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The Probability of Everything
By Sarah Everett. 2023
“One of the best books I have read this year (maybe ever).” —Colby Sharp, Nerdy Book ClubNPR Books We Love…
2023 | Publishers Weekly Best of 2023 | Winner of the Governor General's Literary Awards for Young People's LiteratureA heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever.Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It's how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out.But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84.7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi’s life as she knows it will end.But over the course of the four days, even facts don’t feel true to Kemi anymore. The new town she moved to that was supposed to be “better for her family” isn’t very welcoming. And Amplus-68 is taking over her life, but others are still going to school and eating at their favorite diner like nothing has changed. Is Kemi the only one who feels like the world is ending?With the days numbered, Kemi decides to put together a time capsule that will capture her family’s truth: how creative her mother is, how inquisitive her little sister can be, and how much Kemi's whole world revolves around her father. But no time capsule can change the truth behind all of it, that Kemi must face the most inevitable and hardest part of life: saying goodbye."My heart hurt as I raced through the last chapters of this unique book that shines a light on family, friends, grief, and love." —Lisa Yee, author of Maizy Chen's Last ChanceFirst published in 1996. One spring morning a gardener noticed an unfamiliar seedling poking through the ground near the rocky,…
untidy edge of his garden ... So begins the parable that sets the tone for this inspiring, heartfelt new book for caregivers to bereaved children. By comparing grief counseling to gardening, Dr. Wolfelt frees caregivers of the traditional medical model of bereavement care, which implies that grief is an illness that must be cured. He suggests that caregivers instead embrace a more holistic view of the normal, natural and necessary process that is grief. He then explores the ways in which bereaved children can not only heal but grow through grief. Healing the Bereaved Child also contains chapter after chapter of practical caregiving guidelines: • How a grieving child thinks, feels and mourns: What makes each child's grief unique; How the bereaved child heals: the six needs of mourning; Foundations of counseling bereaved children; Counseling techniques (play, art, writing, nature and many others; more than ,15 pages!); A family systems approach to counseling; Support groups for bereaved kids, including a 10 session model; Helping grieving children at school, including a crisis response team model; Helping the grieving adolescent; Self-care for the child’s bereavement caregiver. A must-read for child counselors, hospice caregivers, funeral directors, school counselors and teachers, clergy, parents-anyone who wants to offer support and companionship to children affected by the death of someone loved.Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, And Application (Death, Education, Aging and Health Care)
By Robert A. Neimeyer. 1994
Presenting a broad coverage of this major area of studies on death and dying, this book provides a systematic presentation…
of the six most widely used and best validated measures of death anxiety, threat and fear. These chapters consider the available data on the psychometric properties of each instrument and summarize research using them, and also supply a copy of the instrument with scoring keys - to facilitate their use. In addition, other chapters make use of the instrumentation by pursuing questions of applied significance in various health care settings nursing homes, psychotherapy, death education, near death experiences, persons with AIDS, experiences of bereaved young adults.; An introductory chapter introduces the major philosophical and psychological theories of the causes and consequences of death anxiety in adult life, and a closing chapter gives an overview of death education and how this affects attitudes towards death and dying.Encountering Death
By Ira David Welch, Richard F. Zawistoski, David W. Smart. 1991
First published in 1991. The intent of this book is not to replace standard textbooks on death and dying. It…
is meant to be used as a supplement to the texts which provide the academic information necessary to any real understanding and examination of societal assumptions and attitudes toward death and dying. This book presents a number of stimulating and provocative activities that will help class members confront death and dying in a more personal and lasting manner. This book provides the information necessary to any real understanding and examination of societal assumptions and attitudes toward death and dying. These stimulating and provocative activities will help class members confront death and dying in a more personal and lasting manner.Violence And Suicidality: Clinical And Experimental Psychiatry
By Robert Plutchik, Alan Apter, Herman M. van Praag. 1990
