The Wounds Of Grief

Trauma has been defined as an interruption of an affiliative or relationship bond. If left unsettled, past grief and psychological trauma can continue to impact our adult relationships and cause us pain in our entire lives. It's possible we may not even realize what is happening to us because usually relationships fail in parts rather than in total. Early childhood losses or traumas can create pain that is relived in adult intimate relationships. Intimacy can provide both an arena for re-enacting old pain and/or healing it. In this fascinating work, noted psychodramatist Tian Dayton shows readers how relationships can be used as a vehicle for healing, personal growth and spiritual transformation. Through fascinating case studies and probing exercises, Dayton helps readers get in touch with the deepest parts of themselves and heal the wounds that plague them.

From the internationally acclaimed, bestselling author of We Should All Be Feminists and Americanah, a profound reckoning with loss, written in the wake of her father’s death. During the brutal summer of 2020, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s beloved father, a celebrated professor at the University of Nigeria and an irreplaceable figure in a close-knit family, succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Notes on Grief is Adichie’s tribute to him, and a moving meditation on loss. Here Adichie offers a candid snapshot of the shock, loneliness, and disillusionment that followed the news of her father’s death. Her family, unable to be together except for on video calls, struggles to go through the rites of mourning amid a global crisis of unimaginable scale. As Adichie wrestles with his passing, she recalls with vivid, poignant detail who her father was: a remarkable survivor of the Biafran war, a man of kindness and charm, and a fierce supporter of his youngest daughter. Here is a uniquely personal, profound work of remembrance and hope by one of today’s luminaries—a book to bring us together in a time when we need it most.

How can complicated grief be defined? How does it differ from normal patterns of grief and grieving? Who among the bereaved is particularly at risk? Can clinical intervention reduce complications? Complicated Grief provides a balanced, up-to-date, state-of-the-art account of the scientific foundations surrounding the topic of complicated grief. In this book, Margaret Stroebe,Henk Schut and Jan van den Bout address the basic questions about the concept, manifestations and phenomena associated with complicated grief. They bring together researchers from different disciplines, providing a broad range of cultural and societal perspectives, to enable the reader to access the scientific knowledge base regarding complicated grief, on both theoretical and empirical levels. The book is divided into four main sections: An exploration of the nature of complicated grief Diagnostic categorizations Contemporary research on complicated grief Treament of complicated grief Illuminating the foundations and new innovations in research, Complicated Grief will be essential reading for professionals working with bereavement such as clinical psychologists, health psychologists and psychiatrists, researchers, as well as graduate students of psychology and psychiatry. Margaret Stroebe is Professor at the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, and the Department of Clinical Psychology and Experimental Psychopathology, University of Groningen,The Netherlands. Henk Schut is Associate Professor at the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Jan van den Bout is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. Contributors: Paul Boelen, Kathrin Boerner, George Bonanno, Laurie Burke, Rachel Cooper, Atle Dyregrov, Kari Dyregrov, Francesca Del Gaudio, Ann-Marie Golden, Jennifer Jacobs, David Kissane, Rolf Kleber, Yeulin Li, Jeffrey Looi, Anthony Mancini, Mario Mikulincer, Michelle Moulds, Robert Neimeyer, Mary-Frances O'Connor, John Ogrodniczuk, William Piper, Holly G. Prigerson, Therese Rando, Beverley Raphael, Paul C. Rosenblatt, Edward Rynearson, Henk A.W. Schut, Phillip Shaver, Margaret S. Stroebe, Jan van den Bout, Marcel van den Hout, Birgit Wagner, Jerome C. Wakefield, Edward Watkins, Talia I. Zaider.

