Read an Excerpt
This is a book of meditations for the grieving. A friend once said that writing it was a brave thing. But I knew the braver thing would be to read it.
It is true that grief is a journey, often perilous and without clear direction, one that demands to be taken. Sometimes, it begins quietly. Your reaction to shocking news is measured, like a tossed stone in a placid lake, circles of meaning slowing widening, reaching into more and more of your consciousness until you understand how much you have lost and grief washes over you.
But more often, grief begins cruelly—a few words, the sharp suspension of reality. A moment of disbelief and then the hailstorm descends, feelings like knives slicing through bone, a relentless attack that will continue into undefined time. Denial, fear, despair, anger, powerlessness, regret, guilt, loneliness—any or all of these feelings batter you mercilessly, causing you to doubt a way out of your pain.
To whatever degree you grieve, the emotional invasion is inevitable; the feelings are valid and real. This book is an attempt to put words around your feelings—something like facing the enemy. You can fight them, or you can live through them.
The very act of struggling to breathe when grief has deprived you of air is a sign of your spirit stirring. Even as the heart is breaking, the pieces begin to inch back. Even though the little things bring sobs up to your throat, and confusion has crushed any sense of normalcy in your life, something within you is plotting survival.
I offer these meditations as one map of your journey through the blackest night to the slow, gentle dawn of acceptance, unexpected wisdom, and new possibilities.
