Proof of a ground-breaking psychological theory: that the fear of death is the hidden motive behind almost everything we do. 'A joy ... The Worm at the Core asks how humans can learn to live happily while being intelligently aware of our impending doom, how knowledge of death affects the decisions we make every day, and how we can stop fear and anxiety overwhelming us' Charlotte Runcie, Daily Telegraph 'Provocative, lucid and fascinating' Financial Times 'An important, superbly readable and potentially life-changing book . . . suggests one should confront mortality in order to live an authentic life' Tim Lott, Guardian 'Deep, important, and beautifully written ... utterly original' Daniel Gilbert

With efficiency and a touch of humour, this valuable guidebook offers information on the difficult subject of planning for one's own death or organising funerals for loved ones. Topics ranging from cremation, burial, caskets, services, and organ donation are explored, and each section offers data, definitions, examples, pros and cons, and helpful worksheets for narrowing down the best options. Numerous sidebars that offer engaging and occasionally bizarre facts on the death industry are also included. Emphasising practicality and frugality, a bevy of money-saving steps are explored, citing that if smart choices are made beforehand then expensive choices made in grief can be avoided. Ideal for the time-constrained, this comprehensive resource presents fast facts in an easy-to-read format, while helpful links for each topic are compiled in an accompanying website. Readers will benefit from the peace of mind that follows the creation of a structured plan to reduce the financial burdens and emotional distress on loved ones left behind.

A 100-page softcover book in which the author happily recounts her experiences with the dogs she has shared her home with for most of her adult life. She speaks with love for her dogs and explains her fascination with their varied personality traits and behaviours. A nationally recognised expert in thanatology (the study of death and dying), the author also explores the delicate subject of losing a beloved pet and offers understanding and support for grieving pet owners. The book includes appendices: Funeral Services for a Pet and The Rainbow Bridge, a poem about the joyful reunion with our pets in the afterlife.

Help bereaved clients deal with and work through a difficult time in their lives.

Grief Counseling Homework Planner provides you with an array of ready-to-use, between-session assignments designed to help clients better understand their grief and the grieving process.

This easy-to-use sourcebook features:

• 63 ready-to-copy exercises covering the most common issues encountered in grief therapy
• A quick-reference format–the interactive assignments are organized around the most typical stages of the grieving process
• Expert guidance on how and when to make the most efficient use of the exercises
• Homework that enables clients to work through the issues surrounding their loss through reflective thought, personal management, problem resolution, and self-healing
• Access to download of all assignments in the book–allowing you to customize them to suit you and your clients' unique styles and needs

***Now a major motion picture on Netflix, starring Kevin Hart*** 'It will make you cry... for the beauty of love and its miraculous power to heal.' John Grogan, author of Marley & Me Matt and Liz Logelin had it all: a perfect marriage, a gorgeous new home in LA, and a baby girl on the way. Just twenty-seven hours after they welcomed a healthy Madeline into the world, Liz suffered a pulmonary embolism and died instantly, without ever holding the daughter whose arrival she had so eagerly awaited. Though confronted with devastating grief and the responsibilities of being a new and single father, Matt did not give in. He chose to keep moving forward - to make a life for Maddy. In his memoir, Matt shares bittersweet and often humorous anecdotes of his courtship and marriage to Liz, of relying on his newborn daughter for the support that she unknowingly provided, and of the extraordinary online community of strangers who have become his friends. In honouring Liz's legacy, heartache has become solace. *** Including a Q&A with Kevin Hart

'This is a book that takes you by the hand and promises the gentlest comfort in the darkest of times.' Tamsin Greig A Grief Companion offers us practical help to use alongside the theory of Sasha Bate's debut book, Languages of Loss. This guide gives us the starting points to begin our journeys of managing grief, providing us with space and pages to explore and process our feelings with Sasha's expert guidance. Sasha offers some optimism to let you know that you will find light and courage from out of this darkness, and you will be transformed by it. Your grief will not leave you, but you will arrange yourself around it differently. Split in to four sections, that can be read in any order - Mind, Body, Spirit and Everyday - this book explores the non-linear grief that you may be feeling and gives you permission to do your grief, your way. Filled with suggestions, resources, advice for friends of the bereaved and a guiding hand, we hope this book will help you see some light in the darkness of grief. 'Explaining how the mind and body work together, A Grief Companion offers insights into the process of grieving. The writing is energetic, down-to-earth and honest as Sasha Bates helps readers cope with the many layers and levels of grief. A useful as well as a moving book.' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of A Manual for Heartache

