Thursday's Therapy - Great Resource for Grief Books ~"Grief to Reading Journey" grief blog

Thursday's Therapy 

Great Resource for Grief Books

~"Grief to Reading Journey" grief blog

Reading and writing have become a way of coping with the sudden and completely unexpected death of my son, Joshua, at the tender age of seventeen. He took his life on March 18, 2009. From that day on, my life will never be the same.

Books That Have Helped - Updated 9/1/2012

~by Josh's mom, posted on her grief blog "Grief to Reading Journey"

I have found solace in many types of books: those written for survivors of suicide, for parents who have lost a child, for those who look to writing as a way of coping, memoirs and even fiction.  The number in parenthesis is the rating given to the book.  I use the GoodReads system.

1 - didn't like it

2 - it was ok

3 - liked it

4 - really liked it

5 - it was amazing

List of books on Josh's blog with short reviews.

Survivors of Suicide

1. No Time to Say Good Bye by Carla Fine (5)
2. My Son, My Son by Iris Bolton (3)
3. Take the Dimness of My Soul Away by William Ritter (3)
4. When Suicide Comes Home: A Father's Diary and Comments by Paul Cox (4)
5. Grieving the Unexpected - the Suicide of a Son by Gary LeBlanc (3)
6. Grieving A Suicide, A Loved One's Search of Comfort, Answers and Hope by Albert Hsu (5)
7. Those They Left Behind by Karen M. Bryson (4)
8. Aftershock by David Cox and Candy Arrington (5)
9. Surviving Suicide: Help to Heal Your Heart by Heather Hayes (4)
10. Dying To be Free: A Healing Guide for Families After A Suicide by Jean Larch and Beverly Cobain (4)
11. The Empty Chair by Beryl Glover (3)
12. Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide by Christopher Lucas (2)
13. After Suicide by John Hewett (2)
14. History of a Suicide by Jill Bialosky (4)
15. His Bright Light: The Story of Nick Traina by Danielle Steel (3)
16. After A Funeral by Diana Athill (2)
17. Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing by Linda K. Cutting (4)
18. The Los Angeles Diaries by James Brown (4)

Parental Bereavement

1. Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff (5)
2. The Worst Loss: How Families Heal From the Death of A Child by Barbara Rosof (4)
3. After the Death of a Child: Living With the Loss Through the Years by Ann Finkbeiner (4)
4. Life After the Death of My Son by Dennis Apple (4)
5. The Grieving Garden: Living With the Death Of a Child by Suzanne Redfern and Susan Gilbert (4)
6. Beyond Tears by Ellen Mitchell (4)
7. Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt (4)

Journaling/Writing

1. Writing Through the Darkness by Elizabeth Maynard Schaefer (5)
2. Writing As a Way of Healing by Louise DeSalvo (5)
3. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (5) ///on hold/ library
4. Journal to The Self: 22 Paths to Personal Growth by Kathleen Adams (4)
5. Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott (5)
6. The New Diary by Tristine Rainer (4) ///on hold
7. Leaving a Trace: On Keeping a Journal ///on hold
8. On Keeping a Journal: Leaving a Trace by Alexandra Johnson (4)
9. The Writer's Portable Mentor by Priscilla Long (5) put on Amzon wshlist
10. Writers and Their Notebooks by Diana Raab (4)
11. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (4)

Memoirs

1. Lucky by Alice Sebold (5)
2. Paula by Isabel Allende (4)
3. The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham (5)
4. The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende (4)
5. An Unquiet Mind by Kay Jamison (2)
6. The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux (4)
7. I know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (4)
8. How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen (4)
9. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis (4)
10. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (4)
11. A Widow's Story by Joyce Carol Oates (4) 
12. Darkness Visible by William Styron (5)
13. Reading My Father by Alexandra Styron (4)
14. Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett (4)
15. Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy (4)
16. Blue Nights by Joan Didion (3)
17. My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid (4)

On Suicide

1. By Their Own Hand: Deliberate Self-Harm and Suicidal Ideas in Adolescents by Keith Rodham

Poetry

1. In Memoriam A.H.H. by Lord Alfred Tennyson - post on Josh's blog
2. The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief & Healing - posts on Josh's blog;   "The Dead by Billy Collins
3. Monthly poetry posts:  January,  February,  
4. Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins - posts on Josh's blog 1) Grave and 2) Horoscopes for the Dead

Original Poetry - written in memory of Josh (click here)

Plays

1. Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth by William Shakespeare - see two posts (teenage suicide ideation and grieving parents)
2. Hamlet by William Shakespeare - see Death, Grief and Suicide Part I and Part II

Fiction

1. The Pact: A Love Story by Jodi Picoult (4)
2. Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (5)
3. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffengger (5)
4. Twenty Wishes by Debbie Macomber (4)
5. Ordinary People by Judith Guest (5)
6. Beach Music by Pat Conroy (2)
7. Legend of A Suicide by David Vann (3)
8. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (2)
9. Sea Change by Jeremy Page (3)
10. The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi Durrow (4)
11. The Hours by Michael Cunningham (5)
12. The Catcher In the Rye by J. D. Salinger (4)
13. The Memoir Club by Laura Kalpakian (2)
14. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (5) - see post

A list of recommended books for survivors of suicide from the American Association of Suicidology. 

