When Mourning Breaks

Sooner or later, heartache comes to everyone. Sadness, sorrow, disappointment, mourning, grief—whatever people call it—is a fact of life. People need help in knowing how to deal with grief, how to work through it, and how to grow because of it. In When Grief Breaks Your Heart, best-selling author James W. Moore explores two major questions: • What does faith say about the grief experience? • How does faith help mend a broken heart? The book, therefore, is about grief and grace. Moore shows how these two words belong together: • God’s grace sustains people through the grief experience • God’s love supports people when they have nowhere else to turn • God’s grace brings the healing touch people so desperately need when their hearts are crushed. The book is appropriate for anyone who is experiencing grief. Pastors especially will find it helpful to keep a quantity on hand to pass out to people during grief experiences and grief counseling.

Real stories and real feedback on what should be said, what should be kept to yourself, and what can be done when trying to support someone you care about as they navigate loss. Breaking Sad helps us start conversations through its pages of personal stories and suggestions from everyday survivors—bringing us all to a place where we can more comfortably offer support and caring to people when they need it most. Featuring stories from Montel Williams, Olivia Newton-John, Scott Hamilton, Giuliana Rancic, Valerie Harper, and more!

A psychologist and bereaved parent offers strategies by which parents can accept and integrate the effects of trauma into their lives. When the Bough Breaks: Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter is a poignant and sensitive book that offers bereaved parents the comfort of learning how others have navigated this rutted road. It is the first book to assess the enduring consequences of loss and the first to shed light on the evolution in values, perceptions, and relationships that follow the death of a child. With great honesty and empathy, it acknowledges that no family ever “recovers” from this tragedy, but rather adapts to a life irretrievably altered. Praise for When the Bough Breaks “Quite simply the best book I know of to help bereaved parents—clear, compassionate, and absolutely on target.” —Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People? and How Good Do We Have to Be? “A sensitive and honest description of the overwhelming journey bereaved families endure as they struggle to adjust to their new lives. Not only is this one of the best books I’ve ever read for bereaved families, but it also offers some real insights for those who care about bereaved parents and siblings.” —Diana Cunningham, executive director of The Compassionate Friends

Everybody is destined to take this journey. Brothers, mothers, lawyers, teachers, spouses, pastors, children each will come to a day when suddenly a loved one dies and the grief journey begins. This is a trip nobody looks forward to taking. It is a lonely, one-way road that must be traveled by placing one foot in front of the other. There are no shortcuts, U-turns, or express lanes. In the beginning, the road is so clouded over with emotions, we cannot see the end or how anything good can ever come from our loss. Fortunately, God can. Mourning Break offers hope through personal stories and scriptural guidance for how to move forward with life. You will be able to reflect on God's Word as it applies just to you. Take a break from your grief, and be reminded that joy, indeed, comes in the mourning.

"Beautifully written and wise … [Martin Prechtel] offers stories that are precious and life-sustaining. Read carefully, and listen deeply."—Mary Oliver, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, "Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses." Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing. According to Prechtel, "When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost, the grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren." These "ghosts," he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors, which the Maya refer to as "solidified tears," or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collective, unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself, and the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering. At base, this "little book," as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts in all of us.

Life is both wonderful and devastating. It graces us with joy, and it breaks our hearts. If your heart is broken, this book is for you. Whether you're struggling with a death, break-up, illness, unwanted life change, or loss of any kind, this book will help you both understand your predicament and figure out what to do about it. Loss may be an unavoidable part of human life, but it doesn't have to prevent you from living well. You can and will survive this. Actually, if you adopt this guide's basic principles, revealed and tested by one of the world's most beloved grief counselors, you will even go on to thrive. Let's get mending.

A poetic picture book about being able to say goodbye to those we love, while holding them in memory.

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.

A book in which some of our best writers address their own losses — and help us endure our own… A heartbreaking, comforting and beautiful collection of true stories about grief and mourning from some of Canada’s best known writers. When Jean Baird’s daughter, Bronwyn, died suddenly, Jean’s deep instinct was to turn to books to help her in her time of sudden loss. Although she found that the thoughts of counselors, psychologists, Buddhists, and self-help gurus were perhaps some help, the works that truly reached to the heart of the matter were by literary writers, largely from the UK and the US. Scanning the Canadian landscape, Jean and her husband George Bowering found elegies and tributes, but little from our writers about the person who is left behind to mourn or what it takes to endure grieving. The Heart Does Break — an anthology of twenty original pieces — sets out to fill that gap.