Alan D Wolfelt

The death of someone changes our lives forever. And the movement from " before" to " after" is almost always a long, painful journey. Grief is always an intensely personal, unique experience. Yet all mourners share six universal needs that they must understand and embrace if they are to heal. This book by one of the world's most respected grief counselors describes these six needs of mourning and their role in your movement toward reconciling this loss into your life. The power of the six needs of mourning is that while they're painful and difficult, they're also, over time, transformative. They will carry you through the wilderness of your grief. They'll help give you the momentum you need to not only survive but eventually thrive again. What's more, your awareness of these needs will help you take a participative, action-oriented approach to healing in grief as opposed to thinking of grief as something you passively experience. You will be able to move toward your grief instead of away from it. You will learn that time does not actually heal wounds... instead it is what you do with the time. Let's make a plan.

This essential resource has long offered compassion and hope to mourners torn apart by the suicide of someone loved. Understanding Your Suicide Grief will help you understand the traumatic complications of suicide grief and feel less alone as you find effective ways not only to survive but eventually integrate the loss into your ongoing life. Understanding Your Suicide Grief is built on Dr. Wolfelt’s Ten Touchstones, which are basic principles to learn and actions to take to help yourself engage with your grief and create momentum toward healing.Excellent as an empathetic handbook for suicide loss survivors as well as an educational text for support groups, Understanding Your Suicide Grief pairs with a guided journal (The Understanding Your Suicide Grief Journal). Not only is jotting down ideas, feelings, and experiences clarifying and therapeutic in grief, but it can also be a way to meaningful thoughts and stories about the life of the person who died— not just their death. These two books are used in tandem by grief support groups everywhere. If grief is a wilderness, then suicide grief occupies the harshest, most dangerous terrain.

This companion workbook to the second edition of Dr. Wolfelt’s bestseller Understanding Your Suicide Grief helps you explore the many challenging facets of your uniquely complicated grief through guided journaling. After you read a section in Understanding Your Suicide Grief, the journal asks you questions about what you’ ve just read. It invites you to consider, clarify, and write down your thoughts and feelings.A good grief journal is a safe place— somewhere you can express yourself no matter what you are experiencing. If you’ re grieving the suicide death of a friend or loved one, this journal and its companion text will help you understand and engage with your grief, actively mourn, and work toward healing. You’ ll find that the journal can also be used to help remember the person who died and/or work through any lingering relationship issues or emotional sticking points. As you express your emotions in this journal, you will feel them beginning to soften as well as become more integrated into your ongoing life. Write as much as or as little as you’ d like. Even just a little work with this journal will help you befriend your grief and give you healing momentum.

When we’ re grieving the death of someone loved, we need the support and compassion of our fellow human beings. Grief support groups provide a wonderful opportunity for this very healing kind of support. This book is for professional or lay caregivers who want to start and lead an effective grief support group for adult suicide loss survivors. It explains how to get a group started and how to keep it running smoothly once it’s underway. The group leader’s roles and responsibilities are explored in detail, including communication skills, trust building, handling problems, and more. The natural complications of suicide loss and how they can affect support group dynamics are covered as well. This Guide also includes twelve meeting plans that interface with the second editions of Understanding Your Suicide Grief and The Understanding Your Suicide Grief Journal. Each week group members read a chapter in the main text, complete a chapter in Including 12 meeting plans that interface with the main text and companion journal, this organizational guide deftly combines grief education with compassionate support for those who want to facilitate an effective suicide grief support group.

When someone we care about experiences a major life loss, for many of us it’s instinctive to want to help. After all, we feel awful about what happened as well as what our friend or family member must be going through. So, we write a note, send flowers, or drop off a casserole. These are all kind, helpful gestures, but what then? The grief journey takes a long time, and early on, most grievers are left to their own devices, lonely and struggling. How do we continue to effectively support our grieving loved ones in the coming weeks, months, and even years?This little book will help you understand how to really be there for grieving people. It will explain the basic principles of human presence and empathy and give you guidelines for reaching out to and spending time with those in grief. The beautiful thing is this: All you have to do is stay for the cup of coffee. You don’t need to supply answers or give advice. You don’t have to have special training or skills. All you need to do is be aware of simple concepts like hospitality and holding space.

Grief hurts. While it's natural to want to avoid pain, healing after a loss requires engaging with and expressing the pain. The only way to fully engage with our grief is to open ourselves to it. All our thoughts and feelings need acknowledgment. They need our time and attention. They also need expression. Sharing our grief outside of ourselves is called mourning, and ongoing mourning is what truly catalyzes our healing over time. Yet we are never more vulnerable than when we are sharing our deepest emotions. Vulnerability is scary. We're often afraid of the pain we'll feel when we're honest with ourselves. We also tend to be afraid of what others might think. But it turns out that vulnerability in grief is our ally. The more open and authentic we are, the more fully we can integrate our loss and go on to live and love well. If you've suffered a significant loss, this book by one of the world's most respected grief counselors will help you understand why and how to be vulnerable in grief. It will help you find the courage to mourn authentically, one small bit at a time. And it will help you embrace the paradoxical power of vulnerability in living a rich, full life.

