Table of Contents
Introduction xi
1 Loss and the Mourning After: A Universal Human Experience 1
2 First Responses to a Major Loss: When Your Worst Fears Become Real 13
3 Sudden Loss or Prolonged Loss: There Is No Easy Way 35
4 Recovering Your Balance: Creating a New Normal Experience 51
5 Perception: The Key to Healing 63
6 Steps to Recovery: A Common Path to Wholeness 77
7 The Inward Search: Grief Is a Personal Experience 93
8 Four Key Facts about Grief: Building a Foundation for Recovery 101
9 Start Now!: Today Is a Better Day to Begin than Tomorrow 117
10 Grief and Growth: Growing through Loss 129
11 A Test of Endurance: Life after Loss Takes Determination and Time 139
12 Beliefs that Help or Hurt: The Use and Abuse of Religion 147
13 Quiet Losses: Private Struggles Grieved in Silence 167
14 Children and Grief: it's a Big Hurt for Little People, Too 183
15 Losses in Later Life: Tarnish on the Golden Years 195
16 Making New Discoveries: Beginning with Loss-Ending with Life 205
17 Significant Points along the Way: Mileposts on the Road to Recovery 215
18 Choosing to Live Again: Ways to Take Charge of Your Own Grief 225
19 Opening New Doors: Decisions that Make a Difference 243
20 Your Own Best Friend: Completing the Journey 263
21 Preparing for Loss: A New Dimension in Wholeness 277
Appendix A Words that Describe Feelings 285
Appendix B Forming a Support Group 289
Notes 303
Acknowledgments 305
Index 307
