Customer Reviews

Awakening from Grief: Finding the Road Back to Joy

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Awakening From Grief is wonderfully different from other books on this subject. It allows you to rediscover and embrace the memory of someone who has died rather than forcing you to "get over" the loss. As it turns out, the cure is not trying to forget, but encouraging you to remember, to allow yourself to feel the joy the person who has died brought you and still brings you.

John Welshons manages to pull this off not by resorting to Hallmark platitudes, religious quick fixes, or amateur psychology...but by simply telling his own story in a very compelling way.

I've now given this book several times to friends who have lost someone. The last person I gave it to (who lost a teenage son) told me it was the most wonderful gift she's ever received.

In my house I have a box in which I reverentially keep those few precious writings and items that most help me heal from the death of my daughter last year. "Awakening From Grief" is in that box. Believe me, I've read a whole lot of grief books and this is one of the best.

John Welshons has a genius for blending life experience and philosophy into a provocative healing balm for the soul. You can feel him reach out from the pages. "Awakening from Grief" helped me unite my emotions and thoughts so that they worked together to form a new outlook on the situation.

The book works as memoir as well as grief companion. Welshons shares touching stories from his own life that let readers know he has lived on the emotional landscapes about which he writes.

His writing voice is assuring, conversational, honest and caring.

This book will make you weep but when you finish it I believe you will find, as I did, that you walk more peacefully and happily in the world. You will feel, and be aware of, how your grief has deepened you.

If this book were a gem, it'd be a diamond.

Yesterday, I snuggled up in a blanket on my couch and read AWAKENING FROM GRIEF. I can't begin to tell you how the words moved me. Until now, I have felt like most of the material I have read about grieving has been a band-aid; a small protective device to keep out harmful germs. After reading AWAKENING FROM GRIEF I feel as though my heart has been covered in a sterile bandage...coated with healing balm to speed the healing process...and healed within a matter of days. My heart has been hurting for years, so I knew it wasn't healed before. Now it is feeling young, and loved, and happy again. I feel truly alive for the first time in a long time! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

This - and Surviving Grief (published by Judson Press for $6)
are THE 2 books (out of many) I checked out of the library that IMMEDIATELY made me feel more serene, accepting, as if I would get through this somehow. Not better, really - but more human and more in touch with the Divine. And somehow FINE in a decidedly UNFINE convergence of circumstances. A bargain for pain you'd pay $100s to ease. Thank you to both John Welshons and to Wayne Dyer for putting his weight behind the book. Invaluable. Priceless.

Dealing with the loss of a loved one is one of life's most difficult challenges, but the opportunity to turn the experience into something that informs us about ourselves and our relationships is what the Welshons book is all about. I think what separates this book from others is that the author fills the book with personal stories of genuine growth that give us a realistic roadmap to effectively dealing with death and making the experience as enriching and forward looking as possible. All in all, it is quite a useful book and is an meanigful touchstone for all kinds of painful and difficult experiences.

This book has changed my life! It is far superior to any other book I've read on the subject . . . most of which tend to be much too syrupy. AWAKENING FROM GRIEF is Real, Honest, and straightforward. It never fails to look at the deepest aspects of the experience of loss and sadness, yet it always shows the reader the road to a new, healing perspective . . . the "Road Back to Joy." What's most remarkable about it is that it isn't really about grief as much as it is about happiness. By showing us the ways in which our attachment to feeling victimized stands in the way of our ability to be happy, this book offers a taste of true spiritual freedom and REAL healing. This book has helped me heal childhood wounds that have resisted all forms of therapy. It has helped me to find a lightness in my life that I've never felt before. I will be forever grateful for this book, and I highly recommend it!

If you enjoyed Tuesdays with Morrie, spend Wednesday with John. Mr. Welshons draws on his twenty-five years of working with both the terminally ill and those in mourning. However, this book is written for anyone who has experienced any type of loss whether through death, divorce or disappointment. Mr. Welshons explains that only through embracing our pain will our hearts open to feel greater joy.

The author conveys his thoughts by telling personal stories which will move the reader and explaining their lessons.

It's an easy to read life affirming book which gives a fresh perspective on death, loss and life.

The next best thing to hearing John Welshons share his insights on grieving in person, is to read this fine, fine book. His voice is warm and deeply penetrating, his style so easy, one would forget he/she is reading a work about death and loss.

There is certainly a place for Mr. Welshons alongside this generation's most hallowed champions of the human potential movement...Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Stephen Levine, Dr. Wayne Dyer, et al can be proud to include him as a contemporary and a torch carrier, who, with bold honesty and great love, takes their work to a yet more personal level.

A wonderful gift for all of us...

This is the first book on grief that I read after my husband died, and I'm glad it was this book. It set the tone for my grieving, because it helped me gain the perspective that loss gives us the opportunity to develop a deeper experience of life. I still refer back to it from time to time, and it continues to give me a sense of peace.

In about 725, Old English first recorded the word "haelan," meaning to make whole.In his profound book, Awakening from Grief, John Welshons explores the routes, variations and ultimately, common aspects of that inevitable quest from so many points of origin.

Mr. Welshons, who reached his approach by reaching others in change and loss, describes how, when all is lost, it may really be found.His is a journey of rediscovery, even joy, when the chips are most down.The book jacket refers to the text as a "roadmap" but that is too simple.Instead the book more resembles a tap to reach the stripped screws life deals so readily.Each reader will take it from there alone but not lonely.We are lucky to have John share his insights, sad, hilarious, compassionate and wise, to reach the state first published in Old English: To be made whole.