Living Through Grief With Spirituality

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.

This book describes how parents lose, find, or relocate spiritual anchors after the death of their child. It describes how ordinary people reconstruct their lives after their foundations have shifted, and how they make sense of their world after one of their centers of meaning has been removed. Klass grounds his descriptions of spirituality in his scholarly study of comparative religions, and in his two decades studying the lives of bereaved parents. He argues that continuing bonds with their dead children can give parents a new transcendent reality. Deceased children, like saints or bodhisattvas, can offer a bridge between the profane and sacred worlds, support parents as they find meaning in a world made forever poorer, and bind together a community adequate to parents' grief. The book reports Klass's clinical practice and his work as advisor to a bereaved parents self-help support group.

Are you looking for answers as you struggle with grief, hurts, difficult circumstances, or suffering? "Living Through Grief With Spirituality, with Pictured Words of Comfort from Jeremiah the Prophet" relates our own struggles with grief and suffering to the hardships experienced by Jeremiah, an Old Testament prophet. We can develop a deeper spirituality through trusting God and accepting the comfort that He offers, no matter how much we are grieving. The book briefly explains Jeremiah's tragic experiences that led him to be called "the weeping prophet." Yet God used his horrible circumstances to bring about a depth of spirituality that resulted in his sharing many words of comfort and encouragement that we can benefit from today. Wonderful Scripture verses of encouragement and comfort are displayed on beautiful nature pictures. They come from the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations, where Jeremiah's story and words are recorded. Take this part of the book slowly. Pick a verse, enjoy its picture, and sit and meditate on the promise that God gives you through the verse. As you take time to enjoy each verse and to let each inspiring message sink into your spirit, you'll find your own spiritual growth just as Jeremiah did. Allow God to bring His peace to you through these Scripture verses. Experience His comfort. Your circumstances may not change quickly, but the new level of spirituality you experience will give you the strength and wisdom you need.

Following a helpful introduction about the role of spirituality in grief, this practical mourning guide suggests activities based on meditation, prayer, yoga, and contemplative solitude to help with feelings of despair. For mourners who suffer from anxiety, breathing exercises are recommended, and massage is suggested for those who experience fatigue. Each description of these practices offers a brief activity to try out before continuing to read.

Explaining how multitudes of North Americans are carrying the pain of all types of loss—not just the deaths of loved ones but also the loss of a spouse through divorce, children who leave home, and the decline of health as they age or get sick—this balanced resource empowers mourners and grief counselors to turn grief into an experience to be learned from. Defining the varieties of heartache and its consequences, this effective guide explores how to inventory, understand, embrace, and reconcile one's accumulated sorrow through a five-phase "catch-up" mourning process. Readers will learn to use a spiritual and holistic approach to examine and integrate the ignored loss from their pasts, so that they can go on to live fuller, more balanced lives.

This earthly plane offers much for us to learn: happiness, wisdom, loss, heartbreak, and enlightenment. It is a Pandora's box of emotions, situations, opportunities, and failures, all wrapped into a package we call life. Nobody is immune, but everyone has the opportunity to grow tall or wither like a flower in harsh light. It's completely up to us how we choose to respond. Finding Hope in the Darkness of Grief is a gleaning of insights from artist Diamante Lavender. For her, life has been a long, difficult road, but it has taught many poignant lessons. Her poetry collection is an exploration of the human soul, a traversing of situations that life throws at us. Diamante has always been intrigued by the ability to overcome and move on to bigger and better things. She writes to encourage hope and possibility in those who read her stories. If she can help others heal, as she has, then Diamante's work as an author and artist will have been well spent. She believes that everyone should try to leave a positive mark on the world, to make it a better place for all. Writing is the way that she is attempting to leave her markone story at a time.

Grief is a personal journey, never the same for any two people and as unique as your life and your relationships. Although loss is an inevitable part of life, how you approach this fact can make the difference between meaningless pain and the manifestation of understanding and wisdom. This book describes a mindful approach to dealing with grief that can help you make that difference. By walking this mindful path, you will discover that you are capable of transforming and healing the grief you carry and finding the spiritual and emotional resilience you need to move through this challenging time. These mindfulness practices, explained here in simple and practical language, will help you bear your time of grief. But they will do more than that, too. They will guide you to a life more fully lived, with more meaning. These simple practices will help you experience what richness comes from asking deeper questions about loss and about life.

In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler—an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving—journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving, introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and compassion. Now, based on hard-earned personal experiences, as well as knowledge and wisdom earned through decades of work with the grieving, Kessler introduces a critical sixth stage. Many people look for “closure” after a loss. Kessler argues that it’s finding meaning beyond the stages of grief most of us are familiar with—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—that can transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience. In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler’s insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief—meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Finding Meaning is a necessary addition to grief literature and a vital guide to healing from tremendous loss. This is an inspiring, deeply intelligent must-read for anyone looking to journey away from suffering, through loss, and towards meaning.