Facing Change: Falling Apart and Coming Together Again in the Teen Years

This informative book helps teens understand their losses and discover creative coping strategies to deal with them. Facing Change is unique in that all kinds of losses experienced by teenagers are listed and validated. Includes: Recognizing and understanding loss, Common ways loss is experienced, Creative coping choices, Charting, finding, and using a support system, Things you can do to help yourself through grief, Finding and Using help from others, Bouncing Back - The art of growing through grief, Resiliency - The art of grieving and growing, Coping strategies that work, 75 ways to help yourself, How to know you're making progress.

Donna O Toole is a writer, counselor, storyteller, and teacher specializing in Loss, Grief, and Growth Counseling. She developed and directed Lapeer Area Hospice, The Michigan Bereavement Project and Creative Living Training, a statewide pilot program offering workshops for parents of terminally ill children, and has written and published books and videos related to grief, loss and personal growth. She has received many honors and distinctions including the Presidential Award of Excellence for Training and Program Development from the National Hospice Organization, Volunteer of the Year awards from the Governor of Michigan and the Michigan Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and was a delegate to the White House Conference on Handicapping Conditions. Donna considers a divorce, the deaths of Caren, her infant daughter, and son Matthew, who died at age 21 of a long-term chronic illness, her deepest sources of learning, challenge and growth. Through her losses she has been moved to a deeper sense of connectedness to all of life. She lives with her husband Ron in Celo Community Inc., Burnsville, NC, where she is the founder and president of Compassion Books, Inc., a national resource center that focuses on loss, grief and growth.