Anyone who has lost a loved one knows how lonely, aimless, and depressing life can feel afterwards. When Joy Ekwommadu's husband died in a bus accident, it seemed impossible to keep living. Her three children also didn't know what to do, and every day seemed like a struggle. In addition to feeling angry and frustrated, she sometimes felt guilty for being alive when her husband was dead. All of these feelings are normal, and dealing with them gets easier with time. In this memoir, Joy Ekwommadu looks back at her experiences in order to help others memorialize and honour a loved one who has died; appreciate the most important people in your life while they're still alive; deal with the tremendous grief that comes with the loss of a loved one; and understand the feelings of others who have suffered a loss. Be Strong: A Memoir of Bereavement is also a tribute to Joy Ekwommadu's late husband, Marcellinus Chukwuemeka Ekwommadu. He worked hard to be a success and to provide for his family, and his story is one worth reading and remembering.

Fear of death is nearly as inevitable as death itself, so we have used modern medicine and the funeral industry to create an ever-increasing distance between us and our mortality. But these interventions have stripped death of its mystery and mysticism. Taking readers on a journey through history, guided by the mystics, Awakened by Death shows us how our psychological and spiritual relationship to death has changed over time, and helps us to reclaim a healthy engagement with our own mortality. Ultimately, readers will gain a deeper understanding of how facing the fear of death, and embracing rather than eschewing its mysteries, can help us live richer, fuller lives.

Few experiences can compare to the trauma and pain of losing a baby; and the wall of silence that often surrounds that loss can make grieving even harder. Loving You From Here explores the traumatic impact of losing a baby through stillbirth and neonatal death. It features the moving stories of multiple families; some affected recently, some decades ago, but still living with the loss. This book is a practical guide for grieving parents in the grips of tragedy, and those around them who want to be able to offer support. From managing those initial feelings of shock, grief, guilt and anger, this book will also show families how it is possible to grow around that grief and eventually form an enduring bond with their baby. This profound and insightful book will help everyone impacted by the loss of a baby - before, during or after birth - including those who have suffered an early or a late miscarriage and those who have had an ectopic pregnancy, and provides sensitive and reassuring advice on all aspects of loss and bereavement, as well as practical advice on how to find a new normal. This groundbreaking book breaks through the suffocating silence that surrounds the death of a baby and gives a voice to all those affected by baby loss.

When her beloved small dog died, Bel Mooney was astonished at the depth of her ongoing sorrow. Sharing her loss online and in a newspaper article brought a deluge of responses, spurring Bel to explore these feelings further. Why do humans mourn pets? Can animals themselves grieve - and do they have souls? In Goodbye, Pet & See You in Heaven, Bel sets off on an emotional journey to learn more about pet bereavement. She is astounded by inexplicable 'signs' of her dog's spirit, watches Bonnie's ashes being turned into glass, talks to experts and discusses the mysterious enduring energy of love. She discovers why Ancient Egyptians mummified animals and what different faiths, myths, writers and scientists have to say. She also looks back over her own life and reflects on lessons learned from companion animals - and from wildlife too. As informative as it is deeply moving, Goodbye, Pet is an intensely personal, uplifting look at the love we share with pets, both in life and afterwards. Enriched by heartfelt stories and inspirational words, it is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever loved an animal.

An inspiring memoir of life, love, loss, and new beginnings by the widower of bestselling children's author and filmmaker Amy Krouse Rosenthal, whose last of act of love before her death was setting the stage for her husband's life without her in the viral New York Times Modern Love column, "You May Want to Marry My Husband." On March 3, 2017, Amy Krouse Rosenthal penned an op-ed piece for the New York Times' "Modern Love" column -"You May Want to Marry My Husband." It appeared ten days before her death from ovarian cancer. A heartbreaking, wry, brutally honest, and creative play on a personal ad-in which a dying wife encouraged her husband to go on and find happiness after her demise-the column quickly went viral, reaching more than five million people worldwide. In My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me, Jason describes what came next: his commitment to respecting Amy's wish, even as he struggled with her loss. Surveying his life before, with, and after Amy, Jason ruminates on love, the pain of watching a loved one suffer, and what it means to heal-how he and their three children, despite their profound sorrow, went on. Jason's emotional journey offers insights on dying and death and the excruciating pain of losing a soulmate, and illuminates the lessons he learned. As he reflects on Amy's gift to him-a fresh start to fill his empty space with a new story-Jason describes how he continues to honor Amy's life and her last wish, and how he seeks to appreciate every day and live in the moment while trying to help others coping with loss. My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me is the poignant, unreserved, and inspiring story of a great love, the aftermath of a marriage ended too soon, and how a surviving partner eventually found a new perspective on life's joys in the wake of tremendous loss.

