Customer Reviews

Seven Choices: Taking the Steps to New Life After Losing Someone You Love

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In late of 1989 I had a devastating head injury. I think the popular wording now is a traumatic brain injury. I was in a coma for 12 days and in the hospital for three months. After I got out of the hospital, I had to go to outpatient speech therapy for another six months.

I found out over the next two years that the person who used to have my name had died. I went back to Georgia State University to find out I had a severe speech impairment and had no short-term memory. I could not remember anything new.

I had been high school valedictorian of my class. At the time of my head injury I was supervising third shift in a printed circuit board plant, as well as going to GSU almost full time. When I realized that person was dead, it was like the most important person in your life had died - and that person was me!

A close friend of mine recognized the grief I was going through and urged me to go to the GSU counseling center and get some help. I did. The psychologist I saw wanted me to read On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I think it is the classic on grief. It studies the grief that terminally sick patients go through before they die. I could not read it. I was too close to dying myself when I had the head injury.

I felt the grief I was experiencing would permanently drown me in sorrow and sadness. One week when I saw the psychologist, I was told I would not help myself because I would not read the grief book. I immediately went to the library and found Seven Choices. The book changed my life. It specifically addresses losing a loved one unexpectantly. That is exactly the way I felt, except the loved one I lost was the old me.

The book was a tremendous help to me. It gave a blueprint of the process I would have to go through to get better. I can not say enough good words about it. Over the next ten years I got better, but it took a long time. When I think of what I went through, I think of the book. The book meant that much to me. It is a super book on one of the most devastating emotions one can feel. That emotion is grief.

As a hospice social worker currently leading grief groups, I think this is one of the most valuable resource I have discovered....

This book provides a thoughtful "map" to the experience of sudden loss as well as coping with loss of any type. Harper Neeld, from her own experiences of loss, offers a new conceptualization for visualizing loss (the impact) and how it affects the world and offers most importantly a concrete active process for facing grief or the transition of coming to terms with a loss.

Things I love about this book.
1) It is very well written. Harper Neeld is a college professor and writes in an engaging manner with broad use of other peoples' stories, literature and personal experience;
2) It is honest. She wrote the book over a 4 year period and chronicles her path of coping with her loss and her own coming to terms with it.
3). She utilizes most of the grief literatures as a foundation and incorporates key ideas appropriately throughout her book.
4) It is action oriented - Seven choices refers to her conception that as mourners face different facets of their grief/pain, they have different choices that lead to healing such as "to experience and express grief fully..." making choices until their have discovered what lyes beyond their grief.

This book offers a tremendous opportunity for comfort and support by someone who has been there. For professional staff, it offers a new twist on grief theory pulling from broad aspects of scholarly resources regarding grief.

The author also maintains a website www.elizabethharperneeld.com which has a monthly newsletter and informtion on her work which includes guides to writing and the writing process.

After losing my husband at the age of 33 I found myself with nobody in the same situation to share my feelings with. This book helped me focus the feelings I had, which were often so overwhelming and confusing. I found myself reading her quotes of other people's feelings and experiences and saying "yes - that's it - I feel that too". The book was such help to me that I buy a bunch of them from time to time and share them with friends who lose someone close to them.

I am so happy I found this book. It was passed around to everyone in my grief support group.we only had 2 copies and at the time we tried to buy more we were told it was out of print.Everyone will be happy to hear they can buy there own copy now.I read every book I could get my hands on when my husband died.This book gave me the strength,hope & spirit to go on with my life

I can honestly say that Seven Choices saved my life.
I began to dip into it when my husband died but soon found that it was my constant companion, providing solace, comfort and hope and I read it slowly and meticulously
as I passed through the long and painful grief process.
In despair it gave me comfort; it allowed me to cry and to understand my strange and seemingly irrational needs.
It taught me that I was not alone. it gave me courage to work through the long months of agony. It was always there - a friend to guide and steer me to the world beyond grief.
Eight years on - I still read it from time to time. Over the years I have personally bought ove 20 copies and always have "library copies" in my home to send to friends in need.
I read all the bereavement books I could find - this one was and still is the only one that gave me the will to continue life without my husband.

I can honestly say that Seven Choices saved my life.
I began to dip into it when my husband died but soon found that it was my constant companion, providing solace, comfort and hope and I read it slowly and meticulously
as I passed through the long and painful grief process.
In despair it gave me comfort; it allowed me to cry and to understand my strange and seemingly irrational needs.
It taught me that I was not alone. it gave me courage to work through the long months of agony. It was always there - a friend to guide and steer me to the world beyond grief.
Eight years on - I still read it from time to time. Over the years I have personally bought ove 20 copies and always have "library copies" in my home to send to friends in need.
I read all the bereavement books I could find - this one was and still is the only one that gave me the will to continue life without my husband.

My husband of 1.5 years but my soul-mate of a lifetime passed away a year ago. I have read so many books of grief, but only Seven Choices helped me find hope. This book is an honest account of a difficult journey, and like all things that are done with honesty - it touches the core of who we are.

After my husband died suddenly, I was beside myself. My aunt insisted on placing this book in my hands. It has been a lifeline to me. I have purchased well over 20 copies of it for friends and continue to haunt my local bookstore when they don't have it on the shelf for immediate purchase. Having read almost every grief book out there, don't waste your money, just buy this one and learn to live again.

I have not yet read this book, however I will purchase it based on the very good reviews here. I lost my wonderful, young husband suddenly 6 months ago and am looking for any words of solace that speak to my broken self. What I really wanted to do was respond to a reviewer below, who titled her/his review "Don't Bother..." This person claimed that the author had no time to cultivate a relationship with her husband because they were only married 4 years and she eventually remarried. This attitude upsets me and I am very sorry that this reviewer's relationship with her/his spouse took so long to grow. I was married to my husband for 1.5 years and we felt as if we'd been by eachother's side for lifetimes, thankfully, which is probably why the pain is so intense. I just want all of those walking this grief journey to know that, regardless of chronological time, you love your mate timelessly and that is what matters. I wouldn't be surprised if this book confirms that belief.

I am in retreat ministry and use Seven Choices as a foundational resource when presenting grief workshops and/or facilitating bereavement support groups. This author "tells it like it is" in a very down-to-earth fashion. She shares her personal experience of loss in ways that invite the reader to also open up and share life's greatest wound and greatest challenge...LOSS.

When Elizabeth Harper Neeld presents Seven Choices in a weekend retreat the participants feel compassionately affirmed and look forward with hope for the experience of the "turning-point".