Healing Journeys with the Shepherd guides readers through the road of painful and desperate times by helping them to experience complete healing through a deeper connection with Jesus, The Shepherd. The journey of grief is raw and messy. In those painful and desperate times, travelers need a guide who understands the road and knows intimately the goodness of Jesus, The Shepherd. Healing Journeys with the Shepherd draws from Mary Kay McCauley Stone's personal experience and journal entries to create a heart to heart connection. In sharing some of the real and often silent struggles of the valley, she serves as a caring guide with practical suggestions to help tender hearts process through the hard questions. Together, readers move from the ache of loss to the joyful discovery of bright new life landscapes. Healing Journeys with the Shepherd includes a 40-day devotional and provides practical life coaching for daily care while exploring the restoration process as described in Psalm 23. The goal is to experience complete healing through a deeper relationship with Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

'This is not a love story I ever wanted to tell, because I hoped it would just go on and on, and never end. I thought that we'd grow old together. I never wanted it to be a tale. But here I am, a middle-aged man sitting at the kitchen table as the California light fades, thinking about the coming night and how to get through it. Trying to explain to someone - to anyone - what it was like to live through something extraordinary: an amazing three decades that happened to me. Three decades that are now over.' In July 2019 Vinnie Jones tragically lost his wife and soulmate Tanya after her six-year battle with cancer. Tanya and Vinnie had shared 27 amazing years and raised a beautiful family together. Her passing was a devastating shock to everyone - and Vinnie found himself struggling to cope. In this extraordinarily intimate memoir, Vinnie tackles his grief honestly and with heart, sharing warm and colourful stories from the 25 years he spent married to Tanya, and unfiltered accounts of the reality of grief. From the darkest hours to the happiest moments, and everything in between, it is tender and heart-breaking, deeply honest but also full of humour and hope. Written to honour Tanya's life, Lost Without You is a beautiful and brave story of love and loss. Nothing will take away the pain of Tanya's death, but if in sharing his experiences Vinnie can inspire others in the depths of the unspeakable to find the help they need, then he will have succeeded in the keeping her kind, caring and selfless spirit alive.

Contents:
Part I: General Perspectives on Loss, Trauma, Coping and Positive Impacts of Loss. From Vulnerability to Growth: Positive and Negative Effects of Stressful Life Events. The Other Side of Trauma: Towards a Psychology of Appreciation. Bereavement. Helping Victims of Loss and Trauma: A Social Psychological Perspective. Victim Thinking. The Ranking of Personal Grief: Death and Comparative Loss. Parallel Selves as Ending of the Grief Work. Rational Suicide. Part 2: Loss and Trauma Associated with Specific Populations. The Role of Perceived Control in Coping with the Losses Associated with Chronic Illness. Coping as a "Reality Construction": On the Role of Attentive, Comparative, and Interpretive Processes in Coping with Cancer. Loss, Adjustment, and Growth after Cancer: Lessons from Patients' children. The Few Gains and Many Losses for Those Stigmatized by Psychiatric Disorders. The Human Costs of Organizational Downsizing: The "Irrational" Effects of The Justice Motive on Managers, Dismissed Workers, and Survivors. Transcending A Lifetime of Losses: kers, and Survivors. Transcending A Lifetime of Losses: Grief and Loss. On Being Homeless and Mentally Ill: A Multitude of Losses and the Possibility of Recovery. Part 3: Loss and Trauma Associated with Close Relationships. Loss, Resources, and Resiliency in Close Interpersonal Relationships. Negotiating Terminal Illness: Communication, Collusion, and Coalition in Caregiving. Caregiver Loss and Quality of Care Provided: Pre-Illness Relationship Makes a Difference. Adjusting to Infertility. Widowhood in Later-Life. The Loss of Loved Ones: the Impact of Relationship Infidelity. Unyielding custody disputes: Tempering Loss and Courting disaster. Cognitive Interdependence and the Experience of Relationship Loss. Part 4: Conclusion. Commentary on Field of Loss and Trauma and Chapters.

