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The Disenfranchised: Stories of Life and Grief When an Ex-Spouse Dies offers an unprecedented anthology of never-before-published, first-person life histories by ex-spouses whose grief has endured as disenfranchised: socially unacknowledged, untold, and unrecognised. Each story of disenfranchised grief is fiercely honest and courageously made public. This anthology has no parallels in current texts, academic literature or mainstream publications. Contributors present personal histories, revealing that the dimensions of disenfranchised grief are as individual as the writers who have endured this neglected aspect of grief and bereavement. In many narratives, the healing power of their creative processes through art and poetry is further revealed. The anthology is compiled and edited by Peggy Sapphire, MS (Guidance and Counseling), a writer living in Vermont. Over the span of five years, through phone conversations and written communications, Ms. Sapphire established trusting relationships with the contributors, who, though choosing to submit their work, often struggled with reluctance, even dread, at revisiting previously private events in their lives and finally committing their stories to paper, and ultimately to publication. Each narrative is accompanied by a clinical commentary, written by Shirley Scott, MS, certified Thanatologist, which provides readers, whether academic, practitioner, student, or lay, with reflections on the issues and patterns of disenfranchised grief, as reflected by each narrative. Included in each commentary are bibliographic references for further and advanced study. The contributors represent an extraordinary range of professional achievements and academic credentials--well-published writers, poets, working artists, educators, academics, mental health practitioners, and health professionals.

Honoring the centennial of Sigmund Freud's seminal paper Mourning and Melancholia, New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment: New Mourning is a major contribution to our culture's changing view of bereavement and mourning, identifying flaws in old models and offering a new, valid and effective approach.George Hagman and his fellow contributors bring together key psychoanalytic texts from the past 20 years, exploring contemporary research, clinical practice and model building relating to the problems of bereavement, mourning and grief. They propose changes to the asocial, intra-psychic nature of the standard analytic model of mourning, changes compatible with contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice. Arguing that the most important goal of mourning is often to preserve, rather than give up the relationship to the deceased, this book provides a more positive, hopeful model. Crucially, it emphasizes the importance of mourning together, rather than alone.New Models of Bereavement Theory and Treatment: New Mourning will be the go-to resource for researchers, clinicians and interested lay people seeking a clear, accessible overview of contemporary mourning theory, useful in their daily lives and in clinical practice. It will appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, grief counsellors, as well teachers, undergraduates and advanced students studying in the field.

Demons in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Genocide, Slavery and Extreme Trauma in Psychoanalytic Practice isthe second of two volumes addressing the overwhelming, often unmetabolizable feelings related to mourning, both on an individual and mass scale. Authors in this volume explore the potency of ghosts, ghostliness and the darker, often grotesque aspects of these phenomena. While ghosts can be spectral presences that we feel protective of, demons haunt in a particularly virulent way, distorting experience, our sense of reality and our character.Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, emons in the Consulting Room, reveals how the most extreme types of trauma can continue to have effects across generations, and how these effects manifest in the consulting room. Essays in this volume consider traumas that have affected multiple generations of people, such as the Holocaust, experiences in the gulags, and the experience of slavery. Authors here consider the clinical challenges of working with the demonic force in severe childhood abuse and the effects of serious and prolonged physical injury and illness. Inevitably, there is in such difficult clinical work, the combined effects of hauntings in the analysts and in patients and often in the surrounding culture.In this book, distinguished psychoanalysts explore the myriad forms of ghosts and the demonic, which interfere and disrupt the endlessly difficult psychic work of mourning. It will be of interest to psychotherapists and psychoanalysts, as well as social workers, family therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. emons in the Consulting Room ill appeal to those specializing in bereavement and trauma and, on a broader level, to sociologists and historians interested in understanding means of coping with loss and grief on both an individual and larger scale basis.

This book comprises a selection of papers initially presented as a series of lectures organised by the Psychoanalytic Forum of the British Psychoanalytical Society. The aims of these lectures was to revisit Freud's key papers'On Narcissism'(1914) and'Mourning and Melancholia'(1917), and to look at how they are used in today's thinking about the different stages of life. The contributions, by well known clinicians and theoreticians in their respective fields, capture certain important themes which were put together with two main incentives in mind: firstly, to consider that mourning, depression and narcissism constitute the basic fabric of psychoanalytic theorizing. Secondly, the centrality of these concepts not only illustrate a particular way of understanding mental functioning but, by locating them at different stages of the individual development, offers a wider, more effective and at times different perspective.

