Judy Tatelbaum

Explores how we can deal with every kind of grief, revealing: how grief manifests itself in many ways, ranging from anguish, exhaustion, emptiness, resentment, longing, tension, confusion, sleeplessness and sometimes the temporary loss of the will to live; and what we should do mentally and physically to prepare ourselves for loss and bereavement.

Thank you my readers for your willingness to be inspired. We never know where our answers might lie. Our most important insights may come from a sentence in a book. I hope this is true for you. Creating this book is the answer to a dream for me. I have wanted to be a writer since I was thirteen, but in those early days I had nothing to say. After I wrote THE COURAGE TO GRIEVE and then YOU DON'T HAVE TO SUFFER, I thought I was done writing books. Still I never stopped wanting to inspire others with ideas about living well. It has always disturbed me that there is no training to be a human being, no lessons in coping with trauma, illness, loss and tragedy. Ours is a world filled with people learning in hit or miss ways how to confront the inevitable troubles and sorrows in life or how to have satisfying lives and successful relationships. Unfortunately there is also no training for the biggest jobs most of us take on - like being a parent or a spouse. It's startling that we have so little assistance or support for dealing with the things that matter most to us in life. Seeing that we really don't have any "curriculum" other than our own trial and error ways for coping with our emotional lives led me to write all of my books and now these articles. Beginning my newsletter project, I thought or hoped to write maybe fifteen articles at most. Instead I have found an endless stream of inspiration, the sharing of which has been one of the greatest joys in my life. This book came as a surprise to me. My hope is that it is valuable for you. I am living Goethe's words: "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." May those words encourage you too in whatever are your endeavors.

This unusual self-help book about surviving grief offers the reader comfort and inspiration. Each of us will face some loss, sorrow and disappointment in our lives, and The Courage to Grieve provides the specific help we need to enable us to face our grief fully and to recover and grow from the experience. Although the book emphasizes the response to the death of a loved one, The Courage to Grieve can help with every kind of loss and grief.Judy Tatelbaum gives us a fresh look at understanding grief, showing us that grief is a natural, inevitable human experience, including all the unexpected, intense and uncomfortable emotions like sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, or even the temporary loss of the will to live. The emphasis is to clarify and offer help, and the tone is spiritual, optimistic, creative and easy to understand. Judy Tatelbaum provides excellent advice on how to help oneself and others get through the immediate experience of death and the grief that follows, as well as how to understand the special grief of children. Particularly useful are the techniques for completing or "finishing" grief--counteracting the popular misconception that grief never ends. The Courage to Grieve shows us how to live life with the ultimate courage: not fearing death. This book is about so much more than death and grieving it is about life and joy and growth.

Written with wisdom, warmth, and clarity, this inspirational and practical handbook offers tools for overcoming problems and enjoying more fulfilling lives. Judy Tatelbaum contends that while hurt is inevitable in life, suffering is not. We cannot control our circumstances and tragedies, but we can choose how much we suffer over them. The author suggests "We can use powerful experiences like losses, illness, hardship, and disappointment as stepping stones to our own growth."