It's normal to experience anxiety in grief. While it's not pleasant to feel anxious, it's natural because loss shakes our sense of security in the present and often raises worries about the future. Anxiety is a form of fear. Of course we feel afraid when someone important to us dies. How will we survive without them? What will our lives be like? What if something happens to others we care about? What's more, the pain of grief compounds anxiety. When we're hurting, we naturally feel anxious. We want the pain to stop. But the pain of grief typically takes many months and even years to begin to diminish. This book by one of the world's most beloved grief counselors will help you understand your anxiety and fears after a significant loss. They are normal, and they serve a purpose. But learning to soothe your fears is also essential. You don't need to live in continuous anxiety, and you shouldn't because it's bad for your health. You'll learn ways to comfort and distract yourself whenever you need to. Finally, you'll discover that expressing your fears is key to taming them.

When it comes to healing after the death of someone loved, our culture has it all wrong. We're told to be strong when what we really need is to be vulnerable. We're told to think positive when what we really need is to wallow in the pain. And we're told to seek closure when what we really need is to welcome our natural and necessary grief.Dr Wolfelt's new book seeks to dispel these misconceptions that we hold on to so tightly and help people everywhere mourn well so they can live fuller lives.The Paradoxes of Mourning discusses three truths that grieving people used to know and respect but seem to have forgotten:1. You must make friends with the darkness before you can enter the light.2. You must go backward before you can go forward.3. You must say hello before you can say goodbye.In the tradition of the Four Agreements and the Seven Habits, this compassionate and inspiring guidebook by North America's most beloved grief counsellor gives you the three keys that unlock the door to hope and healing.

After a significant loss, it’s common to feel like we’re going crazy. The sudden absence of someone we love is not only devastating, it’s disorienting. They were here one moment, and now they’re…gone? Forever? How can that be? The first year or two of grief is often unbelievably painful and confusing. We’re in shock, often for weeks or months. Time seems out of whack. We feel powerless, helpless, and ineffective. We can’t think straight; we can’t get anything done. Our moods swing wildly, and we say and do crazy things. We cry, and we cling to objects that belonged to the person who died. We have bizarre dreams. We think we hear, see, or experience communications from the person who died. We wonder if we can (or should) go on. And through it all, our minds and hearts return over and over again to the impossible reality that can never again talk to or touch a person who lived and breathed and gave our lives so much meaning. There is nothing more challenging than the early months and years of a major life loss. But this compassionate book, by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors, will help you endure and thrive.

After the death of someone close to you, you enter a time of deep grief. And if you use this time to actively, intentionally engage with your grief, you find helpful ways to express it. You do the work of mourning. You share it outside yourself—in doses and over time—so that you begin to integrate your loss into your ongoing life. In other words, you mourn well so that you can heal well—and live and love well again. Eventually you understand that while your grief is never “over,” it is reconciled. It is an integrated part of your life story. Your love is not “over,” either, of course. You feel it in the present just as much as you did in the past. So after your time of deep grief has passed, how do you continue to love and honor the special person who died even as you fully live your own remaining precious days here on earth? In response to this common challenge, this book by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors proposes a way of being Dr. Wolfelt calls “cherishing.” To cherish means to protect and care for lovingly, and to hold dear. The mindset, suggestions, and practices in this resource will help you build cherishing into your daily routines.

An in-depth guide to the counseling process and establishing a trusting relationship with clients—from a bestselling author and grieving expert. Helping people in grief means being an empathetic companion—someone who allows grievers to be experts of their own experiences, who bears witness without judging, who gently encourages the expression of thoughts and feelings. But even if you approach the work with this understanding, how you "are" when you spend time with the griever also has a tremendous influence on your capacity to help. How do you develop a relationship with the griever? How do you show empathy, respect, warmth, and genuineness? Could you improve your listening, paraphrasing, clarifying, perception checking, informing, and other essential helping skills? Whether you are a professional counselor or a lay helper, whether you have years of experience or are new to the work, this guide, based on by Dr. Wolfelt's companioning philosophy, will help you be the most effective grief companion you can be.

We don't only experience grief after a loss—we often experience it before. If someone we love is seriously ill, or if we're concerned about upcoming hardships of any kind, we naturally begin to grieve right now. This process of anticipatory grief is normal, but it can also be confusing and painful. Life is change, and change is hard. This book will help see you through.

Anger in grief is natural. It’s normal to feel anger and other explosive emotions such as hate, blame, terror, resentment, rage, and jealousy after the death of someone you love or another significant life loss. Yet it’s challenging to experience these feelings day after day. And it can be hard knowing what to do about them. Allowing them to seethe and build up inside you is not the answer. Neither is lashing out at people who care about you. This book will show you how to understand and express your anger and other explosive emotions in restorative ways. Learning to be with your anger and soothe it will not only help you on your healing journey in grief, it will also give you tools for living the remainder of your days with less suffering and more joy. If you are angry, let us begin.

