The analogy of the torn fabric was first used by the author in response to a bereaved mother's cry: "I know what grief feels like; I don't know what it looks like." In "Mending the Torn Fabric: For Those Who Grieve and Those Who Want to Help Them", the author expands the metaphor to include earlier and future or potential losses as well as losses associated with the death that may be unrecognized or minimized. This book includes chapters that examine complications that may be present or may arise, suggestions for mending even the most torn fabric, and a chapter dedicated to friends who want to help. Stories bereaved persons have shared with the author through the years are interspersed throughout the book to provide examples of loss and mending.

The analogy of the torn fabric was first used by the author in response to a bereaved mother's cry: "I know what grief feels like; I don't know what it looks like." In "Mending the Torn Fabric: For Those Who Grieve and Those Who Want to Help Them", the author expands the metaphor to include earlier and future or potential losses as well as losses associated with the death that may be unrecognized or minimized. This book includes chapters that examine complications that may be present or may arise, suggestions for mending even the most torn fabric, and a chapter dedicated to friends who want to help. Stories bereaved persons have shared with the author through the years are interspersed throughout the book to provide examples of loss and mending.

Years ago when I began to accumulate information for a topic I was researching, I began from the perspective of my own experiences within the topic I studied. I worked outward, and then back again, to understand my topic, and to comprehend each of my perspectives within it. Because I was able to place myself within my topic rather then distancing myself from it, my understanding of 'things' was clearer, more accurate. I became a better sociologist. For me, to be able to view portions of another person's life from the inside out, is an incredible way to learn more about my own life and evaluations. Each person in this book has used personal experience as the basis from which to frame his individual sociological perspectives. Because they have personalized their work, their accounts are real, and recognizable as having come from 'real' persons, about 'real' experiences. There are no objectively-distanced disembodied third person entitites in these accounts. These writers are actual people whose stories will make you laugh, cry, think, and want to know more. If you regard your own perspecitve as truly relevant to your own understanding of all to which you apply your sociological insights, you will allow yourself to experience Private Sociology.