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Showing 881 - 900 of 2451 items
By Alexandra Fuller. 2019
From the bestselling author of Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, a warm and candid memoir of grief, a…
deeply-felt tribute to her father, and a compulsively readable continuation of a brilliant series of books on her family.You can survive more than you'd believe; Dad had told me that. He'd also told me you can survive more than you want; but it's not always up to you, not the enormous things, those are beyond all control.When her father becomes gravely ill on holiday in Budapest, Alexandra Fuller rushes to join her mother at his bedside. Defiant until the end, together they see out his last days, and then they must navigate the bleak comedy of organizing a cremation and the transport of ashes back to their family home in Africa. As they make this journey and begin to grieve together, Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather her father's loss, she will need to become the parts of him that she misses most. A master of time and memory, Fuller moves seamlessly between the days and months following her father's death, and her memories of a childhood spent running after him in southern and central Africa. And her own life begins to change. She faces seemingly irreparable family fallout, new love found and lost, and eventually further, unimaginable bereavement, holding fast to the lessons her father taught her about how to survive whatever life throws at you. Writing with reverent irreverence of the rollicking misadventures of her mother and father, bursting with pandemonium and tragedy, here is a story of joy, resilience, and vitality, from a writer at the very height of her powers.By P. M. Atwater. 2000
A groundbreaking study of the lifelong effects of near-death experiences in the newly born, babies, toddlers, and children up to…
age five • Draws on interviews with nearly 400 childhood experiencers, both fully matured and young, as well as more than 40 years of NDE research involving over 5,000 people • Reveals how those who experience a near-death state at a young age are profoundly affected for the rest of their lives, including developing psychic and intuitive abilities, “wisdom beyond their years,” and a pervasive feeling of being “homesick for heaven” • Investigates the wide-awake consciousness of babies being born, womb memories, and the experience of being alive on the other side of death In this major study of near-death experiences with the newly born, babies, toddlers, and children up to age five, NDE expert P. M. H. Atwater reveals how those who experience a near-death state or other worlds at a very young age are profoundly affected for the rest of their lives, including developing psychic and intuitive abilities, higher intelligence and “wisdom beyond their years,” and a pervasive feeling of being “homesick for heaven.” Drawing on interviews with nearly 400 childhood experiencers, both fully matured and young, Atwater explores their accounts of what it is like to be alive on the other side of death as well as what makes them different from others, complemented by a deep analysis of statistical evidence from her more than 40 years of NDE research involving more than 5,000 people. She shows how, in contrast to adult experiencers, child and infant experiencers of near-death states cannot compare “before” with “after” as adults do, because they don’t have a “before.” The world of these “forever angels” is the life continuum, a stream of consciousness that has always existed and always will. Integrating “where they once were” with “where they now are” is a lifelong challenge. The author explores how those who have a near-death experience very early in life, or even in utero, grow up “different”--sometimes geniuses, sometimes lost, yet unusually psychic and smart, all at the same time. She reveals how these experiences and their knowledge of the afterlife affect the individual in many areas, including family life, dating, health, education, and spirituality, as well as increasing the experiencer’s potential for thoughts of suicide, out-of-body experiences, and PTSD symptoms. Examining the forever angels’ memories of the womb, birth, early childhood, and the other world, Atwater investigates the wide-awake consciousness of babies being born, the vivid recall of mature childhood near-death experiencers, and how memory of the life-continuum never fades, nor does the desire to go back.By Norman M. Brier. 2020
This book provides practical evidence-based strategies that will help clinicians across a broad range of disciplines to address and discuss…
the main issues an aging person is likely to face and overcome if they are to maintain a sense of well-being as they age. Based on an extensive body of research, the relevant up-to-date knowledge for each topic is concisely presented, followed by practical, concrete, evidence-based suggestions as to how a healthcare provider might acknowledge and create a partnership with their clients to help the person increase their sense of well-being. Each chapter contains a list of key terms, a summary, and case examples that illustrate in realistic and humanistic ways how a person might present the concern being addressed and intervene. The specific challenges associated with aging that are addressed include: anxiety attached to an increasing awareness of mortality; retirement; the increasing number of losses of significant others; regrets; memory loss; the arrival of old-old age and feelings of loneliness, mattering insufficiently, and a loss of purpose; and finally, dealing with imminent death. This book is suitable for all health professionals who provide clinical services or advice to older adults including physicians (i.e. particularly in the specialties of internal medicine, family medicine, geriatrics, and geriatric psychiatry), nurses, social workers, psychologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and audiologists.By Liz Levine. 2020