First published in 1990. This monograph series, published under the auspices of the Department of Psychiatry of the Albert Einstein…
College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center, is meant to keep track of important developments in the profession pf psychiatry, to summarize what has been achieved in particular fields, and to bring together the viewpoints obtained from disparate vantage points-in short, to capture some of the excitement ongoing in modern psychiatry, both in its clinical and experimental dimensions. Violence and suicidality have always been major public health issues, but it is only fairly recently that they have become the focus of some major clinical and biological research efforts. This is due partly to a large increase in suicide and homicide rates in the young and partly to a realization that effective management of psychiatric patients cannot be based on categorical diagnosis alone, but requires an understanding of the patient's entire behavioral profile. This volume attempts to describe some of the most important advances in the psychobiological understanding of the behavioral dimensions of suicide and violence that have been made over the last 10 years. It is comprised of papers presented at two symposia held under the auspices of the department of psychiatry of Albert Einstein College of Medicine that were devoted to the topics of violence and suicide.A History of Death in 17th Century England
By Ben Norman. 2020
A look at the constant confrontation with mortality the English experienced in a time of plague, smallpox, civil war, and…
other calamities. In the lives of the rich and poor alike in seventeenth-century England, death was a hovering presence, much more visible in everyday existence than it is today. It is a highly important and surprisingly captivating part of the epic story of England during the turbulent years of the 1600s. This book guides readers through the subject using a chronological approach, as would have been experienced by those living in the country at the time, beginning with the myriad causes of death, including rampant disease, war, and capital punishment, and finishing with an exploration of posthumous commemoration, including mass interments in times of disease, the burial of suicides, and the unconventional laying to rest of English Catholics. Although the people of the seventeenth century did not fully realize it, when it came to the confrontation of mortality they were living in wildly changing times.This compassionate guide through the grieving process offers wisdom, hope, and healing meditations for those facing a difficult loss. …
The losses we face impact us in different ways, but there are certain steps we naturally take on a journey that ultimately leads to healing. A grief expert who has experienced devastating loss, Molly Fumia offers wisdom and insight to accompany us through these steps in this grief recovery handbook. As Fumia explains, the grieving process is a slow one, but it is only by going through each of the steps that recovery is achieved. With this in mind, she provides meditative reflections for readers to sit with. By encouraging us to take the necessary time to contemplate our feelings, Fumia opens a space for us to face our grief and equips us to handle what comes with that challenge. Fumia provides a deeply thoughtful roadmap for the difficult journey we face after profound loss in our lives. In leading us through the stages of grief, from near disbelief and denial to acceptance and growth, this meditation book provides a helping hand to all those lost in grief.Preventing Adolescent Suicide
By Dave Capuzzi, Larry Golden. 1988
First published in 1988. Many people absolutely reject suicide under any circumstances. However. most of us can sympathize with the…
suicidal motives. let's say. of an elderly person afflicted with terminal cancer. But it disturbs the core of our being that a child would find this life so empty of hope that death would be preferable. Teenagers are so full of pain. pleasure. sexuality. energy. curiosity. idealism. bravado. vulnerability. rebellion. and promise! This book comes to grips with the reality of adolescent suicide. In the book are fifteen chapters organized under five major parts.Scenes with My Son: Love and Grief in the Wake of Suicide
By Robert Hubbard. 2023
A celebration and an elegy, Scenes with My Son sensitively renders the terrible privilege of grief in the wake of suicide.After years…
of battling clinical depression exacerbated by autism, Auggie Hubbard died by suicide at the age of 19. In this poignant tribute to his son, Robert Hubbard—a theatre scholar and actor—stages Auggie&’s life in a series of vivid and tender scenes: Auggie&’s insatiable hunger for Accelerated Reader points. His tireless lightsaber practice in the local park. His sonorous tuba practice in the ward of his inpatient program. Through these anecdotes of Auggie&’s life and the days following his death, readers journey with a family shaken by mental illness and share in their hard-won joys in defiance of depression.Refusing easy answers and clichés about &“God&’s plan,&” Hubbard unflinchingly asks: Does faith matter amid such tragedy? What do you do when awareness isn&’t enough? When you&’ve tried so hard to keep your child safe, but your efforts fail? His honesty and vulnerability—and his tender portrait of Auggie—are gifts to all who live with their own questions in the wake of a loved one&’s death.Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance bridges literary studies and psychology to evaluate contemporary grief memoirs for use by…
