Giving Sorrow Words: How to Cope with Grief and Get on with Your Life [Paperback]

Candy Lightner (Author), Nancy Hathaway (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1991

The founder of MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), who lost her thirteen-year-old daughter to a drunk driver, shares her own and others' stories in a unique and sensitive approach to a subject tht everyone must face at least once in a lifetime.

Product Details

• Paperback: 260 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (August 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446392901
• ISBN-13: 978-0446392907
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,446,298 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely a helpful guide through the grieving process, July 28, 2001

By 

Sherry Pierce (Seabrook, NH) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Giving Sorrow Words: How to Cope with Grief and Get on with Your Life (Paperback)

Candy Lightner's book was the most helpful guide through grief that I read after my own loss of a 14 year-old daughter in 1988. Here I am, 13 years later, still remembering passages from the book. A few months after my child's death, and feeling mired in a depression I had no idea how to lift, I bought or borrowed every book on grief I could get my hands on. This one stands out for its honesty and focuses on the fact that there are disparate ways of grieving, none of them wrong, and that those left to deal with the death of a loved one never "recover" as from an illness, but rather incorporate the experience into his or her life. The loss becomes, as one father described it (paraphrased) not a turbulent river, but a meandering stream that ebbs and flows through the remainder of one's life. I completely recommend this book, and in fact bought many copies which I have given away over the years. There are many interesting facts brought out in the book, for example that 80% of all marriages end in divorce after the death of a child. Although perhaps most helpful to those who have lost a child, the book has much to offer anyone learning to cope after the death of a spouse, relative, or dear friend.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars After the death of my spouse, January 28, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Giving Sorrow Words: How to Cope with Grief and Get on with Your Life (Paperback)

I started reading this book about 2 months after the death of my spouse at the age of 53 and after almost 6 years of marriage and a horrific death from a nerve disease. I never really knew what grief was until his death. Nothing seemed to help until I read Candy's book. I never realized how cathartic such as death could be. Candy provides such an insight into how I needed to not only pass through the sorrow and pain but into a totally changed life. She helped me understand how many more facets there were to what I was feeling. This is a wonderful compassionate work. I know Her daughter must be smiling down from heaven in pride on her mother today.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars There are better books; very America-centric, November 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Giving Sorrow Words: How to Cope with Your Grief and Get on with Your Life (Hardcover)

My father died earlier this month, and in my quest to learn more about the grieving process I bought this book. I learned that everything my family did was wrong.

We should have had a funeral, we should have had an open casket, we should be prostrate with grief for weeks on end, etc. It took me a while, and some discussion, to realize that these ideas are principally American, and are foreign even to those of us in Canada. The very idea of an open casket gives me the shudders, yet she says it's important. Go figure.

I thought Lightner was right on in her acceptance of the grief of adult children, friends, siblings, other relatives, pet owners, etc. I appreciated her validation of my feelings that even though I was an independent adult I still felt abandoned, in a way. She also made me feel better about the way I was grieving, pointing out that the 'rules' of grieving aren't cut and dried, and that everyone handles grief in his or her own way. I appreciated that.