The Vulnerability of Grief

The Vulnerability of Grief
Author: Alan D Wolfelt, PhD
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024
Genre:
ISBN: 9781617223297

Grief hurts. While it's natural to want to avoid pain, healing after a loss requires engaging with and expressing the pain. The only way to fully engage with our grief is to open ourselves to it. All our thoughts and feelings need acknowledgment. They need our time and attention. They also need expression. Sharing our grief outside of ourselves is called mourning, and ongoing mourning is what truly catalyzes our healing over time. Yet we are never more vulnerable than when we are sharing our deepest emotions. Vulnerability is scary. We're often afraid of the pain we'll feel when we're honest with ourselves. We also tend to be afraid of what others might think. But it turns out that vulnerability in grief is our ally. The more open and authentic we are, the more fully we can integrate our loss and go on to live and love well. If you've suffered a significant loss, this book by one of the world's most respected grief counselors will help you understand why and how to be vulnerable in grief. It will help you find the courage to mourn authentically, one small bit at a time. And it will help you embrace the paradoxical power of vulnerability in living a rich, full life.

Working with Loss and Grief

Working with Loss and Grief
Author: Linda Machin
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2013-12-10
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1446292991

This updated second edition of Working with Loss and Grief provides a model for practitioners working with those who are grieving a significant life loss. Making clear connections between theory and practice, the ′Range of Response to Loss′ model provides a theoretical ′compass′ for recognising the wide variability in reaction to loss and the ′Adult Attitude to Grief′ scale is a tool for ′mapping′ individual grief and its change over time, providing an individual grief profile. Together these offer a framework for practitioners to: -listen to stories of grief told by clients -identify common patterns in grief -recognize individual difference in grief response -make assessments -prompt therapeutic dialogue -guide therapeutic focus and -evaluate outcomes. This edition includes: a new chapter on ′The RRL Model and a Pluralistic Approach to Counselling′ ; two new case studies; additional content on vulnerability; new grief assessment tools and systems, and the latest research. Dr Linda Machin is Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University, having been a Lecturer in Social Work and Counselling at Keele. She established a counselling service for the bereaved in North Staffordshire and continues to work as a researcher and freelance trainer.

Finding Meaning

Finding Meaning
Author: David Kessler
Publisher: Scribner
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 1501192736

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.

Bereavement

Bereavement
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 1984-02-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309034388

"The book is well organized, well detailed, and well referenced; it is an invaluable sourcebook for researchers and clinicians working in the area of bereavement. For those with limited knowledge about bereavement, this volume provides an excellent introduction to the field and should be of use to students as well as to professionals," states Contemporary Psychology. The Lancet comments that this book "makes good and compelling reading....It was mandated to address three questions: what is known about the health consequences of bereavement; what further research would be important and promising; and whether there are preventive interventions that should either be widely adopted or further tested to evaluate their efficacy. The writers have fulfilled this mandate well."

Vulnerable Witness

Vulnerable Witness
Author:
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2019-07-02
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520297857

Scholars and practitioners who witness violence and loss in human, animal, and ecological contexts are expected to have no emotional connection to the subjects they study. Yet is this possible? Following feminist traditions, Vulnerable Witness centers the researcher and challenges readers to reflect on how grieving is part of the research process and, by extension, is a political act. Through thirteen reflective essays the book theorizes the role of grief in the doing of research—from methodological choices, fieldwork and analysis, engagement with individuals, and places of study to the manner in which scholars write and talk about their subjects. Combining personal stories from early career scholars, advocates, and senior faculty, the book shares a breadth of emotional engagement at various career stages and explores the transformative possibilities that emerge from being enmeshed with one's own research.

