The Blue Poppy And The Mustard Seed

Katie Morton's son Liam was born with profound brain damage. When he died six-and-a-half weeks later, she searched for answers in books on grief and coping, but none seemed to address her situation. Without completely understanding why, Morton embarked on a wider search for solace. "The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed" takes readers along as she travels to foreign lands to illuminate her inner journey through emotional highs and lows. She interweaves what she witnesses -- simple rituals like children's baths and picnics, and rites of passage like birth and death -- with her own progress. In the process she discovers that the pain she has experienced is both unavoidable and necessary, a pivotal part of the process of healing that can lead to "a victorious kind of joy, of acceptance." In discovering herself, Morton shows readers suffering from similar tragedies how to endure world-shattering pain and come out whole.

Amid the world-shattering pain of loss, what helps? In the tradition of C.S. Lewis's A Grief Observed, Guy Newland offers this brave record of falling to pieces and then learning to make sense of his pain and grief within his spiritual tradition. Drawing inspiration from all corners of the Buddhist world--from Zen stories and the Dalai Lama, to Pema Chödrön and ancient Pali texts--this book reverberates with honesty, kindness, and deep humanity. Newland shows us the power of responding fully and authentically to the death of a loved one.

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own death or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we, spiritually or practically? In Preparing to Die, Andrew Holecek presents a wide array of resources to help the reader address this unfinished business. Part One shows how to prepare one’s mind and how to help others, before, during, and after death. The author explains how spiritual preparation for death can completely transform our relationship to the end of life, dissolving our fear and helping us to feel open and receptive to letting go in the dying process. Daily meditation practices, the stages of dying and how to work with them, and after-death experiences are all detailed in ways that will be particularly helpful for those with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and in Tibetan approaches to conscious dying. Part Two addresses the practical issues that surround death. Experts in grief, hospice, the funeral business, and the medical and legal issues of death contribute chapters to prepare the reader for every practical concern, including advance directives, green funerals, the signs of death, warnings about the funeral industry, the stages of grief, and practical care for the dying. Part Three contains heart-advice from twenty of the best-known Tibetan Buddhist masters now teaching in the West. These brief interviews provide words of solace and wisdom to guide the dying and their caregivers during this challenging time. Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death.