The death of a loved one is often accompanied by old resentments, regrets, and unexpressed love that can hinder your emotional growth, creating wounds that affect all your other relationships. Your Loved One Lives On Within You will show you how your untapped imagination can lead to a new beginning with the person you considered lost to you forever. By re-creating an inner relationship with the person who has died, you can experience powerful opportunities for healing, resolution, and even guidance. Keeping your loved one alive in your heart - and in your mind - will enable you to make peace with the past and move freely into the future.
Alexandra Kennedy, MA is a psychotherapist in private practice since 1976 and author of Losing a Parent (HarperCollins, 1991) and The Infinite Thread: Healing Relationships Beyond Loss (Beyond Words, April 2001), Offerings at the Edge (iUniverse 2007), and How Did I Miss All This Before? Waking Up to the Magic of Our Ordinary Lives (iUniverse, 2010).
She was stunned by the power of her grief when her father was diagnosed with cancer in November 1988--even though she had been a psychotherapist for fourteen years and had attended death and dying workshops with Stephen Levine. Her father died three months later. She wrote Losing a Parent in the year following his death, sharing not only the story of her father's dying and her grieving but also the resources and strategies that helped her move through her grief while raising a family. Since then, she has devoted much of her therapy practice, teaching, and writing to grief. In 2001 The Infinite Thread was published, with an emphasis on healing relationships beyond loss, along with issues not commonly explored, such as the grief handed down through generations. Her most recent book How Did I Miss All This Before?, an intimate account of courageous spiritual transformation in the midst of life's common challenges, is written for everyone wishing to find greater openness to life in each precious moment.
Alexandra lectures at universities, professional organizations and major conferences. Weaving together inspiring case histories, practical advice, and experiential exercises, she provides a unique perspective to grieving through her work with the imagination. She also offers lectures, workshops and seminars on facing loss as an opening to the sacred, the loss of a parent, healing relationships beyond loss, dreams as messengers of the night, women's spirituality, mid-life renewal, the power of the imagination, the empty nest, and related issues.
Alexandra has been interviewed in USA Today, the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Examiner, New Woman and the Boston Herald as well as on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," CNN's "Sonja Live", KQED's "Family Talk," and "New Dimensions Radio." She is a faculty member at the University of California Santa Cruz Extension and adjunct faculty member of John F Kennedy University. She taught a popular graduate level course on dying and grieving at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology for six years. Her articles have appeared in Yoga Journal, Mothering Magazine, Magical Blend and the California Therapist. Her articles have been published online at innerself.com, groups.msm.com, learnwhatsup.com, beyondindigo.com, care-givers.com, wisdomseekers.org, among many others.
