Customer Reviews

Understanding Grief: Helping Yourself Heal

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book has been a great comfort to me during many moments of extreme loneliness and pain. Grieving can make you feel misunderstood, misplaced and lost -- and this author truly understands. Reading this compassionate book helped me realize that all of the extreme feelings one experiences while grieving are completely normal. The many written exercises in the book can be tough to work through, but they are healing. You could easily skip all the exercises and find comfort in reading the text alone. I also found this book very helpful in understanding and dealing with people who expect you to just "pick up the pieces" and get on with life right after the funeral. The book makes the point that Western society in general is guilty of encouraging those of us who mourn to cut our grieving process short. This book is perfect for the person grieving a loss, as a gift for a family member or friend who is grieving, or as a primer for those who are walking with someone through grief and would like some insight into the process and experience of grieving.

Understanding Grief is a compassionate, effective guide to coping with the death of a loved one. Alan Wolfelt presents more than 100 workshops a year for hospices, schools, funeral homes, community groups and service organizations and shared his expertise in helping bereaved people move toward healing by encouraging them to explore their unique journeys into grief and mourning. Understanding Grief covers such issues as common myths about grief and mourning, what to expect, taking care of oneself in the grieving process, when additional help is needed, helping guidelines for support groups, and helping a friend in grief. Readers are asked specific questions about their personal grief journeys and encouraged to thing about and write down their responses. Understanding Grief is an invaluable, informative, comforting, and encouraging book that is highly recommended for personal, counseling center, and public library grief management collections.

I learned about this book when I attended a hospice sponsored grief group
after the death of my father to cancer. This book combines good reading,
excellent guidance, and a way to do some journaling of thoughts.

I have given this book to family and friends who have lost loved ones to
cancer. It does make it easier to share feelings. A great tool in the
journey of grieving.

This is an excellent book. It is a good self-help book. I lost my mother over a year ago and I have just read it in the last few weeks. It really helps one to understand that what they are going through is normal. I highly recommend this book to anyone that is going through the grief and mourning process of losing someone that you loved very much. It has helped me so much.

This is a very resourceful and thoughtful book. You really do learn that grief is a way to celebrate the life of the person that has died, and that it is ok to cry as often as you want, and to feel sad during this time. This book was very resourceful.

Over 35 years in the Emergency Medical field this is by far one of the best books on grief that I have encountered. In going through the process myself I have found this authors understanding of the process of grief far above the traditional texts that have been used for years.