A genuinely moving, funny, and inventive account of loss and grief, mental illness and suicide, from film and TV producer…
Liz Levine (Story of a Girl), written in the aftermath of the deaths of her sister and best friend.I feel like I might be a terrible person to be laughing in these moments. But it turns out, I&’m not alone. In November of 2016, Liz Levine&’s younger sister, Tamara, reached a breaking point after years of living with mental illness. In the dark hours before dawn, she sent a final message to her family then killed herself. In Nobody Ever Talks About Anything But the End, Liz weaves the story of what happened to Tamara with another significant death—that of Liz&’s childhood love, Judson, to cancer. She writes about her relationship with Judson, Tamara&’s struggles, the conflicts that arise in a family of challenging personalities, and how death casts a long shadow. This memorable account of life and loss is haunting yet filled with dark humor—Tamara emails her family when Trump is elected to check if she&’s imagining things again, Liz discovers a banana has been indicted as a whistleblower in an alleged family conspiracy, and a little niece declares Tamara&’s funeral the &“most fun ever!&” With honesty, Liz exposes the raw truths about grief and mourning that we often shy away from—and almost never share with others. And she reveals how, in the midst of death, life—with all its messy complications—must also be celebrated.By Rebecca Abrams. 2013
The death of a parent marks an emotional and psychological watershed in a person's life. For children and teenagers, the…
loss of a parent if not handled sensitively can be a lasting trauma, and for adults too, a parent's death can be a tremendous blow. When Parents Die speaks to bereaved children of all ages. Rebecca Abrams draws on her personal and professional understandings of parental loss, as well as the experiences of many other adults, teenagers and children, to provide the reader with an honest, compassionate and insightful exploration of the experience of losing a parent. The book covers the entire course of grieving, from the immediate aftermath of a parent's death through to the point of recovery, paying particular attention to the many circumstances that can prolong and complicate mourning, including sudden death. An indispensible aid to the bereaved and the many professionals who work with them, this book is written in a clear and sympathetic style. It has been fully revised for this third edition to take recent research into account.Hundreds of thousands of individuals perished in the epic conflict of the American Civil War. As battles raged and the…
specter of death and dying hung over the divided nation, the living worked not only to bury their dead but also to commemorate them. President Abraham Lincoln&’s Gettysburg Address perhaps best voiced the public yearning to memorialize the war dead. His address marked the beginning of a new tradition of commemorating American soldiers and also signaled a transformation in the relationship between the government and the citizenry through an embedded promise and obligation for the living to remember the dead. In Death at the Edges of Empire Shannon Bontrager examines the culture of death, burial, and commemoration of American war dead. By focusing on the Civil War, the Spanish-Cuban-American War, the Philippine-American War, and World War I, Bontrager produces a history of collective memories of war expressed through American cultural traditions emerging within broader transatlantic and transpacific networks. Examining the pragmatic collaborations between middle-class Americans and government officials negotiating the contradictory terrain of empire and nation, Death at the Edges of Empire shows how Americans imposed modern order on the inevitability of death as well as how they used the war dead to reimagine political identities and opportunities into imperial ambitions.By John Eric Baugher. 2019
Integrating two decades of hospice care and social science research, this heartfelt book offers practical lessons on the transformative possibilities…
of end-of-life caregiving. Contemplative Caregiving is an indispensable guide for end-of-life caregivers and for anyone seeking to transform experiences of caregiving and grief. Rather than leading to burnout and despair, caring for those who are suffering and dying can enrich our lives with meaning and further our own spiritual growth and resilience. Whether you are caring for a loved one with cancer or dementia, grieving a sudden traumatic loss, or even serving time in prison, Contemplative Caregiving offers encouragement for showing up to the fullness of life in whatever those circumstances may be. Healing, compassion, and spiritual growth are available to us all, in this lifetime, right now. Baugher’s unique style of integrating social scientific research on caregiving and grief with teachings from Buddhist, contemplative Christian, and other wisdom traditions illuminates how we each can transform experiences of loss and suffering into a path of compassion. Contemplative Caregiving weaves together powerful stories from interviews with diverse hospice caregivers—Vietnam veterans, nurses, housewives, Catholic nuns, those convicted of murder—with the author’s own journey toward wholeness in the face of grief and traumatic loss, including the murder of his own mother. Through rich storytelling, teachings on compassion, and skillful contemplative exercises, Baugher invites you to join him in exploring the healing power of contemplative caregiving.By Kirsten DeLeo. 2019