bereaved and non-bereaved individuals. This volume positions the grief memoir within life writing and bereavement studies through examination of the genre’s characteristics, definitions, and functions. The book presents the views of memoirists, helping professionals, community members, and university students on writing and reading as self-expressive, self-searching, and grief-witnessing acts after the loss of a loved one. Utilizing new data from surveys assessing grief support and bibliotherapy, this text discusses the compatibility of grief memoirs with contemporary grief theories and the role of interdisciplinary methods in assisting the bereaved. Grief Memoirs: Cultural, Supportive, and Therapeutic Significance will help educators advance the understanding and interpretation of loss within psychology, literature, and medical humanities classrooms.Exploring End of Life Experience: Facing Death (Routledge Key Themes in Health and Society)
By Helen Besemeres. 2024
The groundbreaking contribution made by this unique book draws on the experiences recorded by five people who are facing death –…
Jenny Diski, Philip Gould, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Mayne and Cory Taylor. Analysing the key themes that emerge from a psychodynamic perspective, the book describes how the memoirists respond to the first shock of receiving a terminal diagnosis, how they meet the challenge of continuing an active life when the illusion of an open-ended future has gone, and finally, how they struggle with accepting death as it overtakes them. The author argues that the ability to accept personal death is the key to resolving the paradox of our need to survive at all costs, while at the same time, however much we might deny it, we know that we must die. In a society where death and dying occur largely out of sight, this book provides information about what it is like to die – physically, psychologically and emotionally – and invites us to think about coming to terms with death. Exploring End of Life Experience is an important contribution to the interdisciplinary literature on death and dying, relevant to scholars and practitioners in medicine, nursing, psychology, and the wider medical humanities.A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people—morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners—who work in it…
and what led them there.We are surrounded by death. It is in our news, our nursery rhymes, our true-crime podcasts. Yet from a young age, we are told that death is something to be feared. How are we supposed to know what we’re so afraid of, when we are never given the chance to look?Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear.Through Campbell’s incisive and candid interviews with these people who see death every day, she asks: Why would someone choose this kind of life? Does it change you as a person? And are we missing something vital by letting death remain hidden? A dazzling work of cultural criticism, All the Living and the Dead weaves together reportage with memoir, history, and philosophy, to offer readers a fascinating look into the psychology of Western death.Prophecy
By Sandro Veronesi. 2023
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE HUMMINGBIRD'The dawn will still be far away, and you will lift your eyes to…
the sky, and the sky will be as black as sackcloth and ashes'Addressed to a 'you' that encompasses the author, the reader and all of us at once, narrated in the future tense of apocalyptic texts and inspired by Sandro Veronesi's own experience of caring for his elderly parents, Prophecy is a powerful and unforgettable story of immense grief and infinite love.A visionary take on life by one of today's most remarkable writers.PRAISE FOR SANDRO VERONESI'S THE HUMMINGBIRDWinner of the Premio Strega | A Guardian and Spectator Book of the Year'Magnificent'GUARDIAN'A towering achievement'FINANCIAL TIMES'Inventive, bold, unexpected'SUNDAY TIMES'Masterly'IAN MCEWAN'Extraordinary'HOWARD JACOBSON'A real masterpiece'LEILA SLIMANIFrom New York Times bestselling author Kris Carr, comes a transformational book about love, loss, and all the life-changing insights…