The Dead Mother brings together original essays in honour of André Green. Written by distinguished psychoanalysts, the collection develops the theme of his most famous paper of the same title, and describes the value of the dead mother to other areas of clinical interest: psychic reality, borderline phenomena, passions and identification.The concept of the'dead mother'describes a clinical phenomenon, sometimes difficult to identify, but always present in a substantial number of patients. It describes a process by which the image of a living and loving mother is transformed into a distant figure; a toneless, practically inanimate, dead parent. In reality, the mother remains alive, but she has psychically'died'for the child.This produces a depression in the child, who carries these feelings within him into adult life, as the experience of the loss of the mother's love is followed by the loss of meaning in life. Nothing makes sense any more for the child, but life seems to continue under the appearance of normality.The Dead Mother is a valuable contribution to literature on psychoanalytic and psychotheraputic approaches to grief, loss and depression.

This book draws on recent research and cutting-edge ideas about bereavement and carers'experiences across the life course to explore carers'experience of loss and discuss their specific needs prior and or following the death of those they care for.Whether care provided is related to a long term or life limiting condition, many carers experience a multitude of losses including indefinite loss characterised by the loss of a taken-for-granted future, and an inability to plan for the future. Carers may also experience anticipatory grief as multiple losses such as companionship, personal freedom, and control manifest. While many carers are dedicated and committed to their role, they are subject to burnout and disenfranchised grief. When the role of caregiver ends as a result of the death of those cared for, this can represent a major change and a period of significant adjustment for carers leading to a range of emotions experienced.This book presents and discusses research findings, practitioner perspectives, and a wealth of personal accounts to illuminate this vital but neglected area and extend our understanding of loss for carers across the life course. This interdisciplinary and interprofessional volume brings together authors from a wide range of backgrounds, including carers themselves. It is an important contribution to the burgeoning literature around the role and experiences of carers and will interest academics, students and practitioners in health and social care, counselling, and psychology with an interest in loss and bereavement.

Disenfranchised Grief expands the professional helper's understanding of the grief experiences that result from social, cultural, and relational oppression, microaggressions, disempowerment, and overt violence. The authors blend trauma-informed practice and recent research on critical race theory, cultural humility, and intersectionality to both broaden mental health professionals'conceptualization of disenfranchised grief and its impacts and promote equity and inclusion among populations that have been marginalized.

Loss, Grief and Existential Awareness introduces the Integrated Process Model (IPM), a new interdisciplinary and interprofessional model for grief research, education, and accompaniment that distinguishes and integrates five dimensions of grief: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual.Central in this book is the insight that grief is connected to love because it is rooted in losing what is meaningful and dear to us. Once we recognize this, grief can become a window to existential awareness. Combining research on the physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual dimensions of grief, the integrated process approach connects this quest for a personal and authentic answer to the big questions in life with the philosophical and therapeutic tradition of existential thinking. Structured in an accessible, informative manner with gradual information building, the book presents the IPM approach at the beginning and then turns to it as a model throughout the book, so the reader gradually will start to deepen their understanding and memorize the framework. The structure is enhanced with boxes with existential reflections and exercises to engage the reader and case presentations of grieving persons who are followed throughout the book.This book is meant for everyone who is interested in a deeper understanding of how loss and grief can help opening the door to a more meaningful way of living. It is especially helpful for healthcare professionals, therapists, counsellors, chaplains, and researchers.

The third edition of Grieving Beyond Gender explores the different ways that individuals grieve, noting that gender is only one factor that affects an individual's style or pattern of grief.Inherent in the concept of grieving styles is a notion that gender is fluid and that traditional binary views of gender are belied by the concept of grieving styles, and this is highlighted and explored in more depth in the new edition. Doka and Martin present a model firmly grounded in social science theory and research, and place special emphasis on the model's clinical implications. Clinicians will come away from this book with concrete tools for supporting different types of grievers through individual counseling or group support.

