With this compassionate book by respected grief counselor and educator Dr. Alan Wolfelt, readers will find simplified and suitable methods for talking to children and teenagers about sensitive topics with an emphasis on the subject of death. Honest but child-appropriate language is advocated, and various wording and levels of explanation are suggested for different ages when discussing topics such as death in general, suicide, homicide, accidental death, the death of a child, terminal illness, pet death, funerals, and cremation. An ideal book for parents, caregivers, and counselors looking for an easy resource when talking to youths about death, this book can be used for any setting, religious or otherwise.

Since its debut thirty years ago, this favorite by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors has found a place in the homes and hearts of hundreds of thousands of mourners across the globe. Filled with compassion and hope, Understanding Your Grief helps you understand and befriend your painful, complex thoughts and feelings after the death of someone loved. Befriending grief may sound counterintuitive, but actually, your grief is your love for the person who died in a different form, and like that love, it’s also natural and necessary. Perhaps above all, Understanding Your Grief is practical. It’s built on Dr. Wolfelt’s Ten Touchstones, which are basic principles to learn and actions to take to help yourself engage with your grief and create momentum toward healing. This second edition maintains the content of the first edition but builds on it by adding concise wisdom on new topics such as the myth of closure, complicated and traumatic grief, grief overload, unmourned grief, loneliness, the power of ritual, and more. Excellent as an empathetic handbook for anyone in mourning as well as a text for support groups, Understanding Your Grief pairs with a guided journal.

Intended for nurses, doctors, midwives, social workers, chaplains, and hospital support staff, this guide gives caring and practical advice for helping families grieve properly after losing a child at birth. As the special needs of families experiencing perinatal loss are intense and require more than just the bereavement standards in most hospitals, this handbook offers tips and suggestions for opening up communication between caregivers and families, creating a compassionate bedside environment, and helping with mourning rituals. Encouraging continual grief support, these specific companioning strategies can help ease the pain of this most sensitive situation.

Based on Dr. Wolfelt's unique and highly regarded philosophy of "companioning" versus treating mourners, this self-care guide for professional and lay grief caregivers emphasizes the importance of taking good care of oneself as a precursor to taking good care of others. Bereavement care is draining work, and remaining empathetic to the painful struggles of mourners, death, and dying, day in and day out, makes caregivers highly susceptible to burnout. This book demonstrates how caring for oneself first allows one to be a more effective caregiver to others. Through the advice, suggestions, and practices directed specifically to caregiving situations and needs, caregivers will learn not to lose sight of caring for themselves as they care for others.

Grief is always difficult, but if yours feels especially painful, stuck, or complex, you may be experiencing complicated grief. Complicated grief is not an illness or disorder. It’s simply normal grief that’s been made more challenging by circumstances that overwhelm the person in mourning. If someone you love has died of suicide, homicide, or accidental causes; if the death was violent or premature or ambiguous; if you are struggling with additional life issues right now, such as health challenges (physical or mental), family problems, or financial stress; if your relationship with the person who died was extremely close or troubled; if you have suffered several losses in quick succession—this concise guide is for you. In this compassionate resource by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors, you’ll learn how complicated grief is different and what you can do to soften and eventually reconcile it. You’ll inventory the reasons your grief is complicated. You’ll learn the importance of engaging with and expressing your grief. And you’ll find hope for your healing. There is a path through and beyond the wilderness of complicated grief. It’s more arduous than most, but to li

After a significant loss, grief is an everyday experience. Bit by bit, these one-page-a-day readings will help you feel supported and muster the courage and hope you need to make it through the day. Whether you’re choosing this book as a follow-up to Understanding Your Grief or as a way to engage with the teachings in a different format, you’ll find a combination of classic content mixed with new ideas and insights. Reading just one page each day will help you sustain hope and heal your heart.

For anyone who has experienced the suicide of a loved one, coworker, neighbor, or acquaintance and is seeking information about coping with such a profound loss, this compassionate guide explores the unique responses inherent to their grief. Using the metaphor of the wilderness, the book introduces 10 touchstones to assist the survivor in this naturally complicated and particularly painful journey. The touchstones include opening to the presence of loss, embracing the uniqueness of grief, understanding the six needs of mourning, reaching out for help, and seeking reconciliation over resolution. Learning to identify and rely on each of these touchstones will bring about hope and healing.

This comprehensive guide to helping grieving children offers a holistic view of grief as a normal, natural process. It explores the ways in which bereaved children can not only heal but also grow through their grief, and provides the six needs of mourning and counseling fundamentals and techniques for caregivers. Also included are explorations of how a grieving child thinks, feels, and mourns; what makes each child's grief unique; and ideas to help grieving adolescents.