HEALING THE WOUND is based on workshops Dr. Fox-Hines conducts for people who have experienced major losses in their lives whether those loses be the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, the loss of a job, illness or injury that causes massive changes in one's life style, trauma such as rape that tears into our very beings. Dr Fox-Hines created the image of a wound as she dealt with her own grief and with clients' grief. Most people understand that wounds need several forms of care in order to heal. Often they do not know that our often invisible emotional wounds also need several forms of care in order to heal. This book takes the care needed for physical healing and shows how each of the steps in healing bodily wounds can be applied to often agonizingly painful wounds of the spirit. Each chapter in the book focuses on a specific aspect of caring for a wound: cleansing, applying ointment, bandaging, medication, stitches, rehabilitation and dealing with scar tissue. Wounds need to be washed. Emotional wounds need the cleansing of tears. Wounds need antibiotic ointments or medications. Gentle self care and accepting the caring ministrations of others is the ointment that works on wounds of the spirit. Wounds need bandages. Our human support systems are the bandages for emotional pain. We often need some form of pain killers when we are physically wounded. People when grieving too often turn to unhealthy medications such as alcohol or over eating. Activity and diversions are the healthy forms of medication for attacks on our beings. Large wounds require stitches. The stitches involved with emotional wounds include dealing with reality it was a "death" not simply a "moving on." and the anger that often comes with reality. After initial healing comes rehabilitation and with life wounds versus physical ones, rehab is refocusing on the future versus the past; it is making plans for one's life. Lastly, with many major bodily wounds, there is scar tissue and periodically recurring aches and pains. So, too, with emotional wounds. Anniversaries, etc. can cause a flooding of the original pain to roll over us. It is important to be aware of this possibility and even plan for it. When writing HEALING THE WOUND, Dr. Fox-Hines realized that most people going through major losses are not up to reading scholarly and lengthy texts. She, therefore, purposefully kept what she had to say simple and brief --a total of --- pages. She also thought that using the metaphor of a physical wound would make developing a healing plan easier; for example, If you know that washing a wound is necessary, then when you find yourself crying you can label it washing and cleansing not something to be embarrassed about. Dr. Fox-Hines also realized that one plan does not fit all. We are all unique and need to tailor our healing process to fit what is best for us. So, what she does provide in this short book are guidelines, and in each chapter there are questions and/or exercises that might be useful in sorting through what would work for each individual. Most people can read through the whole book in a couple of hours; however, probably the best use of the book is to first do a quick read, and then to slowly focus on one or two chapters at a time, responding to the questions, doing the exercises and building a plan that fits with one's own unique being and unique circumstances. Building a plan can provide a sense of being in control, something we often feel we have lost went we deal with death, injury, divorce, etc. We can know we are consciously moving along versus floating in a miasma of pain or numbness. At the end of the book, Dr. Fox-Hines offers a list of suggested readings mostly resources that have been of help to her personally, to her clients and to participants in her workshops. BOOK R

In a raw and inspiring reflection on grief--selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year--a mourning sister processes her personal story of loss by exploring the history of bereavement customs.​ When Amanda Held Opelt suffered a season of loss—including three miscarriages and the unexpected death of her sister, New York Times bestselling writer Rachel Held Evans—she was confronted with sorrow she didn't know to how face. Opelt struggled to process her grief and accept the reality of the pain in the world. She also wrestled with some unexpectedly difficult questions: What does it mean to truly grieve and to grieve well? Why is it so hard to move on? Why didn’t my faith prepare me for this kind of pain? And what am I supposed to do now? Her search for answers led her to discover that generations past embraced rituals that served as vessels for pain and aided in the process of grieving and healing. Today, many of these traditions have been lost as religious practice declines, cultures amalgamate, death is sanitized, and pain is averted. In this raw and authentic memoir of bereavement, Opelt explores the history of human grief practices and how previous generations have journeyed through periods of suffering. She explores grief rituals and customs from various cultures, including: the Irish tradition of keening, or wailing in grief, which teaches her that healing can only begin when we dive headfirst into our grief the Victorian tradition of post-mortem photographs and how we struggle to recall a loved one as they were the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, which reminds her to rest in the strength of her community even when God feels absent the tradition of mourning clothing, which set the bereaved apart in society for a time, allowing them space to honor their grief As Opelt explores each bereavement practice, it gives her a framework for processing her own pain. She shares how, in spite of her doubt and anger, God met her in the midst of sorrow and grieved along with her, and shows that when we carefully and honestly attend to our losses, we are able to expand our capacity for love, faith, and healing.

If you have ever experienced a deep sadness over the loss of a close loved one, you will recognize the poems in The Wounds of Grief as snapshots of many of the intense emotions that you felt but perhaps were never quite able to describe in words. Instead of allowing himself to be bullied into following societys schedule to get over it and to move on, Jerry Vornholt has used his poems to warmly recall how many of the very ordinary events that he and his wife took for granted have now become some of his most precious memories. Jerry and his wife, Sharon, frequently referred to themselves as a team throughout the forty-eight years that they had the privilege to be together. Several of the poems in this book focus on his intense desire for that relationship to be continued in heaven.

This classic resource helps guide the bereaved person through the loss of a loved one, and provides an opportunity to learn to live with and work through the personal grief process.

Describes the grief associated with a miscarriage, gives advice on coping with one's emotions, and discusses actual cases