Compassion-Based Approaches in Loss and Grief introduces clinicians to a wide array of strategies and frameworks for engaging clients throughout the loss experience, particularly when those experiences have a protracted course. In the book, clinicians and researchers from around the world and from a variety of fields explore ways to cultivate compassion and how to implement compassion-based clinical practices specifically designed to address loss, grief, and bereavement. Students, scholars, and mental health and healthcare professionals will come away from this important book with a deepened understanding of compassion-based approaches and strategies for enhancing distress tolerance, maintaining focus, and identifying the clinical interventions best suited to clients'needs.

This book explores traumatic loss, grief, and recovery through the thoughtful combination of Abraham & Torok's ‘crypt'theory, Jungian thought, and film theory to guide readers through the darkest places of the human psyche. Focusing on both the destructive and reconstructive choices people can make, the book explores prolonged grief disorder, complicated mourning, post-traumatic stress disorder, embitterment, disenfranchised grief, trauma-related rumination as well as mental, emotional and physical pain. Presented with real life examples and fictional ones, the book connects the psychoanalytic concepts of intrapsychic tomb and theoretra with Jungian concepts such as teleological model of the psyche, dreams, alchemical operations, shadow, archetypes, enantiodromia, symbols, and compensation on the canvas of modern grief theory. Traumatic Loss and Recovery in Jungian Studies and Cinema is important reading for psychoanalysts, Jungian analysts, and psychotherapists with an interest in popular culture, as well as cinema students, scholars, and general readers interested in psychology, counselling, mental health and media studies.

Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance bridges literary studies and psychology to evaluate contemporary grief memoirs for use by bereaved and non-bereaved individuals. This volume positions the grief memoir within life writing and bereavement studies through examination of the genre's characteristics, definitions, and functions. The book presents the views of memoirists, helping professionals, community members, and university students on writing and reading as self-expressive, self-searching, and grief-witnessing acts after the loss of a loved one. Utilizing new data from surveys assessing grief support and bibliotherapy, this text discusses the compatibility of grief memoirs with contemporary grief theories and the role of interdisciplinary methods in assisting the bereaved. Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance will help educators advance the understanding and interpretation of loss within psychology, literature, and medical humanities classrooms.

Grief Work in Addictions Counseling is a book for practitioners and students in the field of substance abuse counseling who encounter grief and loss issues with clients recovering from addiction. Enlightening the reader about loss, its relation to addiction, and the need to grieve these losses, this book provides specific strategies and techniques that readers can apply to both individual clients and counseling groups. Chapters address multicultural themes to help clinicians design treatments that will meet the needs of diverse genders, sexual orientations, cultures, ages, and spiritual orientations.This book is useful both for professionals and as a supplemental textbook for students preparing to become addictions counselors.

This book presents a pragmatic guide for coaches and supervisors working with grief and bereavement, providing both useful case studies and practical techniques to aid professionals in embracing the complexity of working with these topics in a coaching context.Coaching and Supervising Through Bereavement clearly delineates the boundary between bereavement issues requiring specialist counselling and'normal'bereavement topics within coaching. It addresses how to coach clients through all different forms of bereavement, not just through death but also other losses such as job loss and relationship loss, and enables coaches to shine a light on their own bereavement journeys for the benefits of themselves and their clients. The authors also offer a guide for coaching supervisors to aid the ethical and emotional support required for their own supervisees and themselves.This book debunks the myth that bereavement should not be discussed in coaching, and so will be a valuable resource for any practicing coach or supervisor of all levels of experience or expertise.

This book provides detailed analysis of the manifold ways in which COVID-19 has influenced death, dying and bereavement. Through three parts: Reconsidering Death and Grief in Covid-19; Institutional Care and Covid-19; and the Impact of COVID-19 in Context, the book explores COVID-19 as a reminder of our own and our communities'fragile existence, but also the driving force for discovering new ways of meaning-making, performing rites and rituals, and conceptualising death, grief and life. Contributors include scholars, researchers, policymakers and practitioners, accumulating in a multi-disciplinary, diverse and international set of ideas and perspectives that will help the reader examine closely how Covid-19 has invaded social life and (re)shaped trauma and loss. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of death studies, biomedicine, and end of life care as well as those working in sociology, social work, medicine, social policy, cultural studies, anthropology, psychology, counselling and nursing more broadly.

