; if your relationship with the person who died was extremely close or troubled; if you have suffered several losses in quick succession-this concise guide is for you. In this compassionate resource by one of the world' s most beloved grief counselors, you'll learn how complicated grief is different and what you can do to soften and eventually reconcile it. You'll inventory the reasons your grief is complicated. You'll learn the importance of engaging with and expressing your grief. And you'll find hope for your healing. There is a path through and beyond the wilderness of complicated grief. It' s more arduous than most, but to li

We don't only experience grief after a loss-we often experience it before. If someone we love is seriously ill, or if we're concerned about upcoming hardships of any kind, we naturally begin to grieve right now. This process of anticipatory grief is normal, but it can also be confusing and painful. Life is change, and change is hard. This book will help see you through.

Loss is always hard, but when someone you love dies of an accidental drug overdose, the grief that follows can be especially painful and challenging. In this compassionate guide, Dr. Alan Wolfelt, one of the world's most respected and beloved grief counselors and educators, shares the most important lessons he has learned from loved ones who've picked up the pieces in the aftermath of a drug overdose. Readers will learn ideas for coping in the early days after the tragic death, as well as ways to transcend the stigma associated with overdose deaths. The book also explores common thoughts and feelings, the six needs of mourning, self-care essentials, finding hope, and more. Yes, the road you are now walking is a heartbreaking one, but the principles in this guide will help you step through the darkness and back into the light. Understanding Your Grief After A Drug-Overdose Death is part of Companion Press's Words of Hope and Healing series-empathetic books on grief and other loss-related topics, with just the right amount of education and support.

Ironically, if you are lonely, you're not alone. People the world over are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. In the US, one in five of us reports feeling lonely, and almost half of seniors are lonely on a regular basis. Loneliness hurts, and it can lead to depression, addiction, physical problems, and other harmful consequences. This compassionate guide offers a variety of practical suggestions for reclaiming community and building meaningful connections in ways that suit you. Finding your way back to companionship and hope is not only possible, it's essential. You deserve to feel better. You deserve connection. This book will help you find your way.

When we're grieving, we need relief from our pain.Today we often turn to technology for distraction when what we really need is the opposite: generous doses of nature. Studies show that time spent outdoors lowers blood pressure, eases depression and anxiety, bolsters the immune system, lessens stress, and even makes us more compassionate.This guide to the tonic of nature explores why engaging with the natural world is so effective at helping reconcile grief. It also offers suggestions for bringing short bursts of nature time (indoors and outdoors) into your everyday life as well as tips for actively mourning in nature. This book is your shortcut to hope and healing...the natural way.

We don't only experience grief after a loss-we often experience it before. If someone we love is seriously ill, or if we're concerned about upcoming hardships of any kind, we naturally begin to grieve right now. This process of anticipatory grief is normal, but it can also be confusing and painful. Life is change, and change is hard. This book will help see you through.

Anger in grief is natural. It's normal to feel anger and other explosive emotions such as hate, blame, terror, resentment, rage, and jealousy after the death of someone you love or another significant life loss. Yet it's challenging to experience these feelings day after day. And it can be hard knowing what to do about them. Allowing them to seethe and build up inside you is not the answer. Neither is lashing out at people who care about you. This book will show you how to understand and express your anger and other explosive emotions in restorative ways. Learning to be with your anger and soothe it will not only help you on your healing journey in grief, it will also give you tools for living the remainder of your days with less suffering and more joy. If you are angry, let us begin.

Grief overload is what you feel when you experience too many significant losses all at once, in a relatively short period of time, or cumulatively. In addition to the deaths of loved ones, such losses can also include divorce, estrangement, illness, relocation, job changes, and more. Our minds and hearts have enough trouble coping with a single loss, so when the losses pile up, the grief often seems especially chaotic and defeating. The good news is that through intentional, active mourning, you can and will find your way back to hope and healing. This compassionate guide will show you how.

When you want to have a baby but are struggling with fertility challenges, it's normal to experience a range and mixture of ever-changing feelings. These feelings are a natural and necessary form of grief. Whether you continue to hope to give birth or you've stopped pursuing pregnancy, this compassionate guide will help you affirm and express your feelings about infertility. Tips for both women and men are included.

