Search results for ""Author Alan Wolfelt""

When we’re grieving, we need relief from our pain. Today we often turn to technology for distraction when what we really need is the opposite: generous doses of nature. Studies show that time spent outdoors lowers blood pressure, eases depression and anxiety, bolsters the immune system, lessens stress, and even makes us more compassionate. This guide to the tonic of nature explores why engaging with the natural world is so effective at helping reconcile grief. It also offers suggestions for bringing short bursts of nature time (indoors and outdoors) into your everyday life as well as tips for actively mourning in nature. This book is your shortcut to hope and healing…the natural way.

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For anyone who has experienced the suicide of a loved one, coworker, neighbor, or acquaintance and is seeking information about coping with such a profound loss, this compassionate guide explores the unique responses inherent to their grief. Using the metaphor of the wilderness, the book introduces 10 touchstones to assist the survivor in this naturally complicated and particularly painful journey. The touchstones include opening to the presence of loss, embracing the uniqueness of grief, understanding the six needs of mourning, reaching out for help, and seeking reconciliation over resolution. Learning to identify and rely on each of these touchstones will bring about hope and healing.

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When someone you care about has suffered the death of a loved one or another significant loss, you want to let them know you care. But it can be hard to know what to say to them or to write in a sympathy note. This handy book offers tips for how to talk or write to a grieving person to convey your genuine concern and support. What to say, what not to say, sympathy card etiquette, how to keep in touch, and more are covered in this concise guide written by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors. You’ll turn to this book again and again, not only after a death but during times of divorce or break-ups, serious illness, loss of a pet, job change or loss, traumatic life events, major life transitions that are both happy and sad, and more.

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Acknowledging the unique set of symptoms that accompanies a period of mourning, this guide is the ideal companion to weathering the storm of physical distress. From muscle aches and pains to problems with eating and sleeping, this handbook addresses how the body responds to the impact of profound loss. Low energy, headaches, and other conditions are also taken into account. With 100 ways to help soothe the body and calm the mind, this compassionate study is an excellent resource in understanding the connection between the two.

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When you want to have a baby but are struggling with fertility challenges, it’s normal to experience a range and mixture of ever-changing feelings. These feelings are a natural and necessary form of grief. Whether you continue to hope to give birth or you’ve stopped pursuing pregnancy, this compassionate guide will help you affirm and express your feelings about infertility. Tips for both women and men are included.

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Grief overload is what you feel when you experience too many significant losses all at once, in a relatively short period of time, or cumulatively. In addition to the deaths of loved ones, such losses can also include divorce, estrangement, illness, relocation, job changes, and more. Our minds and hearts have enough trouble coping with a single loss, so when the losses pile up, the grief often seems especially chaotic and defeating. The good news is that through intentional, active mourning, you can and will find your way back to hope and healing. This compassionate guide will show you how.

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Following a helpful introduction about the role of spirituality in grief, this practical mourning guide suggests activities based on meditation, prayer, yoga, and contemplative solitude to help with feelings of despair. For mourners who suffer from anxiety, breathing exercises are recommended, and massage is suggested for those who experience fatigue. Each description of these practices offers a brief activity to try out before continuing to read.

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Addressing the inevitable grief that accompanies the loss of a loved one, this encouraging and supportive reference provides comfort in the midst of overwhelming sadness. Preventing mourners from becoming tangled in a web of despair, this guide shows how the smallest amount of hope can be nurtured into a confident sense of being, lighting the path towards a future of love, joy, and meaning. Featuring a series of reflective passages and quotations, this handbook makes it possible to roll up one’s sleeves and make healing a reality.

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Grief is always difficult, but if yours feels especially painful, stuck, or complex, you may be experiencing complicated grief. Complicated grief is not an illness or disorder. It’s simply normal grief that’s been made more challenging by circumstances that overwhelm the person in mourning. If someone you love has died of suicide, homicide, or accidental causes; if the death was violent or premature or ambiguous; if you are struggling with additional life issues right now, such as health challenges (physical or mental), family problems, or financial stress; if your relationship with the person who died was extremely close or troubled; if you have suffered several losses in quick succession—this concise guide is for you. In this compassionate resource by one of the world’s most beloved grief counselors, you’ll learn how complicated grief is different and what you can do to soften and eventually reconcile it. You’ll inventory the reasons your grief is complicated. You’ll learn the importance of engaging with and expressing your grief. And you’ll find hope for your healing. There is a path through and beyond the wilderness of complicated grief. It’s more arduous than most, but to li

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If someone you love died by homicide, your grief is naturally traumatic and complicated. Not only might your grief journey be intertwined with painful criminal justice proceedings, you may also struggle with understandably intense rage, regret, and despair. It’s natural for homicide survivors to focus on the particular circumstances of the death as well. Whether your loved one’s death was caused by murder or manslaughter, this compassionate guide will help you understand and cope with your difficult grief. It offers suggestions for reconciling yourself to the death on your own terms and finding healing ways for you and your family to mourn. After a homicide death, there is help for those left behind, and there is hope. This book will help see you through.

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We don’t only experience grief after a loss—we often experience it before. If someone we love is seriously ill, or if we’re concerned about upcoming hardships of any kind, we naturally begin to grieve right now. This process of anticipatory grief is normal, but it can also be confusing and painful. Life is change, and change is hard. This book will help see you through.

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The Dementia Care Partner’s Workbook is a new resource from Companion Press that is both a support group participant’s manual and self-study guide for care partners who have a loved one with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia. Its ten concise lessons not only walk you through the types, brain biology, and progressive symptoms of dementia but also offer practical tips for managing behaviors, coping with emotional issues, prioritizing self-care, and planning ahead—everything from diagnosis to end-of-life.The Manual provides general information about establishing and leading support groups, counseling skills for leaders and co-leaders, how to handle challenging group participants, step-by-step instructions on how to run each of the ten individual weekly meetings (including meeting-specific handouts), and lots of practical advice.

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