This innovative volume examines the phenomenological, existential and cultural dimensions of grief experiences. It draws on perspectives from philosophy, psychology and sociocultural studies to focus on the experiential dimension of grief, moving beyond understanding from a purely mental health and psychiatry perspective.The book considers individual, shared and collective experiences of loss. Chapters explore the intersections between the profound existential experiences of bereavement and how this is mediated by sociocultural norms and practices. It points to new directions for the future conceptualization and study of grief, particularly in the experiential dimension.Drawing on a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, this important book will appeal to academics, researchers and students in the fields of death and bereavement studies, wellbeing and mental health, philosophy and phenomenological studies.

Grief and Bereavement in Contemporary Society is the authoritative guide to the study of and work with major themes in bereavement. The classic edition includes a new preface from the lead editors discussing advances in the field since the book's initial publication.The book's chapters synthesize the best of research-based conceptualization and clinical wisdom across 30 of the most important topics in the field. The volume's contributors come from around the world, and their work reflects a level of cultural awareness of the diversity and universality of bereavement and its challenges that has rarely been approximated by other volumes. This is a readable, engaging, and comprehensive book that shares the most important scientific and applied work on the contemporary scene with a broad international audience. It's an essential addition to anyone with a serious interest in death, dying, and bereavement.

By showcasing asset-based approaches inspired by individual reflection, research, and experience, this volume offers a fresh and timely perspective on grief and trauma within higher education and illustrates how these approaches can serve as opportunities for hope and allyship.Featuring a broad range of contributions from scholars and professionals involved in educational research and academia, Humanizing Grief in Higher Education explores the varied ways in which students, scholars, and educators experience and navigate grief and trauma. Set into four distinct parts, chapters deploy personal narratives situated within interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research frameworks to illustrate how issues such as race, gender, socio-economic class, and politics intersect with experiences of personal and professional grief in the academy. A variety of intersectional fields of study – from positive psychology, counselling, feminist and queer theories, to trauma theory and disability studies – inform an interdisciplinary framework for processing traumatic experiences and finding ways to hope. These narrative explorations are positioned as key to developing a sense of hope amongst the grieving and those supporting them. This text will benefit researchers, doctoral students, and academics in the fields of Higher Education, teacher education, trauma studies, and mental health education. Those interested in positive and educational psychology, as well as grief counselling in adults, will also enjoy this volume. Finally, this collection serves as a companion for those who find themselves grappling with losses, broadly defined.

Grief and Addiction illuminates the role of grief work in addiction counseling, encouraging counselors to be more comprehensive in their treatment and to increase empathy for what the treatment process is asking of clients.Acknowledging that entering recovery includes a loss of coping skills, and that it requires building a new identity, this book focuses on addiction-specific grief work. Grief and Addiction integrates concepts like complicated grief, nonfinite loss, trauma, family grief responses, and treatment suggestions in one place—all with a focus on the application to addiction work.Featuring appendices with information and examples for clinicians, Grief and Addiction provides treatment strategies drawn from both the addiction and grief world for professionals and counselor educators.

Given the relationship between trauma, loss, and interpersonal bonds, the editors have assembled a noteworthy list of contributions discussing trauma associated with close relationships (divorce, infertility, widowhood). Certainly, trauma is closely associated with loss. This edited volume offers the perspective of over twenty leading scholars in the study of trauma and loss. Each chapter offers extensive coverage of contemporary issues (terror management, rational suicide, spirituality, stigmatization). Relationship issues within these topics are also explored.

Winner, ICQI 2022 Outstanding Qualitative Book AwardIn Writing the Self in Bereavement: A Story of Love, Spousal Loss, and Resilience, Reinekke Lengelle uses her abilities as a researcher, poet, and professor of therapeutic writing to tell a heartfelt and fearless story about her grief after the death of her spouse and the year and a half following his diagnosis, illness, and passing. This book powerfully demonstrates that writing can be a companion in bereavement. It uses and explains the latest research on coming to terms with spousal loss without being prescriptive. Integrated with this contemporary research are stories, poetry, and reflections on writing as a therapeutic process. The author unflinchingly explores a number of themes that are underrepresented in existing resources: how one deals with anger associated with loss, what a healthy response might be to unfinished business with the deceased, continuing conversations with the beloved (even for agnostics and atheists), ongoing sexual desire, and secondary losses. As a rare book where an author successfully combines a personal story, heart-rending poetry, up-to-date research on grief, and an evocative exploration of taboo topics in the context of widowhood, Writing the Self in Bereavement is uniquely valuable for those grieving a spouse or other loved one, those supporting others in bereavement, and those interested in the healing power of poetry and life writing. Researchers on death and dying, grief counsellors, and autoethnographers will also benefit from reading this resonant resource on love and loss.