'This is the most startlingly honest book about grief I have ever read. Its immediacy hits you on the first page and takes you on an unforgettable journey. No one has set out so clearly the stages we go through as we try to come to terms with facing the enormity of death.' - Dame Penelope Wilton, DBE 'Sasha writes exquisitely and honestly, the sheer rawness of what she has gone through and is still going through, sitting in balance with the calm and clear-sighted objectivity of the therapist, who is also her.' - Hugh Bonneville One person, two perspectives on grief. Plunged unexpectedly into widowhood at just 49 years old, psychotherapist Sasha Bates describes in searing honesty the agonisingly raw feelings unleashed by the loss of her husband and best friend, Bill. At the same time, she attempts to keep her therapist hat in place and create some perspective from psycho-analytic theory. From the depths of her confusion she gropes for ways to manage and bear the pain - by looking back at all that she has learnt from psychotherapeutic research, and from accepted grief theories, to help her make sense of her altered reality. Languages of Loss starts a necessary and overdue conversation about death and loss. It breaks down taboos and tries to find humour and light amidst the depressing, bewildering reality. It is an essential companion to help support readers through the agony of those early months, giving permission for all the feelings, and offering various methods of living with them.This book's overriding message is that everyone's experience of grief is different, but knowing more about the theory, and learning a new vocabulary, while not necessarily easing the grief, can help you feel less alone, and at some point enable you to reflect back and see how far you have come. 'This is a useful as well as a moving book. The writing is energetic, down-to-earth and bracingly honest, and many readers will feel consoled and enlightened by Bates's take on her experience.' - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times 'Bates's skill as a psychotherapist is married to her deft ability to use language and metaphor to create this vital treatise on loss. As much as Languages of Loss is an essential text on grief, it is also a story of love.' - Sunday Business Post Review 'This book will give anyone grieving the death of their partner an insight into their experience, and help those around them understand the difficult and painful process of grief.' - Julia Samuel, author of This Too Shall Pass and Grief Works

'Clever, warm and funny' - ADAM KAY 'Beautifully rendered, thoughtful and original' - Pandora Sykes 'A marvellous read' - Ruth Hogan Ada is a widowed writer, navigating loneliness in Oxford after the death of her husband. She has no children. No grandchildren. She fears she is becoming peripheral, another invisible woman. Eliza is a student at the university. She finds it difficult to form meaningful relationships after the estrangement of her mother and breakup with her girlfriend. After meeting through Ada's new venture, 'Rent-a-Gran', and bonding over Lapsang Souchong tea and Primo Levi, they begin to find what they're looking for in each other. But can they cast off their isolation for good? An exquisite story of connection and loss, and how a person can change another person's life. Full of heartache yet joyful and life-affirming, this is for fans of Normal People, Expectation and Sarah Winman's Tin Man. 'Leaf's writing is warm and lyrically funny - she has an eye for details both sublime and ridiculous.Looking for Eliza is an intelligent and big-hearted read with the human condition at its core.' - Harriet Walker, The Times

Even from upside-down in his recently flipped truck, Frank Soos reveals himself to be ruminative, grappling with the limitations of language to express the human condition. Moving quickly-skiing in the dark or taking long summer bike rides on Alaska highways-Soos combines an active physical life with a dark and difficult interior existence, wrestling the full span of "thinking and doing" onto the page with surprising lightness. His meditations move from fly-fishing in dangerously swift Alaska rivers to memories of the liars and dirty-joke tellers of his small-town Virginia childhood, revealing insights in new encounters and old preoccupations. Soos writes about pain and despair, aging, his divorce, his father's passing, regret, the loss of home, and the fear of death. But in the process of confronting these dark topics, he is full of wonder. As he writes at the end of an account of almost drowning, "Bruised but whole, I was alive, alive, alive."

Don't Forget Me is a survival manual and a lifeline for those whose lives have been touched by substance use and addiction. With the pervasiveness of drugs today and death by overdose as the leading cause of death for people under 50 in the US, almost everyone has been directly or indirectly affected by this drug epidemic. Loving someone with substance abuse can be terrifying. Steve Grant shares what he learned during his own difficult journey to encourage and guide other parents who are living with children who are struggling with substance abuse. Don't Forget Me tells the story of Steve's two sons, Chris and Kelly, who took distinctly different paths to the same outcome: death by overdose. Steve reveals not only a highlight reel of the things he got right but takes an honest look at the mistakes he made along the way to help other parents avoid those same mistakes. Don't Forget Me offers time-tested, practical suggestions to assure family members of those struggling with substance abuse they have not lost their mind and encourages them to find hope-even on the darkest days.

A practical, empowering guide to navigating your partner's diagnosis of a terminal or life-limiting illness, or death. Receiving the news that your partner has a terminal or life-limiting illness, or has died unexpectedly, is among the worst experiences in life. At a time when you are least able to cope, you are faced with a multitude of difficult decisions, some of which must be made quickly. What you need is a friend who has experienced everything you are about to face, who can support you as you navigate some tough, important choices. This book is that friend. There is plenty of information out there but where to start looking? What information is needed and how can it be accessed? What decisions are essential in the immediate term and what can be left until later? Throughout the book, the emphasis is on protecting and supporting those left behind by presenting almost every choice you may need to make and the possible implications of each decision. You will learn: - The importance of creating a will, arranging power of attorney, organising advanced decisions of treatment, and even getting married or entering a civil partnership - What you are entitled to from the state, the NHS and your employer - How to stabilise your finances and prepare to run a household alone - Where your partner ought to be during treatment and/or palliative care, and how to go about achieving this - Which decisions need to be made after death, from planning the funeral to accessing your partner's estate - How to navigate the grieving process and take control of a happy future No matter where you are in the process, How to Survive Losing a Loved One is a comprehensive, practical and empowering guide to coping with your partner's terminal illness and death, and building the next chapter in your life.