A deeply moving reflection on what matters to us most as we approach the end of life.

Internationally renowned psychiatrist and author Irvin Yalom has devoted his career to counselling those suffering from anxiety and grief. But never had he faced the need to counsel himself until his wife, esteemed feminist author Marilyn Yalom, was diagnosed with cancer. In A Matter Of Death And Life, Marilyn and Irvin share how they took on profound new struggles: Marilyn to die a good death, Irvin to live on without her.

In alternating accounts of their last months together and Irvin's first months alone, they offer us a rare window into coping with death and the loss of one's beloved. The Yaloms had rare blessings - a loving family, a beautiful home, a large circle of friends, avid readers around the world, and a long, fulfilling marriage - but they faced death as we all do. With the candour and wisdom of those who have thought deeply and loved well, they investigate universal questions of intimacy, love, and grief.

Informed by two lifetimes of experience, A Matter Of Death And Life offers poignant insights and solace to all those seeking to fight despair in the face of death, so that they can live meaningfully.

This book investigates how social media are reconfiguring dying, death, and mourning. Taking a narrative approach, it argues that dying, death, and mourning are shared online as small stories of the moment, which are organized around transgressive moments and events with motivational, participatory, or connective scope. Through the different case studies discussed, this book presents an empirical framework for analyzing small stories of dying, death and mourning as practices of sharing which become associated with specific modes of affective positioning, i.e. modulations of different degrees of distance or proximity to the death event and the dead, the networked audience(s), and the affective self. The book calls for the study of affect as integral to narrative activity and opens up broader questions about how stories and emotion are mobilized in digital cultures for accruing audiences, value (social or economic), and visibility. It will be of interest to researchers in narrative analysis, the anthropology and sociology of emotion, digital communication, media and cultural studies, and (digital) death and dying.

After the suicide of his son Jack in 2015, journalist Cosmo Landesman set out to write an anti-suicide/ anti-grief memoir that was angry and cynical about the way we look at death, suicide and grief. Where others parents of suicides were motivated to try and do good in the world, Landesman took the do nothing, say nothing and feel as bad as possible option. Seven years later he wonders if he made a terrible mistake. But Jack and Me is more than about suicide - it's about a clueless father trying to save his troubled son.

On Children and Death is a major addition to the classic works of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whose On Death and Dying and Living with Death and Dying have been continuing sources of strength and solace for tens of millions of devoted readers worldwide. Based on a decade of working with dying children, this compassionate book offers the families of dead and dying children the help -- and hope -- they need to survive. In warm, simple language, Dr. Kübler-Ross speaks directly to the fears, doubts, anger, confusion, and anguish of parents confronting the terminal illness or sudden death of a child.

Every 85 minutes someone in the UK takes their own life and the suicide rate is currently the highest since 2004. Society often reacts with unease, fear and even disapproval but what happens to those bereaved by a self-inflicted death? The reasons leading someone to take their own life are complex, and the bereavement reactions of survivors of suicide can also be complex, including shame, guilt, sadness and the effects of trauma, stigma and social isolation. It can be difficult for those personally affected by a suicide death to come to terms with their loss and seek help and support. A Special Scar looks in detail at the impact of suicide and offers practical help for survivors, relatives and friends of people who have taken their own life. Fifty bereaved people tell their stories, showing us that, by not hiding the truth from themselves and others they have been able to learn to live with the suicide, offering hope to others facing this traumatic loss. This Classic Edition includes a brand-new introduction to the work and will be an invaluable resource for survivors of suicide as well as for all those who are in contact with them, including police and coroner's officers, bereavement services, self-help organisations for survivors, mental health professionals, social workers, GPs, counsellors and therapists.

'A magnificent, beautifully written memoir. Unsentimental but heartbreaking, the voice - true and clear. Brilliant.' Nina Stibbe In 2014 I moved back to the United States after living abroad for fourteen years, my whole adult life, because my father was dying from cancer. Six weeks after I arrived in New York City, my father died. Six months after that I learned that I had inherited the gene that would cause me cancer too. When Jean Hannah Edelstein's world overturned she was forced to confront some of the big questions in life: How do we cope with grief? How does living change when we realize we're not invincible? Does knowing our likely fate make it harder or easier to face the future? How do you motivate yourself to go on your OkCupid date when you're struggling with your own mortality? Written in her inimitable, wry and insightful voice, Jean Hannah Edelstein's memoir is by turns heart-breaking, hopeful and yet also disarmingly funny. This Really Isn't About You is a book about finding your way in life. Which is to say, it's a book about discovering you are not really in control of that at all.