Superhero Grief uses modern superhero narratives to teach the principles of grief theories and concepts and provide practical ideas for promoting healing. Chapters offer clinical strategies, approaches, and interventions, including strategies based in expressive arts and complementary therapies. Leading researchers, clinicians, and professionals address major topics in death, dying, and bereavement, using superhero narratives to explore loss in the context of bereavement and to promote a contextual view of issues and relationship types that can improve coping skills.This volume provides support and psychoeducation to students, clinicians, educators, researchers, and the bereaved while contributing significantly to the literature on the intersection of death, grief, and trauma.

Reading this book, caregivers will find ways to increase their effectiveness by understanding more fully what their care receivers are experiencing, by finding creative ways to assist them in processing what is happening, and by working with them to discern responses to loss that are emotionally healthy, intellectually coherent, spiritually genuine, culturally sensitive, relationally authentic, and personally fulfilling.

Sorrow and Solace focuses on the importance of cemeteries in the lives of everyday mourners, and ways in which our bereaved give meaning to and draw value from their commemorative activities. The death of someone dear to us is among the most momentous life event that we experience. In many societies, visiting the grave or memorial is a common behavioural response to bereavement. Memorial sites provide vital connections to our deceased loved ones with whom we wish to maintain ongoing social bonds, and cemeteries are crucial places of deep healing and growth. Millions of visits are made to cemeteries every day, but the extent of this activity and its value to those who mourn - the topics of this volume - have long remained largely unrecognised. Large urban memorial parks are hives of activity for recently bereaved persons, and are among the most visited places in Western communities. Some cemeteries, hosting millions of annual visits, are more popular than many major tourist attractions. Cemetery visitation is a high-participatory, value-laden, expressive activity, and a most significant observable behaviour of the recently bereaved. This work will be invaluable to those seeking a scholarly understanding of bereavement, mourning, and commemoration. Written principally for professionals with a tertiary educational interest in related fields, such as grief educators, nurses, palliative carers, and social workers, it is also an important resource for the further education of other carers and service providers, including psychologists, physicians, counsellors, clergy, funeral directors, cemetery administrators, and monumental masons. The book is also a significant contribution to the field of social anthropology.

While in training at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich in 1988, Susan Olson suffered the loss of her daughter in an auto accident. In this intimate and unique exploration, Olson uses C. G. Jung's psychological framework to describe her journey through tragedy, guided by a series of vivid dreams.In Images of the Dead in Grief Dreams: A Jungian View of Mourning, Jung's definition of the dream as a'harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods'evolves from theory into embodied insight as Olson describes her encounter with the transforming power of grief. Drawing from personal experience as well as theoretical and clinical material, Olson presents premonitory dreams, which occur before the loss of a loved one, and grief dreams, which follow a loved one's death, and analyzes both according to Jung's method of dream interpretation. Sharing her own dreams as well as those of other mourners, Olson asserts that such dreams play a crucial role in the dreamer's emotional recovery and psychological development, otherwise known as the process of individuation. She sensitively offers an assessment of the stages of grief and draws on the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, Jung's memoirs, and other literature to amplify her experience of mourning. In this rare combination of grief theory and dream work, Images of the Dead in Grief Dreams is both a grief memoir and an extensive study of C. G. Jung's view of the mourning process.This fully updated revised edition will be of immense interest to Jungian analysts and trainees, academics, psychologists, students of Jungian dream analysis, and to all who have suffered loss.

Loss, Grief, and Attachment in Life Transitions gives readers an attachment-informed grief counseling framework and a new way of understanding non-death loss and its treatment.Loss and grief are viewed through a wide-angle lens with relevance to the whole of human life, including the important area of career counseling and occupational consultation. The book is founded on the key themes of the Transition Cycle: welcome and contact, attachment and bonding, intimacy and sexuality, seperation and loss, grief and meaning reconstruction. Rich in case material related to loss and change, the book provides the tools for adopting a highly personalized approach to working with clients facing a range of life transitions.This book is a highly relevant and practical volume for grief counselors and other mental health professionals looking to incorporate attachment theory into their clinical practice.