A trusted companion and go-to resource for everyone supporting someone at the end of life--from the moment we first learn…
that someone is dying through the time of death and beyond.Present through the End offers the guidance and essential wisdom we need when we are struggling to support someone who is nearing death. This book helps us meet the many challenges ahead and navigate through difficult times with clarity and kindness--both for the person who is dying and also for ourselves. Inspired by decades of experience caring for the dying and years teaching contemplative care around the world, Kirsten DeLeo shares down-to-earth advice and offers short, simple "on the spot" tools to help us handle our emotions, deal with difficult relationships, talk about spiritual matters, practice self-care, listen fully, and more. This book offers insight and encouragement when we are unsure what to do or say and shows us how to be present even though we may feel utterly helpless, love when loss is just around the corner, and be fully alive to each moment as time runs out.By Anthony Griffith, Brigitte Travis-Griffin. 2019
“I was living every comic’s dream…with a nightmare attached.”Anthony Griffith, a stand-up comic from Chicago’s South Side, has lived on…
the borderline of comedy and tragedy. At the very time his career as a stand-up comedian was taking off, and he had finally achieved his dream of appearing on The Tonight Show, he was also enduring an unimaginable personal nightmare: his two-year-old daughter, Brittany Nicole, was dying from cancer. While Anthony performed under bright lights, he struggled not to succumb to the darkness of losing a child.Behind the Laughter asks, When your world is falling apart, how do you keep going? It’s the story of how Anthony and his wife, Brigitte, learned to endure the most painful of times and emerge on the other side of the “zombie years.”This memoir is deeply moving yet also humorous—packed with laughs as Anthony takes us from his gun-toting grandma’s home to Chicago’s white and black comedy clubs, then to Hollywood, and to the world of network television. The surprising twists along Anthony’s path highlight the power of God that goes before us and prepares the way—a truth that later encourages Anthony and Brigitte after Brittany’s death and moves them to reach out and comfort others going through similar difficulties.With humor and deep insights into the human spirit, Behind the Laughter explores the bonds of not only parent and child but also husband and wife. While Anthony and Brigitte’s story is uniquely theirs, it elicits powerful, relatable emotions and lessons that are universal and inspiring.This book re-examines the role of the sublime across a range of disparate cultural texts, from architecture and art, to…
literature, digital technology, and film, detailing a worrying trend towards nostalgia and arguing that, although the sublime has the potential to be the most powerful uniting aesthetic force, it currently spreads fear, violence, and retrospection. In exploring contemporary culture, this book touches on the role of architecture to provoke feelings of sublimity, the role of art in the aftermath of destructive events, literature’s establishment of the historical moment as a point of sublime transformation and change, and the place of nostalgia and the returning of past practices in digital culture from gaming to popular cinema.By Eilene Zimmerman. 2020
A journalist pieces together the mysteries surrounding her ex-husband’s descent into drug addiction while trying to rebuild a life for…
her family, taking readers on an intimate journey into the world of white-collar drug abuse. Eilene Zimmerman noticed that her ex-husband looked thin, seemed distracted, and was frequently absent from activities with their children. She thought he looked sick and needed to see a doctor, and indeed, he told her he had been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder. Yet in many ways, Peter seemed to have it all: a beautiful house by the beach, expensive cars, and other luxuries that came with an affluent life. Eilene assumed his odd behavior was due to stress and overwork—he was a senior partner at a prominent law firm and had been working more than sixty hours a week for the last twenty years. Although they were divorced, Eilene and Peter had been partners and friends for decades, so when she and her children were unable to reach Peter for several days, Eilene went to his house to see if he was OK. So begins Smacked, a brilliant and moving memoir of Eilene’s shocking discovery, one that sets her on a journey to find out how a man she knew for nearly thirty years became a drug addict, hiding it so well that neither she nor anyone else in his life suspected what was happening. Eilene discovers that Peter led a secret life, one that started with pills and ended with opioids, cocaine, and methamphetamine. He was also addicted to work; the last call Peter ever made was to dial in to a conference call. Eilene is determined to learn all she can about Peter’s hidden life, and also about drug addiction among ambitious, high-achieving professionals like him. Through extensive research and interviews, she presents a picture of drug dependence today in that moneyed, upwardly mobile world. She also embarks on a journey to re-create her life in the wake of loss, both of the person—and the relationship—that profoundly defined the woman she had become.By Mark R. Levin. 2007
