Competitive Grieving

An Entertainment Weekly Pick of Summer’s Best New Books Wren’s closest friend, her anchor since childhood, is dead. Stewart Beasley. Gone. She can’t quite believe it and she definitely can’t bring herself to google what causes an aneurysm. Instead of weeping or facing reality, Wren has been dreaming up the perfect funeral plans, memorial buffets, and processional songs for everyone from the corner bodega owner to her parents (none of whom show signs of imminent demise). Stewart was a rising TV star, who—for reasons Wren struggles to understand—often surrounded himself with sycophants, amusing in his life, but intolerable in his death. When his icy mother assigns Wren the task of disseminating his possessions alongside George (Stewart’s maddening, but oddly charming lawyer), she finds herself at the epicenter of a world in which she wants no part, where everyone is competing to own a piece of Stewart’s memory (sometimes literally). Remembering the boy Stewart was and investigating the man he became, Wren finds herself wondering, did she even know this person who she once considered an extension of herself? Can you ever actually know anyone? How well does she really know herself? Through laughter and tears, Nora Zelevansky’s Competitive Grieving shines a light on the universal struggle to grieve amidst the noise, to love with a broken heart, and to truly know someone who is gone forever.

Coping and recovery strategies for dealing with the loss of a loved one Whether the death of a loved one is sudden or expected, grieving the loss is a difficult yet transformative process. Grieving For Dummies approaches this very important subject with sensitivity, helping readers who are grieving the loss of a loved one as well as those who want to support them in this process. This compassionate guide covers all types of profound losses, including parents, spouses and partners, children, siblings, friends, and pets. It also addresses children’s grieving and how the manner of death may cause additional hurdles to grieving the loss. The book is filled with practical suggestions for moving through the phases, stages, and tasks of grieving with an eye towards successfully integrating the loss of a loved one, while at the same time, keeping the love shared alive.

For nearly three decades, Sandra Bertman has been exploring the power of the arts and belief--symbols, metaphors, stories--to alleviate psychological and spiritual pain not only of patients, grieving family members, and affected communities but also of the nurses, clergy and physicians who minister to them. Her training sessions and clinical interventions are based on the premise that bringing out the creative potential inherent in each of us is just as relevant-- perhaps more so--as psychiatric theory and treatment models since grief and loss are an integral part of life. Thus, this work was compiled to illuminate the many facets that link grief, counseling, and creativity. The multiple strategies suggested in these essays will help practitioners enlarge their repertoire of hands-on skills and foster introspection and empathy in readers.

The question is not whether Shakespeare studies needs feminism, but whether feminism needs Shakespeare. This is the explicitly political approach taken in the dynamic and newly updated edition of A Feminist Companion to Shakespeare. Provides the definitive feminist statement on Shakespeare for the 21st century Updates address some of the newest theatrical andcreative engagements with Shakespeare, offering fresh insights into Shakespeare’s plays and poems, and gender dynamics in early modern England Contributors come from across the feminist generations and from various stages in their careers to address what is new in the field in terms of historical and textual discovery Explores issues vital to feminist inquiry, including race, sexuality, the body, queer politics, social economies, religion, and capitalism In addition to highlighting changes, it draws attention to the strong continuities of scholarship in this field over the course of the history of feminist criticism of Shakespeare The previous edition was a recipient of a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award; this second edition maintains its coverage and range, and bringsthe scholarship right up to the present day

What does it take to face death, loss, and grief with confidence and peace? Cheryl Eckl is reluctantly forced to play hostess to life’s most unwelcome guest when her husband, Stephen, is diagnosed with terminal cancer and given a few short years to live. In A Beautiful Death, her powerful insights, moving story, and unerring guidance show us that we all have the inner resources to face death, and the future, with peace. In fact, she says, with the proper preparation this experience, while rarely easy, can be profoundly beautiful. A Beautiful Death is a compassionate and honest approach to death as an integral part of life-how to think about it, talk about it, and prepare for it. Eckl helps us overcome our fear and avoidance of painful end-of-life issues as she gently takes us by the hand on a transformative journey through loss and unspeakable grief. Her sensitive and deftly written work will help you engage the intensity of life’s deepest sorrow so you can rise up strengthened and able to greet life’s most profound joy. You will explore five liberating steps for facing the end of life, whether your own or a loved one’s. Above all, you’ll find the comfort you need to fully embrace the unwelcome guest with grace, confidence, and peace.

