Self-Help : Death, Grief, Bereavement

When a family member or close friend dies, it can be difficult to know how best to help the children and teenagers involved. Someone Very Important Has Just Died is a practical book written for those caring for children and teenagers suffering a close bereavement. Intended for use immediately or soon after the death has occurred, this book gives practical and detailed guidance on what adults might say and do to help children. This much-needed resource tackles the sensitive issues of what to tell children, how far to include them in the events immediately after the death, and how to tend to their physical and emotional needs. The material is suitable for anyone regardless of their background and beliefs, and is supplemented with information on where to go to obtain longer term bereavement support. Someone Very Important Has Just Died is an ideal resource for professionals in all areas of work relating to bereavement. It is designed to be given to adults with children in their care at the time of a death. more...

Price: $9.95

Practical and spiritual guidance for the seriously ill, the dying, and their caregivers A living will . . . medical power of attorney . . . do-not-resuscitate orders . . . palliative care. . . . In this important book that fills a real market need, Karen Kaplan and Christopher Lukas show people how to approach these and other sensitive issues. They emphasize the importance of thinking years ahead–when first diagnosed–and explain how to focus on what is truly important, both practically and spiritually, with the hope that those who are seriously ill can maintain control and have their wishes heard. more...

Price: $14.95

This book provides an excellent resource for secondary schools to be used in supporting young people coping with grief, loss and death'- Educational Psychology in Practice. This book provides students aged 11 to 18 with an opportunity to consider the effects of grief, loss, and death; develop the ability to talk about, acknowledge and manage the feelings associated with the grieving process; and maintain mental health and resilience. Teacher//facilitator notes, copiable activities and all resources are provided for the 10 sessions, which can be delivered to either the whole class or to smaller groups of students. more...

Price: $30.95

Both a memoir and an investigation, Swimming in a Sea of Death is David Rieff's loving tribute to his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer. Rieff's brave, passionate, and unsparing witness of the last nine months of her life, from her initial diagnosis to her death, is both an intensely personal portrait of the relationship between a mother and a son, and a reflection on what it is like to try to help someone gravely ill in her fight to go on living and, when the time comes, to die with dignity. Rieff offers no easy answers. Instead, his intensely personal book is a meditation on what it means to confront death in our culture. In his most profound work, this brilliant writer confronts the blunt feelings of the survivor -- the guilt, the self-questioning, the sense of not having done enough. And he tries to understand what it means to desire so desperately, as his mother did to the end of her life, to try almost anything in order to go on living. Drawing on his mother's heroic struggle, paying tribute to her doctors' ingenuity and faithfulness, and determined to tell what happened to them all, Swimming in a Sea of Death subtly draws wider lessons that will be of value to others when they find themselves in the same situation. more...

Price: $21.00

Through Loss is about the central place of loss in our everyday lives. It is a practical and compassionate book, which will support and inform readers in their experience of loss and grief. You may have experienced a relationship breakdown, a serious accident to yourself or a loved one, the death of a relative, a life-altering diagnosis of ill health, or a chronic physical or emotional condition. Managing your current situation, finding better ways and seeking better outcomes for yourself is the primary aim of this book. Through Loss explains the grieving process: what it involves; where it may sometimes take you; ways you can develop to deal with some of its strength, intensity and relentlessness; ways of staying connected with other people; ways of living with the loss and grief that continues in the forefront of minds or as a backdrop to lives, or sometimes both. The authors describe the meaning of loss and grief through the use of the word ‘nonfinite’. They have found this word remarkably apt to describe what, perhaps, you too have discovered about loss and grief. It rules out the unrealistic idea of emotional acceptance, or of returning to the world as it used to be—who we were before. It ushers in the more realistic possibility of adaptation to the world and self that is emerging. Through Loss is a manual you can return to, not only because it may provide some different ways of looking at your personal history and surroundings, but because it may help you to re-validate any natural recurrence of feeling states throughout your life. more...

Price: $24.95