Second Firsts

Second Firsts
Author: Christina Rasmussen
Publisher:
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1401940838

Presents a guide for dealing with grief and loss, detailing five steps of healing that can lead to a lifestyle alignment with personal values and new possibilities for a re-engaged life. --Publisher's description.

Disenfranchised Grief

Disenfranchised Grief
Author: Kenneth J. Doka
Publisher:
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2002
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN:

This book focuses on the kind of grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned. It addresses the unique psychological, biological, and sociological issues involved in disenfranchised grief. The contributing authors explore the concept of disenfranchised grief, help define and explain this type of grief, and offer clinical interventions to help grievers express their hidden sorrow.

Divorcing

Divorcing
Author: Susan Taubes
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2020-10-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1681374951

Now back in print for the first time since 1969, a stunning novel about childhood, marriage, and divorce by one of the most interesting minds of the twentieth century. Dream and reality overlap in Divorcing, a book in which divorce is not just a question of a broken marriage but names a rift that runs right through the inner and outer worlds of Sophie Blind, its brilliant but desperate protagonist. Can the rift be mended? Perhaps in the form of a novel, one that goes back from present-day New York to Sophie’s childhood in pre–World War II Budapest, that revisits the divorce between her Freudian father and her fickle mother, and finds a place for a host of further tensions and contradictions in her present life. The question that haunts Divorcing, however, is whether any novel can be fleet and bitter and true and light enough to gather up all the darkness of a given life. Susan Taubes’s startlingly original novel was published in 1969 but largely ignored at the time; after the author’s tragic early death, it was forgotten. Its republication presents a chance to discover a splintered, glancing, caustic, and lyrical work by a dazzlingly intense and inventive writer.

Divorce Is Worse Than Death

Divorce Is Worse Than Death
Author: Stanley McCluskey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 154
Release: 2020-08-11
Genre:
ISBN:

Divorce or the death of a dream can sometimes be as devastating as the death of a loved one. This book wasn't written to encourage or discourage divorce but to help people who are going through it to realize that it's ok if this is how you feel. Divorce is complicated. Some may rejoice while others feel like they just lost their best friend. There is no "one size fits all," and it's ok to grieve. My parents got divorced when I was twenty years old and it has been the single most traumatic event in my life. Their deaths, in comparison, were not even as painful. At the time I was simply told to "man up" by friends and family. Fortunately, today, professional help is available and there are many more solutions and options for healing. My story, as well as dozens of other real-life stories from those who have gone through a divorce or been affected by it, are included so readers can better understand and relate to the myriad feelings that surface as a result. A variety of topics are discussed including heartbreak, grief, the loss of one's home, legal and financial ramifications, children and custody, dealing with family and friends, the outlook of various faiths and finally, moving on. While each divorce is unique, there is hope for all provided in these pages.

Untangling Your Marriage

Untangling Your Marriage
Author: Nanci A. Smith
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-10-11
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1538166909

Divorce is hard, but it doesn’t have to be so painful. Collaborative Divorce offers a different, more peaceful path to ending a marriage; this book shows you how to do it. Divorce is like a death in the family, except no one is bringing you food. This book is a myth buster, and an antidote to the negative messaging about divorce. It offers hope and encouragement for the reader to choose a divorce process that aligns with their own core values. Values such as dignity, mutual respect, integrity, and compassion. It offers the reader an introduction to Collaborative Divorce, both the mindset and the process, as it has been established and practiced for the past thirty years. Collaborative divorce is an interdisciplinary, non-adversarial divorce model. It is like mediation on steroids. Divorce is a complex process. It involves legal, psychological, and financial considerations. Collaborative divorce uses an interdisciplinary approach, and it is not dominated by the lawyers and is more cost efficient. A skillful mental health coach addresses emotional issues such as anger, sadness, rage, betrayal, guilt, shame, excitement, relief, and acceptance for everyone in the family. The financial neutral will collect, organize, analyze, and present the financial resources of the couple in a way to ensure an equal understanding of what can often feel like overwhelming amount of data. The lawyers provide legal advice. The core focus of the book is to reframe divorce from a shame and blame game to a paradigm where divorce is viewed through the lens of grief. It offers each reader an opportunity to show up for their divorce and present their best selves, even if they don’t feel like it. It emphasizes honor and respect for everyone involved. This book is an open and honest portrayal of divorce from the perspective of a veteran divorce attorney, who has also been divorced. We live in a time of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. A divorce is just like that, and the antidote to those conditions include concepts like collaboration, deep listening, innovation, flexibility, and an ability to pivot. Collaborative divorce is the best kept secret of family lawyers. It is an opportunity to emerge from a divorce, healthy and wholehearted, not bitter, and resentful. Learn how to do it here.