The Love Songs of a Lonely Man is a selection of poems wtitten over a twenty year span, but 80 ercent or more are recent. Some of the "love songs" are conventional, at least in the sence of wooing and heart palpitations, the blues, and evanescence. That the conventional themes are given unconventional treatment is suggested by the titles of some of the poems: "The Love Song of an Inadequate Man," "Advice to a Sophomore Co-ed Who's suffering From Acute Horniness," "Forgive Me, Wife." However, most of the poems are love songs in the broader sense of passionate engagement with the world and with life at this time, under these circumstances. The author has had varied experiences as a laborer, medical lab tech, radio-TV anouncer and sportscaster, university professor, principal in large-scale grant projects, officer in a funding agency, mountain route newspaper carrier, and many other ups and downs. The perspectives in his poems, accordingly, are many, ranging from those of a bag lady to those of the "Sibyl on the Rhine," from those of a student who has shot fellow students to those of a grumpy old man who can't sleep and is discussing sex in his imagination with "famous dead men" - Picasso, Goethe, Hesse. The poems themselves are in several styles and forms, but all are "accessible." Some are sololoquies in voices as varied as those of Hildegard von Bingen, oedipus, a Death Mother, a Latino bead artsist, and a Union (Civil War) soldier. the poems demonstrate a flair for psychological insight, storytelling, and powerful imagery. speaking in his own voice the author is always passionate, is often cranky, sometimes has a twinkle in his eye. One motif is american culture in such poems as "The Bellringers of Palm Springs," "Of Meadows and Parking Lots," "The 600 Block of Elm Between Pleasant and Arcadia," and several others. A second major motif is religion; the author's perspective is revealed in "Sin Is" and is elaborated in "Osiris and Medea," "Oedipus Instructs the Tribes of Isreal," "Hildegard Confesses to Febrile and Apasionata," and others. Still a third major motif is simplistic morality and moral evil, found in "How Am I Different," "Errors of Love," "Are Women the Cause of Men?" "Dearest Lucinda," and others. And a fourth motif is art and artists, in such poems as "You Can't See a Tabula Rasa Until It Disappears," "How a Poet May Self-Aggrandize," and "The poet of Beads." A feature of the collection is a group of poems culled from a once large group based on dreams women share with the author. Over time those inlcuded in Love Songs have become "more poem that dream." the poems are unambiguously feminine in detals, imagry, and themes. "Encounter With the Turban and His Beast" is unambiguously humorous and has an odd resonance with the events of 9/11. "I Hold Pain in My Arms" is based on a dream following an abortion. And "Dona Nobis Pacem" is a vivid women-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown dream-poem. Though it is not an emphasis of this collection of poems, some autobiographical details leach out. The unpleasant details are fiction and the pleasant details are lies.

Losses may provide a turning point where an individual faces personal and social choices. Still, one may derive significance through the experience of loss, while another may encounter bereavement with less consequence. "Complicated Grieving and Bereavement: Understanding and Treating People Experiencing Loss" examines complicated grief in special populations, including the mentally ill, POW-MIA survivors, the differentially-abled, suicide survivors, bereaved children, those experiencing death at birth, death in schools, and palliative-care death.

The third edition of Grieving Beyond Gender explores the different ways that individuals grieve, noting that gender is only one factor that affects an individual’s style or pattern of grief. Inherent in the concept of grieving styles is a notion that gender is fluid and that traditional binary views of gender are belied by the concept of grieving styles, and this is highlighted and explored in more depth in the new edition. Doka and Martin present a model firmly grounded in social science theory and research, and place special emphasis on the model’s clinical implications. Clinicians will come away from this book with concrete tools for supporting different types of grievers through individual counseling or group support.