Posted by Josh's mom 

http://grieftoreadingjourney.blogspot.fr/

Wednesday's Woe - Writing About Our Children

Wednesday's Woe

Writing About Our Children

I am in the process of reading and ordering some books by other broken-hearted parents who have written about having lost their precious child,  (Swish: Maria in the Mourning by Pamela Palmer Mutino; Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers by Carol Henderson; Branch in His Hand by Sharon Charde, Who Is Kim Cress? by Gina Lay, and Beautiful Nate: A Memoir of a Family's Love, a Life Lost, and Eternal Promises by Dennis Mansfield).

Even now, I have tears streaming down for all of these grieving parents. The newest book, soon to appear on the market (March, 2013), is Dennis Mansfield's book Beautiful Nate, about his 27-year-old son Nate who had been struggling with a drug problem before his ultimate death. Dennis had been on the staff of James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" for years. (I was introduced to Dennis by another Christian brother, as soon as this brother learned that Dennis had just lost his son, meeting him on Twitter of all places!)   

Mansfield's excerpt brought tears as it so resonated with mine and Tommy's feelings after having worked in the Christian helping field, trying to save marriages and families all our adult life… only to lose our only daughter to death … A quote from his book description says it so well:

(In regard to) "faith and family…even when you follow all the "rules, "life can go very wrong."

Here is the poignant excerpt from Dennis Mansfield's new book (Click "View Full Note" at the bottom of his entry):

https://www.facebook.com/DennisMansfieldAuthor/notes

You may have to go here first before you can read the excerpt:

https://www.facebook.com/DennisMansfieldAuthor

One of Dennis's readers asked him, 

"I am wondering if writing this book was a healing experience for you?"

Here is Dennis's answer:

Dennis Mansfield "Nancy - a good question. It could well have been a helpful tool that God used in having me see Him more clearly, but not really a 'healing' tool in the sense of accepting Nate's behavior and his death.

"There is no true healing with an amputation. There's only ghost-limb movements that an entire family knows will always be there.

"And there is Heaven, waiting for those who see this life as it is - a vapor, here today and then gone. Yet we remain forever. That's where Nate is and where we'll be."

(highlights, mine)

~May God bless each of you amidst your own severe "amputation"…

Thursday's Therapy - The Final Gift

Thursday's Therapy

The Final Gift

from

A TCF Speech – 8 Things I’ve Learned About the Grief of a Grieving Parent

Part Eight of Eight

Sunday, July 6, 2003 - TCF National Conference Closing Speech by Charlie Walton

Part Eight

8. THE FINAL GIFT.

Finally, I want to tell you something that I have begun to realize as the years have passed since the night that Tim and Don, and Don's best friend, Bryan, died. I have realized that, by their deaths and the deep permanent scar it left in my life, they gave me a gift of immeasurable value.

The final gift bestowed by any loved one who is torn from your grasp is a clear and unforgettable awareness of what is permanent... and what is temporary.

My second book, which is called Packing for the Big Trip, was written because conversations I had with people about the first book made it so crystal clear that the reason we are all so completely blind-sided by death is that

we live in a "death-denying society," a society where the death rate is 100 percent, but where no one wants to mention it.

I wrote in Packing for the Big Trip, "Every person who dies gives a priceless gift to those who stay behind.

That gift is awareness of death and its manifold implications for our lives. Death awareness is about living. It brings the maturity we need to live our lives with wisdom and joy...to stop cringing at the thought of eventual death... and start living with the daily enthusiasm of those who are packing for the big trip."

Maybe you are still so close to your child's death that you are not ready to see that there could ever be anything good to come from it. That's fine. Maybe you are still wishing you could wring that kid's neck for leaving you here with all this pain. That's fine too. But maybe, you are beginning to realize that

you have new eyes for the upside down values of our culture, that your "death awareness" has given you greater "life wisdom," that your child's death has given you a gift of life.

CLOSING

Well. I could go on for a while but I was told years ago by a speech teacher that "the ear cannot hear what the seat cannot endure." So, let me encourage you to

One, recognize that you are stuck with this pain, but that the depth of your pain represents the extent of your tribute to the one that left you.

Two, understand that people just naturally say a lot of dumb stuff when they are trying to help, and try to be patient and hear what they mean instead of what they say.

Three, understand that you need to tell and re-tell your story a lot more times than you can expect family and friends to hear it, so be grateful for your Compassionate Friends who are willing to hear your story and even make it their own.

Four, give writing a try. It can really help to get some of that confusion out of your mind and onto paper where you can deal with it.

Five, get regular, strenuous exercise even when you don't feel like you can walk across the room.

Six, let people help you, for their benefit and yours.

Seven, watch out for "personality intensification" and give yourself time to become yourself again before you go making decisions while you are "out of your mind with grief."

And finally, recognize the abiding and valuable gift you have received from the person who went away. You have an understanding of life and its true values that you could never have had otherwise.

Let me close with the final words from When There Are No Words.

"My prayer for you is

that you will have peace,

that you will have good grief,

that you will be honest with yourself,

letting out what is within you,

and refusing to govern your ways of grieving by what you think others might be expecting that you ought to do,

that you will allow your loved ones the same right to their own ways of grieving, never assuming that they should want to cry when you feel like crying, or talk when you feel like talking, or sit and stare when you want to,

that both your life and your death will be greatly enhanced by the perspectives that enter your life when a loved one exits your life,

that you will become daily more comfortable with the realization that, as my son Don used to tell me, 'Death is just a part of living.'"

Thank you so much to Charlie Walton for his wise words as a grieving father and to Jayne Raines Newton, head of Atlanta's TCF (The Compassionate Friends) for sharing him with us!

May you all have a wonderful, God-blessed, God-comforted 2010!