On 10th August 2000, David and Kim Fleming lost their son, Noah, during childbirth. After his funeral, a rainbow appeared in the sky over the Flemings'home. The family latched onto that symbol of hope and made it the driving force for their recover. A year and ten days later, the daughter Ally Hope was born. This book, written in the unique narrative style Fleming crafted during his ten years at ESPN and'Sports Illustrated', is a father's memoir of the emotional journey from the death of his son to the birth of his daughter. It is real and raw, but above all - redemptive. Although it opens with the harrowing tale of losing a child, the book is more about hope than death, more about what was learned than what was lost. For other grieving parents, and fathers in particular, this book will show that, while the death of a child will change your life forever, it doesn't have to ruin it. As it unfolds,'Noah's Rainbow'also becomes something of a love story, recounting the way the Flemings worked through this tragedy as a team, knowing that how they responded to Noah's death would be their son's only legacy. This book details exactly how they managed to do it: how they survived and grieved for their son, what they learned about themselves, their families and the world at large, the setbacks and the blessings, the daily gifts of hope, the restoration of their faith, the perpetuation of Noah's spirit, and, ultimately, the peace and strength that sustained them as they prepared for the birth of their second child. This book is for parents who are grieving the death of a child and is particularly geared towards fathers. The scope of the book, however, is broad enough to appeal to anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one or who cares about someone who is grieving. It will also serve anyone searching for perspective or hope in life. It's a book a father would fell good about recommending to another father.

Non-Death Loss and Grief offers an inclusive perspective on loss and grief, exploring recent research, clinical applications, and current thinking on non-death losses and the unique features of the grieving process that accompany them.The book places an overarching focus on the losses that we encounter in everyday life, and the role of these loss experiences in shaping us as we continue living. A main emphasis is the importance of having words to accurately express these ‘living losses', such as loss of communication with a loved one due to disease or trauma, which are often not acknowledged for the depth of their impact. Chapters showcase a wide range of contributions from international leaders in the field and explore individual perspectives on loss as well as experiences that are more interpersonal and sociopolitical in nature.Illustrated by case studies and clinical examples throughout, this is a highly relevant text for clinicians looking to enhance their support of those living with ongoing loss and grief.

First published in 1997, this volume studied families bereaved by perinatal or infant death, including factors both preceding and following the experience and its effect on areas such as marriage, mental health and future conception, based on interviews with 194 women living in south-eastern Queensland, Australia. Tracing the natural history of the first thirty months of their loss, all mothers completed semi-structured interviews and standardized questionnaires at two, eight, fifteen and thirty months following the baby's death. The study aims to explain and explore these effects and to suggest some potential recommendations for the care and support of women who experience stillbirth, neonatal death or SIDS.

How long have you been thirsting for tempting, tantalizing teasers, craving for challenging cryptographic conundrums? A sequel to''Have Some Sums to Solve'', this work can satiate the desires of even the most prolific puzzle enthusiast.

What would you say to a deceased loved one if they could come back for one day? What if you can't just ‘move on'from grief? At Home with Grief: Continued Bonds with the Deceased chronicles Blake Paxton's autoethnographic study of his continued relationship with his deceased mother. In the 90s, Silverman, Klass, and Nickman argued that after the death of a loved one, the bond does not have to be broken and the bereaved can find many ways to connect with memories of the dead. Building on their work, many other bereavement scholars have discussed the importance of not treating these relationships as pathological and have suggested that more research is needed in this area of grief studies. However, very few studies have addressed the communal and everyday subjective experiences of continuing bonds with the deceased, as well as how our relationship with our grief changes in the long term. In this book, Blake Paxton shows how a community in southern Illinois continues a relationship with one deceased individual more than ten years after her death. Through this gripping autoethnographic account of his mother's struggles with a rare cancer, her death, and his struggles with sexuality, he poses possibilities of what might happen when cultural prescriptions for grief are challenged, and how continuing bonds with the dead may help us continue or restore broken bonds with the living.

'When a Child Has Been Murdered: Ways You Can Help the Grieving Parents'is a concise, easy- to-read guide that begins with a general discussion of the types of grief that result from death and non-death losses. Then, using statements made by parents whose children were murdered, it discusses the specifics of murdered-child grief including: the complex emotions felt by the grieving parents, how the necessity of interacting with the criminal justice system can alter and enhance these emotions, short- and long-term methods these parents employ to work through the grieving process and to reconstruct their shattered lives, and how anyone who comes in contact with the parents can help them survive their grief.