we receive when we embrace them.A few years ago, Kris Carr&’s world was falling apart. Her father was dying, she had to pivot her business because of the pandemic, and she was on the verge of reaching her twenty-year milestone of living with an incurable Stage IV cancer diagnosis.While sitting in a CVS parking lot, she broke down, finally allowing herself to feel the massive stress and sadness she had been suppressing in order to seem strong for those around her, and for herself.And then she asked herself, &“If embracing my intense emotions helped me feel even the slightest bit better, why was I so determined to avoid them? And given how all-encompassing this hint of catharsis felt, where else in my life have I been avoiding grief?&”In this book, Kris shares her (embarrassing, painful, helpful, hilarious, and sometimes inappropriate) stories and observations about what to expect when you&’re not expecting your world to fall apart.If your life has been turned upside down—whether it be the dissolving of a relationship or marriage, the end of a job or career, any other number of significant unexpected transitions. . . or, like Kris, you are wrestling with the pain that comes from an illness or the death of a loved one, this book is filled with real-life experiences, practices, and insights that can help you feel better—not cured—but better.It will provide comfort and community as you learn that these big messy emotions can be a catalyst to take inventory of your life, figure out what matters most, and reset. . . because as Kris says, &“when we&’re brave enough to tend to our hearts: Our messy emotions can teach us how to be free––not free from pain, but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.&”Normal Broken: The Grief Companion for When It's Time to Heal but You're Not Sure You Want To
By Kelly Cervantes. 2023
None of us make it through life without experiencing loss that leaves us feeling broken. That&’s what makes grief so…
normal.In Normal Broken, Kelly Cervantes isn&’t trying to tell you what to do, how to feel, or the right way to heal. She&’s also not flinging sunny thoughts, vibes, and prayers at you. After losing her daughter to epilepsy, she knows that grief is many things. It&’s weird. It sucks. It&’s all-encompassing. Something everyone will have to deal with. But never linear. Just as what we are grieving varies, so do our journeys to process it.Normal Broken was born out of this desire to meet people where they are in their grief journeys, to lend a hand, or maybe to just sit in the dark with them. To acknowledge your brokenness and to feel broken together—never pressured to &“move on&” or &“think positive.&”With chapters that can be read in any order, Normal Broken is divided into &“moments&” of grief that will allow you to choose what you need at any given time—such as:When you&’re not sure if you want to heal When your greatest fear is socializingWhen you&’re facing anniversaries and other meaningful datesWhen you&’re ready to be okay Kelly also shares stories from her ongoing journey, along with advice she wishes someone had given her, and simple exercises to help you reflect on where you are. Normal Broken is designed to serve as a companion through your own grief journey, whether you are mourning the loss of a child, a friend, a family member, or anyone special in your life.More Than We Expected: Five Years With a Remarkable Child
By James G. Robinson. 2023
&“No matter how much I enjoyed parenthood, I found myself having to accept its fundamental truth: that nothing ever turns…
out quite as you&’d expect.&”It was a journey that most parents would hope to avoid: a son born with a congenital heart defect, a fateful decision to take a family trip abroad, and an emergency hospitalization that left them stranded on the other side of the world with no obvious way home. Despite these difficult circumstances, More Than We Expected is not a tragedy. Instead, this memoir offers valuable lessons about the privilege of parenthood and the practice of medicine: the mysterious ways in which the body forms and grows, giving life; how we find the faith to live with our decisions, even if the consequences are beyond our control; and a family&’s extraordinary capacity—when something goes wrong—to compensate and heal. More Than We Expected is a story of finding strength in the most unexpected places. Our children have a special ability to reveal the goodness in the world—their eyes a window to a life full of wonder. Like them, this book is a vivid reminder of what it means to be human—a miraculous, inexplicable gift, however fleeting.American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century
By Shannon Lee Dawdy. 2021
A mesmerizing trip across America to investigate the changing face of death in contemporary lifeDeath in the United States is…
undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Your family can incorporate your remains into jewelry, shotgun shells, paperweights, and artwork. Cremations have more than doubled, and DIY home funerals and green burials are on the rise. American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy’s lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife.As an anthropologist and archaeologist, Dawdy knows that how a society treats its dead yields powerful clues about its beliefs and values. As someone who has experienced loss herself, she knows there is no way to tell this story without also reexamining her own views about death and dying. In this meditative and gently humorous book, Dawdy embarks on a transformative journey across the United States, talking to funeral directors, death-care entrepreneurs, designers, cemetery owners, death doulas, and ordinary people from all walks of life. What she discovers is that, by reinventing death, Americans are reworking their ideas about personhood, ritual, and connection across generations. She also confronts the seeming contradiction that American death is becoming at the same time more materialistic and more spiritual.Written in conjunction with a documentary film project, American Afterlives features images by cinematographer Daniel Zox that provide their own testament to our rapidly changing attitudes toward death and the afterlife.We're Going Home: A True Story of Life and Death