Winner of a Gold Nautilus Award "We can do extraordinary things when we lead with love," Barbara Becker reminds us in her debut memoir Heartwood. When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye towards that which makes life worth living, Barbara Becker--a perpetual seeker, a mom, and an interfaith leader--recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways. She volunteers on a hospice floor, becomes an eager student of the many ways people find meaning at the end of life, and accompanies her parents in their final days. Becker inspires readers to live with the end in mind and proves that turning toward loss rather than away from it is the only true way to live life to its fullest. Just as with the heartwood of a tree--the central core that is no longer alive yet supports the newer growth rings--the dead become an enduring source of strength to the living. With life-affirming prose, Becker helps us see that that grief is not a problem to be solved, but rather a sacred invitation--an opportunity to let go into something even greater...a love that will inform all the days of our lives.

'The most life-affirming book ever written about death.' Sandi Toksvig 'One of the most powerful and helpful books about grief that you will ever read.' Anita Anand 'Grief is more than the price of love. It is love. We must learn not just to live with it, but to make it welcome.' Mother and daughter Anne Mayer Bird and Catherine Mayer were widowed within 41 days of each other on the eve of the pandemic, then locked down alone. Their profound isolation was broken just once a week, when Catherine visited Anne to care for her, at distance and in a mask. Together they found ways to navigate their loss and the startling questions and challenges that confronted them. In this memoir, Catherine also investigates the possibility that her husband, renowned musician Andy Gill, contracted Covid-19 when his band, Gang of Four, toured China in late 2019. Her main focus, however, is not on death, but on life and love. This is a captivating account of lives well lived, moving and spiked with black humour. It is interwoven with letters Anne wrote to her husband John to tell him of the astonishing and heartrending events since his death and her small triumphs in living independently. In sharing their insights and experiences, Catherine and Anne aim to help those who have lost or will lose people or who wish to know how best to support others in such circumstances. They also celebrate love-for John and Andy and each other. 'We are extraordinarily lucky, my mother and I. We have each other and we have this room. 'In this living room, we are learning to embrace the things we can't touch, each other and the lovely dead.'

Told through the eyes and heart of an interfaith hospice chaplain, The Three Regrets shares stories of remarkable men and women who have struggled with regrets. Some harbored them until the very end. Others embraced them as opportunities to resolve their regrets and live life fully... celebrating strength, the power of choice, and peace.

LET NOT THE WAVES OF THE SEA is Simon Stephenson's account of his journey following the loss of his brother in the Indian Ocean tsunami. If it is a story of grief, it is also a story of hope and of the unexpected places where healing can be found. Simon's journey takes him from Edinburgh in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, to Downing Street in London, to Thailand and the island where his brother died, to the scene of an ancient tsunami on the north-west coast of the United States, and to the town where he and his brother's favourite childhood film was made. Along the way there is heartbreak, dengue fever, Greek mythology, and hard physical labour in the tropical heat, but there is also memory, redemption and humour as well.

'Touching and often hilarious... A truly joyful read' Press & Journal Danny Malooley's life is falling apart. He's a single parent with an eleven-year-old son, Will, who hasn't spoken since the death of his mother in a car crash fourteen months ago. He's being pursued by a dodgy landlord for unpaid rent and he's just lost his job. Struggling to find work, and desperate for money, Danny decides to do what anyone in his position would do. He becomes a dancing panda. After seeing street performers in his local park raking it in, he spends his last fiver on a costume... but the humiliation is worth it when Will finally speaks to him for the first time since his mother's death. The problem is Will doesn't know that the panda is in fact his father, and Danny doesn't want to reveal his true identity in case Will stops talking again. But Danny can't keep up the ruse forever... 'Uplifting' Woman & Home A surprising, laugh-out-loud and uplifting story of a father and son reconnecting in the most unlikely of circumstances. For fans of Nick Hornby, Mike Gayle and Jojo Moyes.

In Winter of the Heart, retreat leader, former psychotherapist, and bestselling author Paula D'Arcy shares her life's work, accompanying you through seasons of grief and the emotions that come with the loss of a loved one or after other major changes in life. Winter of the Heart is a companion for anyone early in grieving process-for the person experiencing shock, emotional pain, an inability to move, guilt, intense anger, and a range of other emotions that might be new to you. D'Arcy lost her young husband and toddler in a violent car accident more than four decades ago. She understands your grief and can also help you look to what's on the other side-hope, acceptance, recognition that what you are experiencing is both common and unique, and the essential counsel that you need not ever "get over it." Winter of the Heart is for those who mourn the death of a loved one, but it is also for counselors and pastoral ministers. You'll find D'Arcy's words relevant for other occasions when mourning can be painful, including the end of a marriage, job loss, and other major life changes.