More and more people are considering a career in nursing or healthcare, but the thought of undertaking an academic degree at university can be intimidating. Whether you are moving straight from school or college or have been away from education for some time, Getting Ready for your Nursing Degree is essential preparation for anyone considering becoming or about to become a nursing student. It looks at all aspects of university work in a straightforward way and provides advice, examples and activities designed to help you get the most out of classes, research and assessments, from your first lecture right through to sitting exams and learning on placement. Designed with nursing students in mind, this small but perfectly formed guide is tailored to help you develop the skills you will need not only for your course but for your career and lifelong learning as a registered healthcare practitioner.

Affirming a pet owner's struggle with grief when his or her pet dies, this book helps mourners understand why their feelings are so strong and helps them overcome the loss. Included are practical suggestions for mourning and ideas for remembering and memorializing one's pet. Among the issues covered are understanding the many emotions experienced after the death of a pet; understanding why grief for pets is unique; pet funerals and burial or cremation; celebrating and remembering the life of one's pet; coping with feelings about euthanasia; helping children understand the death of their pet; and things to keep in mind before getting another pet.

Grief overload is what you feel when you experience too many significant losses all at once, in a relatively short period of time, or cumulatively. In addition to the deaths of loved ones, such losses can also include divorce, estrangement, illness, relocation, job changes, and more. Our minds and hearts have enough trouble coping with a single loss, so when the losses pile up, the grief often seems especially chaotic and defeating. The good news is that through intentional, active mourning, you can and will find your way back to hope and healing. This compassionate guide will show you how.

Explaining how multitudes of North Americans are carrying the pain of all types of loss -- not just the deaths of loved ones but also the loss of a spouse through divorce, children who leave home, and the decline of health as they age or get sick -- this balanced resource empowers mourners and grief counsellors to turn grief into an experience to be learned from. Defining the varieties of heartache and its consequences, this effective guide explores how to inventory, understand, embrace, and reconcile one's accumulated sorrow through a five-phase "catch-up" mourning process. Readers will learn to use a spiritual and holistic approach to examine and integrate the ignored loss from their pasts, so that they can go on to live fuller, more balanced lives.

We don’t only experience grief after a loss—we often experience it before. If someone we love is seriously ill, or if we’re concerned about upcoming hardships of any kind, we naturally begin to grieve right now. This process of anticipatory grief is normal, but it can also be confusing and painful. Life is change, and change is hard. This book will help see you through.

This classic resource helps guide the bereaved person through the loss of a loved one, and provides an opportunity to learn to live with and work through the personal grief process.

Dealing with grief in a practical manner, this guide offers compassionate tips for those affected by a traumatic death. Included are topics such as coping with family stress, expressing feelings of hurt and anger, dealing with hurtful comments, and exploring feelings of guilt. Each of the 100 suggestions is aimed at reducing the confusion, anxiety, and huge personal void in order to help survivors begin their lives again. Some of the tips include understanding the special characteristics of trauma grief, planting a tree in memory of the person who died, and making connections with others affected by a similar death.

Partly a counselling model and partly an explanation of true empathy, this handbook explores the ways companionship eases grief. For caretakers who work with grieving people or for friends and family just hoping to stay close, 11 tenets are outlined for mourner-led care. These simple rules call for understanding another person's pain, listening with the heart rather than the head, not filling up every minute with words, respecting confusion and disorder, and relying on curiosity rather than expertise.

First published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

This comprehensive handbook provides a solid foundation in helping skills related to successful funeral service practice.

You've spent most of your adult life focused on the care and raising of your children, and now they're leaving. For you and for them, this major transition is often challenging in many ways. You may feel surprised at the power of your grief—a confusing mixture of sadness, hope, emptiness, fear, excitement, and other emotions all at once. This book by one of the world's most beloved grief counselors helps parents understand their normal and necessary empty nester grief. The 100 practical tips and activities are designed to help you acknowledge and express your feelings of loss, foster love and respect, and, over time, find ways to re-instill your life with meaning. Advice is also offered for nurturing a marriage or partnership through this challenging time.

First published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1984. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

Navigating the challenging journey that families and friends of Alzheimer’s patients must endure, this heartfelt guide reveals how their struggle is as complex and drawn out as the illness itself. Confronting their natural but difficult process of grieving and mourning, the study covers the inevitable feelings of shock, sadness, anger, guilt, and relief, illustrating the initial reactions people commonly feel from the moment of the dementia’s onset. Healthy and productive ways to acknowledge and express these feelings are suggested along with 100 tips and activities that fulfill the emotional, spiritual, cognitive, physical, and social needs of those who care about someone afflicted with this debilitating disease. Special consideration is also shown for caregivers, whose grief is often complicated by the demanding physical attention that patients require.

This comprehensive handbook provides a solid foundation in helping skills related to successful funeral service practice.