In "Four Funerals and a Wedding," Smolowe jostles preconceptions about caregiving, defies cliches about losing loved ones, and reveals a stunning bottom line: far from being uncommon, resilience like hers is the norm among the recently bereaved. With humor and quiet wisdom, and with a lens firmly trained on what helped her tolerate and rebound from so much sorrow, she offers answers to questions we all confront in the face of loss, and reminds us that grief is not only about endings--it's about new beginnings.

* For 20 years the Loose Women panellists have been entertaining the nation with their forthright opinions on the vagaries of modern life. For the first time, they have come together to share intimate thoughts, fears, memories and anecdotes that are both thought-provoking and entertaining in equal measure. Loose Women: Let Loose! takes on the essential subjects of Love, Sex, Self-Esteem, Friendships, Family, Body Image and Wellness. Whether it is parenting advice from Nadia ('It's important to have a support network when you're a new parent'); Gloria's experience with bereavement ('Losing a child changes you, you can't be the same person'); Coleen's feelings about love ('I do believe there is "the one" - for now'); or Janet's take on mental health ('It doesn't need to be triggered by splitting up or a death, it could be happening in small ways'), there are stories that have never been shared before alongside the show's best bits, making Loose Women: Let Loose! a hilarious and honest guide to handling life's ups and downs as a 21st-century woman.

In 'Goodbye, Friend', Reverend Gary Kowalski takes readers on a journey of healing, offering warmth, guidance, and sound advice on how to deal effectively with death of your animal companion's life.

From New York Times bestselling author and pastor Timothy Keller, a book about facing the death of loved ones, as well as our own inevitable death Significant events such as birth, marriage, and death are milestones in our lives in which we experience our greatest happiness and our deepest grief. And so it is profoundly important to understand how to approach and experience these occasions with grace, endurance, and joy. In a culture that does its best to deny death, Timothy Keller--theologian and bestselling author--teaches us about facing death with the resources of faith from the Bible. With wisdom and compassion, Keller finds in the Bible an alternative to both despair or denial. A short, powerful book, On Death gives us the tools to understand the meaning of death within God's vision of life.

Beyond Goodbye guides you through your darkest days of suffering and offers hope for your future... Grief can leave us feeling alone and lost in the world, not knowing where to turn for help. And yet grief is one of the few certainties in life - it is impossible to experience love without suffering loss. Leading grief expert Zoe Clark-Coates examines the different losses we may endure in our lives, and provides the much-needed support that helps you navigate your own path through loss. From losing loved ones - parents, partners, children, siblings, family members and friends - to answering the most common questions that are asked in this time of mourning and beyond, Zoe tackles topics that are rarely discussed but essential to address. Beyond Goodbye balances practical advice with personal stories and emotional support. It explores common myths around loss, and offers advice for those supporting the bereaved. Zoe's caring and compassionate guide includes a unique 60 day support plan to guide you on your way. Beyond Goodbye will be a beacon of hope to all who read it.

What will you do when the unthinkable happens in your life? Her parents called her Lenya Lion because of her ferocious personality and hair that had been wild and mane-like since birth. But they never expected that, five days before Christmas, their five-year-old daughter would suddenly go to heaven

For readers of Being Mortal and When Breath Becomes Air, the acclaimed co-founder of Death over Dinner offers a practical, inspiring guide to life's most difficult yet important conversation Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death - and not just the practical considerations, such as DNRs and wills, but what we fear, what we hope, and how we want to be remembered. Yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Inspired by his experience with his own father and countless stories from others who regret not having these conversations, Michael Hebb cofounded Death Over Dinner - an organization that encourages people to pull up a chair, break bread, and really talk about the one thing we all have in common. Death Over Dinner has been one of the most effective end-of-life awareness campaigns to date; in just three years, it has provided the framework and inspiration for more than a hundred thousand dinners focused on having these end-of-life conversations. As Arianna Huffington said, 'We are such a fast-food culture, I love the idea of making the dinner last for hours. These are the conversations that will help us to evolve.' Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen practical advice on how to have these same conversations - not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising. By transforming the most difficult conversations into an opportunity, they become celebratory and meaningful - ways that not only can change the way we die, but the way we live.