Based on Dr. Wolfelt's unique and highly regarded philosophy of "companioning" versus treating mourners, this self-care guide for professional and lay grief caregivers emphasizes the importance of taking good care of oneself as a precursor to taking good care of others. Bereavement care is draining work, and remaining empathetic to the painful struggles of mourners, death, and dying, day in and day out, makes caregivers highly susceptible to burnout. This book demonstrates how caring for oneself first allows one to be a more effective caregiver to others. Through the advice, suggestions, and practices directed specifically to caregiving situations and needs, caregivers will learn not to lose sight of caring for themselves as they care for others.

Since its debut thirty years ago, this favorite by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors has found a place in the homes and hearts of hundreds of thousands of mourners across the globe. Filled with compassion and hope, Understanding Your Grief helps you understand and befriend your painful, complex thoughts and feelings after the death of someone loved. Befriending grief may sound counterintuitive, but actually, your grief is your love for the person who died in a different form, and like that love, it’s also natural and necessary. Perhaps above all, Understanding Your Grief is practical. It’s built on Dr. Wolfelt’s Ten Touchstones, which are basic principles to learn and actions to take to help yourself engage with your grief and create momentum toward healing. This second edition maintains the content of the first edition but builds on it by adding concise wisdom on new topics such as the myth of closure, complicated and traumatic grief, grief overload, unmourned grief, loneliness, the power of ritual, and more. Excellent as an empathetic handbook for anyone in mourning as well as a text for support groups, Understanding Your Grief pairs with a guided journal.

When we’re grieving the death of someone loved, we need the support and compassion of our fellow human beings. Grief support groups provide a wonderful opportunity for this very healing kind of support. This book is for professional or lay caregivers who want to start and lead an effective grief support group for adults. It explains how to get a group started and how to keep it running smoothly once it’s underway. The group leader’s roles and responsibilities are explored in detail, including communication skills, trust building, handling problems, and more. This Guide also includes twelve meeting plans that interface with the second editions of Understanding Your Grief and The Understanding Your Grief Journal. Each week group members read a chapter in the main text, complete a chapter in the journal, and come to group ready for you to guide them through an exploration of the content. Meeting plans include suggestions for how to open each session as well as engaging exercises and activities. A Certificate of Completion you can photocopy and give to group members in the final meeting is provided.

This companion workbook to the second edition of Dr. Wolfelt’s bestseller Understanding Your Grief helps you explore the many facets of your grief through guided journaling. After you read a section in Understanding Your Grief, the journal asks you questions about what you’ve just read. It invites you to consider, clarify, and jot down your thoughts and feelings. A good grief journal is a safe place of solace—somewhere you can express yourself no matter what you are experiencing. If you’re grieving a death or a significant loss of any kind, this journal and its companion text will help you understand and embrace your grief, actively mourn, and move toward healing. You’ll find that the journal can also be used to help honor the person who died and/or work through any lingering relationship issues. As you express your emotions in this journal, you will feel them beginning to soften as well as become more integrated into your ongoing life. Write as much as or as little as you’d like. Even just a little engagement with this journal will help you befriend your grief and give you healing momentum.

When we are grieving the death of someone loved, we may struggle with making it through each day. How are we supposed to cope with our gut-wrenching grief and live our daily lives at the same time? What should we do with our chaotic, painful, and intrusive thoughts and feelings? How do we survive? And is it possible to both grieve and live with meaning and hope? If you’ve been asking yourself such questions, this book by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors provides affirmation and answers. Rituals give us something to do with our grief. Simple, everyday practices can give structure to our grief and hold us up us when we’re feeling like we might collapse. In fact, when we’re in grief, rituals are essentially effective beelines to healing. Learn what makes a ritual a ritual. (Spoiler alert: Rituals can be easy and fast!) Try some of the many solo rituals gathered here, such as letter writing, meditating, intentional emoting, grief walks, and the 10-minute grief encounter. And reach out to friends and loved ones who might like to get together for one of the simple group ceremonies. By incorporating the healing power of ritual into your days, you’ll be not only surviving your grief, you’ll be building in meaning and hope so that you can go on to thrive.

The miscarriage of a hoped-for child is a shattering loss and those who had already begun to feel attached to the baby will naturally grieve—particularly the mother and father but also siblings this baby would have had, extended family, and friends. This compassionate guide contains 100 practical ideas to help those affected by the tragedy of miscarriage, from teaching the principles of grief and mourning to practical, action-oriented tips for coping with the natural difficulties of a loss. Fostering communication between partners, explaining the loss to others, and reconciling anger and guilt are some of the additional topics covered in this compassionate book for those grieving in the aftermath of a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy.

When your family, neighborhood, city, or area of the country is affected by a natural disaster, it’s normal and necessary to feel grief and the traumatic experience of actually witnessing and surviving the event may be consuming you. This book will help you understand and embrace your difficult thoughts and feelings. It will be a compassionate companion to you as you move through shock and numbness and struggle with ongoing grief symptoms such as fear, guilt, and sadness. Some of the 100 ideas explain the basic principles of grief and mourning and how they apply in the aftermath of a natural disaster, while others offer immediate, here-and-now suggestions of things you can do today to express your grief and live with meaning in each moment.