Books

Many books on grief lay out a model to be followed, either for bereaved persons to live through or for professionals to practice, and usually follow some familiar prescriptions for what people should do to reach an accommodation with loss. The Crafting of Grief is different: it focuses on conversations that help people chart their own path through grief.

Authors Hedtke and Winslade argue convincingly that therapists and counselors can support people more by helping them craft their own responses to bereavement rather than trying to squeeze experiences into a model. In the pages of this book, readers will learn how to develop lines of inquiry based on the concept of continuing bonds, and they’ll discover ways to use these ideas to help the bereaved craft stories that remember loved ones’ lives.

My Grandmother is Always With Me offers children a way to make sense out of death when a loved one dies. The story is told though the eyes of a young girl and her grandmother. Each colorfully illustrated page suggests another way in which the little girl benefits from keeping a storied legacy close to heart after her grandmother dies.

This book offers a different approach to death and grief than many of the other messages that children receive. When a loved one dies, their love for them does not die. Children, still love that person as they did before but they now need to use memories more deliberately to keep the love alive. My Grandmother is Always With Me suggests a way for children to make sense out of the changes in their lives and to incorporate the many memories of the person who has died into their own lives.

Along with the story and pictures geared for young readers, there is a grown-up guide. The guide offers suggestions to support adults as they lead the way for the younger ones

Grief is frequently thought of as an ordeal we must simply survive. This book offers a fresh approach to the negotiation of death and grief. It is founded in principles of constructive conversation that focus on “remembering” lives, in contrast to processes of forgetting or dismembering those who have died. Re-membering is about a comforting, life enhancing, and sustaining approach to death that does not dwell on the pain of loss and is much more than wistful reminiscing. It is about the deliberate construction of stories that continue to include the dead in the membership of our lives.

This book, BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT GROUPS, fills the gap between the challenges to conventional grief psychology and the practice of bereavement counseling. The deceased person has often been left behind in counseling conversations, requiring the bereaved to distance themselves from honoring memories that could soothe their heartache. Ironically, the stories of the dead person have not featured prominently in the grief experience. This book offers a structured guide for facilitating bereavement support groups, but is intended as more than a simple “how to” book. It will also inspire readers with invigorating practice ideas.