When it comes to healing after the death of someone loved, our culture has it all wrong. We're told to be strong when what we really need is to be vulnerable. We're told to think positive when what we really need is to wallow in the pain. And we're told to seek closure when what we really need is to welcome our natural and necessary grief. Dr. Wolfelt's new book seeks to dispel these misconceptions that we hold on to so tightly and help people everywhere mourn well so they can live fuller lives. The Paradoxes of Mourning discusses three truths that grieving people used to know and respect but in the last century, seem to have forgotten: 1. You must make friends with the darkness before you can enter the light. 2. You must go backward before you can go forward. 3. You must say hello before you can say goodbye. In the tradition of the Four Agreements and the Seven Habits, this compassionate and inspiring guidebook by North America's most beloved grief counselor gives you the three keys that unlock the door to hope and healing.

Recognizing how the need to grieve is anchored in one’s capacity to care for someone, this calming guide contends that the act of mourning is healthy—and necessary—following a life-changing loss. The very foundation of attachment is reflected upon, illustrating devotion as both the primary cause of grief and a crucial source of emotional recovery. Exploring the essential principles of love as well as the reasons behind it, this heartfelt handbook makes it possible to embrace a trying but vital process.

"Anguished, beautifully written... The Long Goodbye is an elegiac depiction of drama as old as life." -- The New York Times Book Review From one of America's foremost young literary voices, a transcendent portrait of the unbearable anguish of grief and the enduring power of familial love. What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of fifty-five, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief-its monumental agony and microscopic intimacies-an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond. O'Rourke's story is one of a life gone off the rails, of how watching her mother's illness-and separating from her husband-left her fundamentally altered. But it is also one of resilience, as she observes her family persevere even in the face of immeasurable loss. With lyricism and unswerving candor, The Long Goodbye conveys the fleeting moments of joy that make up a life, and the way memory can lead us out of the jagged darkness of loss. Effortlessly blending research and reflection, the personal and the universal, it is not only an exceptional memoir, but a necessary one.

After a loved one dies, each day can be a struggle. But each day, you can also find comfort and understanding in this daily companion. With one brief entry for every day of the calendar year, this little book by beloved grief counselor Dr. Alan Wolfelt offers small, one-day-at-a-time doses of guidance and healing. Each entry includes an inspiring or soothing quote followed by a short discussion of the day's theme. This compassionate gem of a book will accompany you.

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.

Mourning Glory sheds light on troubled times as it shows how passion and prejudice, grief and denial all contributed to the continuing creation of a revolutionary legacy that still affects our understanding of the nature of language and history.

In Mourning Becomes the Law, Gillian Rose takes us beyond the impasse of post-modernism or 'despairing rationalism withour reason'. Arguing that the post-modern search for a 'new ethics' and ironic philosophy are incoherent, she breathes new life into the debates concerning power and domination, transcendence and eternity. Mourning Becomes the Law is the philosophical counterpart to Gillian Rose's highly acclaimed memoir Love's Work. She extends similar clarity and insight to discussions of architecture, cinema, painting and poetry, through which relations between the formation of the individual and the theory of justice are connected. At the heart of this reconnection lies a reflection on the significance of the Holocaust and Judaism. Mourning Becomes the Law reinvents the classical analogy of the soul, the city and the sacred. It returns philosophy, Nietzsche's 'bestowing virtue', to the pulse of our intellectual and political culture.