Permission To Grieve

The voice behind the popular grief podcast Coming Back: Conversations on Life After Loss puts pen to paper in her first book to create a powerful permission slip for anyone facing the devastating heartbreak that comes with death, divorce, diagnosis, and so much more. When loss steamrolls through, there’s a lot of hidden and not-so-hidden “rules” about the way you’re “supposed” to grieve: “You should be over it after a year.” “Put on a brave face.” “Keep your grief at home.” Permission to Grieve calls out society’s garbage rules for what they really are: toxic and repressive narratives that insist we abandon our true selves in the face of grief. Shelby asks instead: - What if we allowed grief the freedom to influence our emotions? - What if we allowed grief the power to alter our identities at home, school, and work? - What if we allowed grief to show up in the physical world through art, memorial, and ritual? - What if we gave ourselves… Permission to Grieve? Drawing on her experience as a grieving person and two years’ worth of interviews with grief experts like Megan Devine, Kerry Egan, and Caleb Wilde, Shelby Forsythia makes the case for radical, self-honoring permission—free from personal judgement and society’s restrictive timelines and rules. Permission to Grieve guides you to call your grief out of hiding and invites you to give it permission through thoughtful writing prompts, easy-to-follow exercises, and clever visual illustrations. In this book you’ll learn: - How society encourages us to practice life-rejection and self-abandonment instead of expressing our grief - The three big permissions that unlock the emotions, identities, and actions our grief wants to express—featuring insights from -podcast guests and Shelby Forsythia’s personal grief community - Tips and tricks for practicing permission to grieve in the real world—including how to ask for permission to grieve from friends, family, and coworkers and tools for helping others tap into their own permission to grieve Permission to Grieve is not a hall pass from a higher authority; it’s a personal practice that is strengthened with self-awareness, attention, and love. You don’t have to wait to receive permission to grieve; you already have it. Permission to Grieve is a book for people who are tired of covering up and pushing down their pain. It’s a book for people who know that there’s a better, more compassionate way to approach the worst thing that has ever happened to them. It’s a book for people who believe that grief is not an enemy to be vanquished as quickly as possible, but an opportunity to connect more deeply with their human selves. Because even in the midst of loss, Shelby writes, we can create grace, space, and room to breathe.

"A heartfelt invitation for grieving readers...An excellent resource for those working their way through loss." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review Veteran hospital chaplain to the sick, dying, and bereaved, J.S. Park offers you both the permission and the process for how to grieve and heal at your own pace. In As Long As You Need, J.S. offers an honest and unrushed engagement with grief, decoding four types of grieving—spiritual, mental, physical, and relational—and offering compassionate self-care and soul-care along the way. If you are struggling to process loss, pain, or grief from the last few years or the last few minutes, J.S. is an experienced and deeply empathetic listener and grief catcher who has held the pain and questions of thousands of patients. While social and cultural narratives about grief are dominated by "letting go, moving on, or turning the page" in his nearly decade of service as a chaplain at a major hospital with a designated level one trauma center J.S. understands firsthand how rushing or suppressing grief only adds a suffocating layer of pain on top of the original wound. From his unique window into the stories of the ill, injured, dying, and their families, J.S. offers you: Permission to dismantle all too common myths about grief and replace them with a guilt-free and unrushed approach to navigating your losses. Encouragement for how entering grief, rather than avoiding it, leads to a hard but meaningful holding of your loss. Empathy and hope if you are struggling with a crisis of faith in the midst of grief. Recognition that grief spans a wide narrative of loss: loss of future, faith, mental health, worth, autonomy, connection, and loved ones. Affirmation that your grief is your own. While the DNA of grief might be universal to the human condition, how you experience and process grief is unique to you. From the ER to deliveries to deathbeds across every sort of illness and injury imaginable, J.S. Park has provided meaningful counseling for people in all walks of life and death. Now, through his book he wants to assure you that, while everybody else might rush past your pain, grief is the voice that says, take as long as you need.

Written in a poetic structure, the author lets us into his life and grief while offering hope and lessons to other grief survivors.

