Good Grief: Healing Through the Shadow of Loss [With CD]

A compassionate guide to the experience of loss as an essential growth process

• Explores the nature of loss as a profound mystery shared by all human beings

• Offers sensitive and practical advice for experiencing grief and preparing for the healing journey that follows

• Includes CD of the author reading selections from the text

We grieve only for that which we have loved, and the transient nature of life makes love and loss intimate companions. In Good Grief professional grief educator Deborah Morris Coryell describes grief as the experience of not having anywhere to place our love, of losing a connection, an outlet for our emotion. To heal grief we have to learn how to continue to love in the face of loss.

In this compassionate guide, Coryell gives inspiring examples of how embracing our losses allows us to awaken our most profound connections to other people. Though our society tends to rank losses in a “hierarchy of grief,” she reminds us that all losses must be grieved in their own right and on their own terms, and that we must honor the “small” losses as well as the “big” ones. Paying attention to even the most minute experiences of loss can help us to be more in tune with our responses to the greater ones, allowing us to once again become part of the rhythm of life from which we have become disconnected. This 10th anniversary edition includes a 60-minute CD of the author reading select passages from the text.

Deborah Morris Coryell has worked in the health field developing wellness programs since 1974. She founded the Wellness Education Department for Canyon Ranch Spa Resorts as well as for the Pritikin Longevity Center. She is a visiting faculty member for Dr. Andrew Weil’s program in Integrative Medicine and is cofounder and executive director of the Shiva Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the education and support of those dealing with loss and death, located in San Luis Obispo, California.