Modern Loss

Modern Loss
Author: Rebecca Soffer
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2018-01-23
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 006249922X

Inspired by the website that the New York Times hailed as "redefining mourning," this book is a fresh and irreverent examination into navigating grief and resilience in the age of social media, offering comfort and community for coping with the mess of loss through candid original essays from a variety of voices, accompanied by gorgeous two-color illustrations and wry infographics. At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it’s clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let’s face it: most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We’re awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit. Enter Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner, who can help us do better. Each having lost parents as young adults, they co-founded Modern Loss, responding to a need to change the dialogue around the messy experience of grief. Now, in this wise and often funny book, they offer the insights of the Modern Loss community to help us cry, laugh, grieve, identify, and—above all—empathize. Soffer and Birkner, along with forty guest contributors including Lucy Kalanithi, singer Amanda Palmer, and CNN’s Brian Stelter, reveal their own stories on a wide range of topics including triggers, sex, secrets, and inheritance. Accompanied by beautiful hand-drawn illustrations and witty "how to" cartoons, each contribution provides a unique perspective on loss as well as a remarkable life-affirming message. Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.

Primal Loss

Primal Loss
Author: Leila Miller
Publisher: Lcb Publishing
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2017-05-20
Genre: Adult children of divorced parents
ISBN: 9780997989311

Seventy now-adult children of divorce give their candid and often heart-wrenching answers to eight questions (arranged in eight chapters, by question), including: What were the main effects of your parents' divorce on your life? What do you say to those who claim that "children are resilient" and "children are happy when their parents are happy"? What would you like to tell your parents then and now? What do you want adults in our culture to know about divorce? What role has your faith played in your healing? Their simple and poignant responses are difficult to read and yet not without hope. Most of the contributors--women and men, young and old, single and married--have never spoken of the pain and consequences of their parents' divorce until now. They have often never been asked, and they believe that no one really wants to know. Despite vastly different circumstances and details, the similarities in their testimonies are striking; as the reader will discover, the death of a child's family impacts the human heart in universal ways.

Today I Rise

Today I Rise
Author: Traver Boehm
Publisher:
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2017-11-12
Genre:
ISBN: 9781973284802

Heartbreak is an exquisitely seering pain with its never ending nausea, obsessive thinking, and crushing depression. Quite literally a personal prescription for living in hell. Trust me, I know it well and wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy.The pain of a broken heart is universally understood and experienced, but what is not universal however, is what is done with it. For most people it's an emotional death sentence but can be quite the opposite.The pain can break you down, or break you open. It can keep you bitter, or finally remove all of your heart's armor? Could heartbreak actually be the greatest opportunity ever handed to any of us?I believe it be just that - the greatest of opportunites - yet it's the one no one wants to use. My philosophy is quite simple: this horrendous pain isn't going anywhere, at all, so why not turn it into the catalyst for every change we've ever wanted in our lives. Why not use it instead of letting it destroy us. I know because I did just that.After using the two and half year odyssey of my own divorce to very publicly change every aspect of my life, something interesting began to happen - people started reaching out to me and asking how they could do the same. People just like you who wanted to lose weight, quit smoking, get sober, or rebuild their entire identity.When a close friend had her husband walk out, I made the commitment to speak with her for 90 straight days, telling her exactly what I wished someone had told me the moment my own wife walked out.Every morning I'd send her an email with a story from my own hellacious experience, giving her something inspirational to focus on and an action step to get her from heartbroken back to thriving - as fast as possible.These letters were compiled into an email series with thousands of readers already using them to navigate the darkest chapter of their lives. My goal was simple - to get her just a little bit stronger each and every day and it worked. And worked. And worked.This book is the compliation of those exact letters, with no punches pulled. The raw truth of my experience, the truth of you're facing with no punches pulled, and the best ways to get through it all. To survive, revive, and then thrive.Here's to you. Getting past today and on to tomorrow. One day at a time - one day stronger.