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief
Author: Claire Bidwell Smith
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2018-09-25
Genre: Self-Help
ISBN: 0738234761

With this groundbreaking book, discover the critical connections between anxiety and grief—and learn practical strategies for healing, based on the Kübler-Ross stages model. If you're suffering from anxiety but not sure why, or if you're struggling with loss and looking for solace, Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief offers help and answers. As grief expert Claire Bidwell Smith discovered in her own life—and in her practice with her therapy clients—significant loss and unresolved grief are primary underpinnings of anxiety. Using research and real life stories, Smith breaks down the physiology of anxiety, providing a concrete explanation that will help you heal. Starting with the basics questions—“What is anxiety?” and “What is grief?” and moving to concrete approaches such as making amends, taking charge, and retraining your brain, Anxiety takes a big step beyond Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's widely accepted five stages to unpack everything from our age-old fears about mortality to the bare vulnerability a loss can make us feel. With concrete tools and coping strategies for panic attacks, getting a handle on anxious thoughts, and more, Smith bridges these two emotions in a way that is deeply empathetic and profoundly practical.

Notes on Grief

Notes on Grief
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Knopf
Total Pages: 44
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593320816

From the globally acclaimed, best-selling novelist and author of We Should All Be Feminists, a timely and deeply personal account of the loss of her father: “With raw eloquence, Notes on Grief … captures the bewildering messiness of loss in a society that requires serenity, when you’d rather just scream. Grief is impolite ... Adichie’s words put welcome, authentic voice to this most universal of emotions, which is also one of the most universally avoided” (The Washington Post). Notes on Grief is an exquisite work of meditation, remembrance, and hope, written in the wake of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's beloved father’s death in the summer of 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged around the world, and kept Adichie and her family members separated from one another, her father succumbed unexpectedly to complications of kidney failure. Expanding on her original New Yorker piece, Adichie shares how this loss shook her to her core. She writes about being one of the millions of people grieving this year; about the familial and cultural dimensions of grief and also about the loneliness and anger that are unavoidable in it. With signature precision of language, and glittering, devastating detail on the page—and never without touches of rich, honest humor—Adichie weaves together her own experience of her father’s death with threads of his life story, from his remarkable survival during the Biafran war, through a long career as a statistics professor, into the days of the pandemic in which he’d stay connected with his children and grandchildren over video chat from the family home in Abba, Nigeria. In the compact format of We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele, Adichie delivers a gem of a book—a book that fundamentally connects us to one another as it probes one of the most universal human experiences. Notes on Grief is a book for this moment—a work readers will treasure and share now more than ever—and yet will prove durable and timeless, an indispensable addition to Adichie's canon.

Bereavement

Bereavement
Author: Colin Murray Parkes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2013-12-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1317850823

The loss of a loved one is one of the most painful experiences that most of us will ever have to face in our lives. This book recognises that there is no single solution to the problems of bereavement but that an understanding of grief can help the bereaved to realise that they are not alone in their experience. Long recognised as the most authoritative work of its kind, this new edition has been revised and extended to take into account recent research findings on both sides of the Atlantic. Parkes and Prigerson include additional information about the different circumstances of bereavement including traumatic losses, disasters, and complicated grief, as well as providing details on how social, religious, and cultural influences determine how we grieve. Bereavement provides guidance on preparing for the loss of a loved one, and coping after they have gone. It also discusses how to identify the minority in whom bereavement may lead to impairment of physical and/or mental health and how to ensure they get the help they need. This classic text will continue to be of value to the bereaved themselves, as well as the professionals and friends who seek to help and understand them.

On Grief and Grieving

On Grief and Grieving
Author: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2014-08-12
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1476775559

Ten years after the death of Elisabeth K bler-Ross, this commemorative edition of her final book combines practical wisdom, case studies, and the authors' own experiences and spiritual insight to explain how the process of grieving helps us live with loss. Includes a new introduction and resources section. Elisabeth K bler-Ross's On Death and Dying changed the way we talk about the end of life. Before her own death in 2004, she and David Kessler completed On Grief and Grieving, which looks at the way we experience the process of grief. Just as On Death and Dying taught us the five stages of death--denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance--On Grief and Grieving applies these stages to the grieving process and weaves together theory, inspiration, and practical advice, including sections on sadness, hauntings, dreams, isolation, and healing. This is "a fitting finale and tribute to the acknowledged expert on end-of-life matters" (Good Housekeeping).