There is something to be said when we truly give people Permission To Grieve, in all situations of loss, not just in death, but even in divorce and in the midst of unexpected transitions.In "Permission To Grieve: How To Cope Through Public Loss In The Midst of Private Pain," Author Dwann Holmes takes us through her personal journey of grief in the death of her father, Dewayne Holmes Sr. who died not quite one year after her 101 year-old grandmother, Eleanor Nash Holmes. These personal losses happened during a time when many looked up to Holmes as their pastor. She shares how Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) helped her in ways she could have never imagined and what hurt is as a leader coping through public loss in the midst of private pain.Dwann Holmes gives interesting insight on what she calls the global grief of the world now that COVID-19 is listed as the cause of death for more than 2 million people and rising.Plus, Holmes provides brief prayers for those grieving and practical instructions on how leaders can develop a Grief Contingency Plan. You will find help and hope as you journey with Chaplain Dwann during this thought-provoking piece.

2020 Colorado Authors' League Finalist 2020 Book Excellence Awards Finalist "Kim's words, ripped from her diary, are raw, painting a picture of the excruciating anguish that so many left behind by the physical departing of a loved one express." —Duck White-Petteruti, Founder, Domus Pacis Family Respite "It will give you, the reader, permission to remember, never forget, and to slowly live from the place of heart again." —Patty L. Luckenbach, MA, DD, associate minister and author of I Only Walk On Water When It Rains The grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one is crippling. In Feeling Left Behind, author Kim Murdock relates and empathizes with that pain because she’s been there. She knows what it feels like to be woefully blindsided by music or at the grocery store, to reconsider the future alone, and to connect with a person who is no longer alive. You will relate to her chapters as she describes: • The crushing desire to freeze time and isolate yourself • The unstable phase of “firsts”― first holidays, birthdays, anniversaries • The anger and sadness at seeing other couples • The loss of self, empathy, security, and tolerance • The heartbreaking sadness of getting rid of their belongings • And so much more This is not a step-by-step guide on how to grieve. Kim outlines every detail of her experience as well as the experiences of her widow/widower friends to show you that you are not alone. You are normal. And you deserve as much time as possible to figure out how to survive in your own way. "Kim's words, ripped from her diary, are raw, painting a picture of the excruciating anguish that so many left behind by the physical departing of a loved one express." —Duck White-Petteruti, Founder, Domus Pacis Family Respite

The holidays are difficult for anyone on the grief journey. The candles are lit, the houses are decorated, and the grieving person struggles to find any joy in the celebrations. Doug gives the reader permission to find their own special way to cope, to remember, and to survive the hurdles that the holiday season can present. Buy it for yourself, for a friend or family member, or purchase in quantity to give at this year's memorial service.

Grief is always a challenge, and that is definitely the case when it is a sibling who has died. In this book, Amy describes some of the most challenging parts of her grief journey from sibling loss to a place of restored hope. When she lost her only sibling to cancer, Amy's life changed forever. She felt the responsibility to care for all of the other people in her life, including her parents and her brother's young family, all while struggling through her own devastating journey of grief and loss. In Permission to Grieve, Amy recounts her experiences as a bereaved sibling, how she learned to validate her own grief, and ultimately how she found a path toward resilience and hope. In addition, she offers suggestions for other bereaved siblings in the hope that her experience will smooth the road for others. This is a remarkable voyage of discovery-a story about grieving, relationships, and the importance of self-care.

I created this emotionally charged book for you to be a workbook.It is intended to give you the space to be able to go through this grieving process with a form of grace.This book can give you something to hold onto as well as a space to productively honor your experience.This workbook gives you the chance to honor the love you have for your pet and to get it all out on paper so it doesn't have to stay in your body and potentially create more pain and suffering.I am you, I have suffered many animal losses in my lifetime and I know that every single one is different from the last and that the pain and suffering are real.From my own multiple experiences and that of working with over 7,000 dogs and their humans, I know that the pain has the potential to last for years and sometimes lifetimes.It is my intention with this workbook to make this process a little bit more light and to give you a space to be able to manage, balance and perhaps even heal the pain.OHM, Michele Jarvis-Wonnacott