What is happening emotionally when we grieve for a loved one? Is there a ‘right'way to grieve? What effect does grief have on how we see ourselves?The Psychology of Grief is a humane and intelligent account that highlights the wide range of responses we have to losing a loved one and explores how psychologists have sought to explain this experience. From Freud's pioneering psychoanalysis to discredited ideas that we must pass through ‘stages'of grief, the book examines the social and cultural norms that frame or limit our understanding of the grieving process, as well as looking at the language we use to describe it.Everyone, at some point in their lives, experiences bereavement and The Psychology of Grief will help readers understand both their own and others'feelings of grief that accompany it.

Chronic Sorrow explores natural grief reactions to losses that are not final and continue to be present in the life of the griever. This second edition updates terminology, pertinent research, and the roles the concept of chronic sorrow has come to play in the nursing, medical, social work, pastoral, and community counseling professions, among others. This text also extends the concept's usefulness to other ongoing losses that are bases for non-ending grief responses, such as serious disabilities. Benefits and social supports are explored in depth, giving readers a practical guide for accessing available resources. Chapters also give guidance for professionals to assist individuals and families who struggle with living with irremovable loss, helping them plan for a future in which customary caregivers can no longer carry the load.

Sibling Loss Across the Lifespan brings together researchers, clinicians, and bereaved siblings to explore sibling loss. Unique in both form and content, the book focuses on loss within five key age ranges—childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood, and late adulthood—and losses within a special topics section that addresses areas of interest across multiple age groups. In addition to chapters from researchers and clinicians, the book includes personal stories from bereaved siblings who describe the lived experience of this loss.

For nearly three decades, Sandra Bertman has been exploring the power of the arts and belief--symbols, metaphors, stories--to alleviate psychological and spiritual pain not only of patients, grieving family members, and affected communities but also of the nurses, clergy and physicians who minister to them. Her training sessions and clinical interventions are based on the premise that bringing out the creative potential inherent in each of us is just as relevant-- perhaps more so--as psychiatric theory and treatment models since grief and loss are an integral part of life. Thus, this work was compiled to illuminate the many facets that link grief, counseling, and creativity. The multiple strategies suggested in these essays will help practitioners enlarge their repertoire of hands-on skills and foster introspection and empathy in readers.

The introduction of the continuing bonds model of grief near the end of the 20th century revolutionized the way researchers and practitioners understand bereavement. Continuing Bonds in Bereavement is the most comprehensive, state-of-the-art collection of developments in this field since the inception of the model. As a multi-perspectival, nuanced, and forward-looking anthology, it combines innovations in clinical practice with theoretical and empirical advancements. The text traces grief in different cultural settings, asking questions about the truth in our interactions with the dead and showing how new cultural developments like social media change the ways we relate to those who have died. Together, the book's four sections encourage practitioners and scholars in both bereavement studies and in other fields to broaden their understanding of the concept of continuing bonds.

The workplace is not immune to the problems, pressures, and challenges presented by experiences of loss and trauma and the grief reactions they produce. This clearly written, well-crafted book offers important insights and understanding to help us appreciate the difficulties involved and prepare ourselves for dealing with such demanding situations when they arise. People's experiences of loss and trauma are, of course, not left at the factory gate or the office door. Nor are loss and traumatic events absent from the workplace itself. Loss, grief, and trauma are very much a part of life - and that includes working life. Executives, managers, human resource professionals, and employee assistance staff need to have at least a basic understanding of how loss, grief, and trauma affect people in the workplace. This book provides that foundation of understanding and offers guidance on how to find out more about these vitally important workplace issues.The text provides a valuable blend of theory and practice that will be of interest to those involved in management, human resources, and organizational studies as well as those interested in the social scientific study of loss, grief, and trauma - and, of course, to those involved in the helping professions. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with making the workplace a more humane and effective environment, or anyone wishing to develop an understanding of the complexities of loss, grief, and trauma in our lives.

This book is about death, loss, grief and mourning, but with an unusual twist. It explores specific kinds of deaths encountered within families and households, rather than general concepts of mourning and addresses the death of a different loved one.