Human life is a series of attachments, transitions, and losses. We explore, we connect, we love. We grow, we change, we lose. Over and over on our journey through life, we experience hurt. We often equate the death of a loved one with the term " loss," but really it's just one kind of loss. Many other losses are deeply consequential as well, from health and financial problems to divorce, estranged relationships, abuse, betrayals, traumatic events, moves from beloved places, lost or broken dreams, and more. Even happy, appropriate transitions can be partly painful, such as leaving for college, getting married, and seeing children into adulthood. All of these significant losses can be deeply hurtful. When they arise, we naturally grieve inside. But most of us haven't learned that just as with death, it's essential to mourn- or express our grief- over them. It is through mourning that we integrate all our losses along life's path. It is through mourning that we heal and learn to live well, with ever-deeper joy and meaning. Grief happens. Mourning takes intention and work. The good news is that you can mourn and live an exuberant life at the same time. This book will show you how.

Grief hurts. While it's natural to want to avoid pain, healing after a loss requires engaging with and expressing the pain. The only way to fully engage with our grief is to open ourselves to it. All our thoughts and feelings need acknowledgment. They need our time and attention. They also need expression. Sharing our grief outside of ourselves is called mourning, and ongoing mourning is what truly catalyzes our healing over time. Yet we are never more vulnerable than when we are sharing our deepest emotions. Vulnerability is scary. We're often afraid of the pain we'll feel when we're honest with ourselves. We also tend to be afraid of what others might think. But it turns out that vulnerability in grief is our ally. The more open and authentic we are, the more fully we can integrate our loss and go on to live and love well. If you've suffered a significant loss, this book by one of the world's most respected grief counselors will help you understand why and how to be vulnerable in grief. It will help you find the courage to mourn authentically, one small bit at a time. And it will help you embrace the paradoxical power of vulnerability in living a rich, full life.

When someone you care about has suffered the death of a loved one or another significant loss, you want to let them know you care. However, it can be hard to know what to say to them or to write in a sympathy note. This handy book offers tips for how to talk or write to a grieving person to convey your genuine concern and support. What to say, what not to say, sympathy card etiquette, how to keep in touch, and more are covered in this concise guide written by one of the world's most beloved grief counselors. You'll turn to this book again and again, not only after a death but during times of divorce or break-ups, serious illness, loss of a pet, job change or loss, traumatic life events, major life transitions that are both happy and sad, and more.

It's normal to experience anxiety in grief. While it's not pleasant to feel anxious, it's natural because loss shakes our sense of security in the present and often raises worries about the future. Anxiety is a form of fear. Of course we feel afraid when someone important to us dies. How will we survive without them? What will our lives be like? What if something happens to others we care about? What's more, the pain of grief compounds anxiety. When we're hurting, we naturally feel anxious. We want the pain to stop. But the pain of grief typically takes many months and even years to begin to diminish. This book by one of the world's most beloved grief counselors will help you understand your anxiety and fears after a significant loss. They are normal, and they serve a purpose. But learning to soothe your fears is also essential. You don't need to live in continuous anxiety, and you shouldn't because it's bad for your health. You'll learn ways to comfort and distract yourself whenever you need to. Finally, you'll discover that expressing your fears is key to taming them.

After the death of someone close to you, you enter a time of deep grief. And if you use this time to actively, intentionally engage with your grief, you find helpful ways to express it. You do the work of mourning. You share it outside yourself-in doses and over time-so that you begin to integrate your loss into your ongoing life. In other words, you mourn well so that you can heal well and live and love well again. Eventually you understand that while your grief is never " over," it is reconciled. It is an integrated part of your life story. Your love is not " over," either, of course. You feel it in the present just as much as you did in the past. So, after your time of deep grief has passed, how do you continue to love and honor the special person who died even as you fully live your own remaining precious days here on earth? In response to this common challenge, this book by one of the world' s most beloved grief counselors proposes a way of being Dr. Wolfelt calls " cherishing." To cherish means to protect and care for lovingly, and to hold dear. The mindset, suggestions, and practices in this resource will help you build cherishing into your daily routines. They will also assist you in making the most of situations in which mourners often feel torn-both happy and sad-such as holidays, anniversaries, weddings, and other celebrations and life transitions. You can live fully while still loving and honoring those who' ve died. This book will help see how.

If someone you love died by homicide, your grief is naturally traumatic and complicated. Not only might your grief journey be intertwined with painful criminal justice proceedings, you may also struggle with understandably intense rage, regret, and despair. It's natural for homicide survivors to focus on the particular circumstances of the death as well. Whether your loved one's death was caused by murder or manslaughter, this compassionate guide will help you understand and cope with your difficult grief. It offers suggestions for reconciling yourself to the death on your own terms and finding healing ways for you and your family to mourn. After a homicide death, there is help for those left behind, and there is hope. This book will help see you through.