Customer Reviews

Losing a Parent: Passage to a New Way of Living

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book offers valuable insights into the personal journey each person must go through in grieving the loss of a parent, or even someone as close as a parent. Unlike some of the other reviewers on this page, I found her explanations of shamanism and spirit guides a refreshing and useful way to explore my own inner wisdom and find support and healing. For those unfamiliar with shamanism, or uncomfortable with practices different than their own, I encourage anyone to open their heart and mind to a new way of healing.

I found Ms. Kennedy's book extraordinarily helpful. Although both of my parents are alive, I had a stepmother whom I loved dearly who died when I was 20 and away at college. I had been told that she died of a broken heart. ( She was mentally ill and depressed and had ten shock treatments.) Twenty years later, my father informed me that Leila, whom I had loved like a second mother, had killed herself. I had lived with a lie for twenty years. The grief I felt was almost overwhelming: to think that she had died in such a terrible lonely way. Ms. Kennedy's book helped me find ways to clarify my relationshiop with Leila, with her death, and to work through all those years of unresolved loss, confronting the truth from a different perspective. Although my parents are alive, her book has also prepared me for the fact that although I will never really be ready for their death, being clear and direct in the relationships I have now will help when it is time for them to pass, and that I will have tools with which to cope when it is their time to leave this Earth. I am glad to have this book in my library. I gave it to all four of my cousins when their wonderful father dropped dead of a heart attack at 63.( The circumstances, in which he chose not to go to the hospital, made it almost like a suicide, creating unresolved feelings).They found it remarkably helpful. Death seems so final when we think of the object as being unable to receive our communication or to transform. Ms. Kennedy's book points out in a very meaningful way, that "the object", the loved one, in this case is anything but an object, but a living spirit with which we can continue to interact... " the object" is no more outside ourselves than we are outside ourselves: it is a matter of defining who they are and how they live within us that creates the healing. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

LOSING A PARENT IS A BOOK WITH A UNIQUE WAY TO WORK THROUGH GRIEF. EVEN IF A PARENT DIED YEARS EARLIER, THE BOOK PROVIDES NEW, INSIGHTFUL WAYS TO DEAL WITH ISSUES AS THEY COME UP IN LIFE. ALEXANDRA IS BRAVE AND GENEROUS TO SHARE HER OWN EXPERIENCES WITH US. JUST KNOWING OTHERS EXPERIENCE THOSE MOMENTS IS EMPOWERING.

This book allowed me to understand the incredibly deep emotions and affect my father's death had on me. Though his death was expected, and I was 45 years old, had no idea the impact his passing would have. Alexandra Kennedy's book was like a lifeline for me, revealing that my reactions were at the same time personal and shared by others. Her ability to weave the experiences of others and her own helped to show me that losing a parent is indeed a benchmark in our lives. I utilized many of the tools given in the text to help work through my grieving, thus personalizing my experience. There is no doubt that by acting upon the suggestions in this book I grew through the grieving process.

I recommend this book to anyone, regardless of age, who has experienced the death of a parent.

Alexandra's Kennedy's LOSING A PARENT profoundly enlarges the isolated gray world of grief and loss into a rich and varied possibility that invites the participation of personal imagination and offers an opportunity for creative breakthrough and psychological insight. The book is personal, practical, and original. Highly recommended for anyone grieving the loss of an intimate relationship and open to the possibilities of personal growth.

I am so blessed to have discovered this book. When I started reading the book, my mother had passed away almost five months earlier. I found the author articulated the feelings and experience of grief so well. She also gives great advice for one's healing journey.

The sudden death of my dear father left me bewildered and confused - I certainly have not been here before. Alexandra's wonderful book has been a beacon of a light, a lifeline and an anchor in the stormy sea of grief. Ms. Kennedy's touching account of her own journey and transformation at her father's death provides a map of possibility. Not only did she give countless practical suggestions on how to grieve, but also opens the doorway to our inner world of spirit. Through her own vivid examples, using visualization and shamanic journeys,
Alexandra demonstrates how we can find internal sources of strength.

Thank you, Alexandra, for being willing to share your story, wisdom and heart with us!

Losing A Parent speaks to our relationship with death in a very meaningfulful and pragmatic way. The reader has the opportunity to go on their own personal journey. This can be instructive and healing. This is a must read book.

Telling her own experience of the death of her father, the author opens wide the experience for others. In a gentle, graceful, yet compelling manner, she allows us to enter a seldom visited domain; the interior space of one who is coping with the multiple and sometimes conflicting emotions of a parent's death. The reader will recognize his own shifting reactions in the author's description of her own. At the same time new possibilties for living may open up, as they did for me. For these reasons, this is a very outstanding book, one which I have given often to thoughtful friends coping with parental loss.

I came across this book as my mother slowly slipped away with Alzheimer's disease. Alexandra Kennedy's gentle style of writing along with several guided meditations allowed me to move at my own pace and within my own framework. As a result, I was able to deal with the grief I wasexperiencing and answer many of the painful questions that arose. When my mother finally died several years later, I picked up the book again and was able to explore my own transformations that were a result of her death. This book was an invaluable tool for one of life's most difficult transitions.