By Cynthia Thayer. 2023
They were an unlikely pair: a “fast and frantic” woman and a steady, “pickin’ at it” man. And even though…
both had been raised in cities and knew nothing about farming, Bill and Cynthia Thayer moved to Maine, started an organic farm, and made it work for more than forty years. Then a mysterious disaster strikes and Bill is found lying in the road. In We’re Going Home, Cynthia relates the aftermath of the accident, interspersed with recollections of her life with her beloved “Farmer Bill,” from their first meeting to their final goodbye—and her life beyond.There Is No Blue
By Martha Baillie. 2023
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2023Martha Baillie’s richly layered response to her mother’s passing, her father's…
life, and her sister’s suicide is an exploration of how the body, the rooms we inhabit, and our languages offer the psyche a home, if only for a time. Three essays, three deaths. The first is the death of the author’s mother, a protracted disappearance, leaving space for thoughtfulness and ritual: the washing of her body, the making of a death mask. The second considers the author’s father, his remoteness, his charm, a lacuna at the centre of the family even before his death, earlier than her mother’s. And then, the shocking death of the author’s sister, a visual artist and writer living with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, who writes three reasons to die on her bedroom wall and then takes her life."Martha Baillie’s novels are thrillingly, joyously singular, that rare combination of sui generis and just plain generous. That There Is No Blue, her memoir, is all of those things too, is no surprise; still, she has gone somewhere extraordinary. This triptych of essays, which exquisitely unfolds the “disobedient tale” of the lives and deaths of her mother, her father, and her sister, is a meditation on the mystery and wonder of grief and art making and home and memory itself. It made me think of kintsugi, the Japanese art of repair, in which the mending is not hidden but featured and beautifully illuminated. Baillie’s variety of attention, carved out of language, is tenderness, is love." – Maud Casey, author of City of Incurable Women"This is a stunning memoir, intense and meticulous in its observations of family life. Baillie subtly interrogates and conveys the devastating mistranslations that take place in childhood, the antagonism and porousness of siblings, and the tragedy of schizophrenia as it unfolds. I couldn’t put it down." – Dr. Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad and Everyday Madness"Exquisite." – Souvankham Thammavongsa, author of How to Pronounce Knife"I am grateful for this profound meditation on family and loss.” – Charlie Kaufman, filmmaker"This strange, unsettling memoir of outer life and inner life and their bizarre twining captures the author’s identity by way of her mother’s death, her sister’s failing battle with mental illness, and the mysterious figure of her father. It combines anguished guilt, deep tenderness, and bemused affection in highly evocative, often disturbing prose. Its brave honesty is amplified by a persistent lyricism; its undercurrent of fear is uplifted by a surprising, resilient hopefulness. It is both a plea for exoneration and an act of exoneration, an authentic meditation on the terrible difficulty of being human." – Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday DemonChildhood & Death in Victorian England
By Sarah Seaton. 2017
A vivid and graphic survey of the casualties of childhood during the Victorian Era through detailed and never-before-seen firsthand accounts.…
Take a fascinating journey into the real lives of Victorian children—how they lived, worked, played, and far too often, died before reaching adulthood. These true accounts, many of which had been hidden for more than a century, reveal the hardship and cruel conditions endured by young people living through the tumult of the Industrial Revolution. Here are the lives of a traveling fair child, an apprentice at sea, and a young trapper, as well as the children of prostitutes, servant girls, debutantes, and married women, all unified in the tragedy of early death. Drawing on actual cases of infanticide and baby farming, historian Sarah Seaton uncovers the dismal realities of the Victorian Era&’s unwed mothers, whose shame at being pregnant drove them to carry out horrendous crimes. With the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834, the future for some poor children changed—but not for the better. Yet it was the tragic loss of these many young lives that lead to essential reforms, and eventually to today&’s more enlightened views on childhood.