From the New York Times bestselling radio personality Mark Levin and his family comes the true story of the two…
years of joy and anguish they had with a rescue dog named Sprite.Mark Levin, while known as a lawyer and nationally syndicated broadcaster, considers himself first and foremost a dog lover. In 2004, Mark’s family added a new member to their bunch—a beautiful, Spaniel-mixed dog they named Sprite. With his beautiful face and soft, huggable fur, Sprite immediately bonded with the Levin family. But on Halloween night, just three weeks after being adopted, Sprite collapsed and had to be rushed to the animal hospital in what would turn out to be the first of many such visits—and a difficult, heart-wrenching journey for the entire family. Over the next two years, Sprite’s health deteriorated, but his spirit remained high and his beauty and grace continued to inspire, until the holiday season of 2006, when the Levin family had to say a final goodbye to their beloved pet. Rescuing Sprite is a stunningly intimate revelation of the strong love that can develop between a family and a pet, and the realization, as Mark Levin puts it, that “in the end, we humans are the lucky ones.”By John Rush. 2007
In The Twelve Gates, clinical anthropologist John Rush embarks on a spellbinding journey through death rituals in various cultures, centering…
on the ancient Egyptian philosophy of death and resurrection. The first part of the book provides an overview of different rituals, encouraging readers to confront their feelings about death and to reevaluate their lives. The author details his own experiences preparing for death, including a painful tattooing process inspired by the ancient Egyptian Books of the Netherworld. He then guides readers through the Twelve Gates of the Underworld, symbolic ritual stages during which they can figuratively experience death and rebirth. A set of full-color tarot cards, designed by the author, is included as an aid in passing through each of the Gates. These ancient rituals, performed by pharaohs and priests for thousands of years, help ease the way toward a peaceful, conscious death.By Nancy Duff. 2018
By exploring the ethics of resisting and accepting death from a Christian perspective, Nancy Duff encourages Christians to talk about…
death in the context of Christian faith. Making Faithful Decisions at the End of Life helps readers use biblical and theological perspectives regarding death to inform end-of-life decisions, consider where they stand on withdrawing life support and supporting death with dignity laws, and take steps in planning for their own future.By Jakob Van Wielink, Leo Wilhelm, Denise van Geelen-Merks. 2020
Loss, Grief, and Attachment in Life Transitions gives readers an attachment-informed grief counseling framework and a new way of understanding…
non-death loss and its treatment. Loss and grief are viewed through a wide-angle lens with relevance to the whole of human life, including the important area of career counseling and occupational consultation. The book is founded on the key themes of the Transition Cycle: welcome and contact, attachment and bonding, intimacy and sexuality, seperation and loss, grief and meaning reconstruction. Rich in case material related to loss and change, the book provides the tools for adopting a highly personalized approach to working with clients facing a range of life transitions. This book is a highly relevant and practical volume for grief counselors and other mental health professionals looking to incorporate attachment theory into their clinical practice.By Thomas Lynch. 2019
From one of our most gifted writers and thinkers about death and the meaning of living comes a collection of…
writings about “what comes next.” Thomas Lynch, funeral director, poet, and author of the National Book Award finalist The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, has an uncanny knack for writing about death in ways that are never morbid, always thoughtful, often humorous, and quite moving. From his account of riding in the hearse at the funeral of poet laureate Seamus Heaney, to his recounting of the funeral for a young child in the 1800s, to his compelling essay about his own mortality, Lynch always finds ways to make sense of senseless things, as he ponders what will come next.By Diana Espírito Santo, Anastasios Panagiotopoulos. 2019
Going beyond the frameworks of the anthropology of death, Articulate Necrographies offers a dramatic new way of studying the dead…
and its interactions with the living. Traditional anthropology has tended to dichotomize societies where death “speaks” from those where death is “silent” – the latter is deemed “scientific” and the former “religious” or “magical”. The collection introduces the concept of “necrography” to describe the way death and the dead create their own kinds of biographies in and among the living, and asks what kinds of articulacies and silences this in turn produces in the lives of those affected.Based on the author's own experiences as well as those of people she has contacted through her website (AdultSiblingGrief.com), "Surviving…
the Death of a Sibling" shows adults who have lost a sibling that they are not alone in their struggle.By Katie Haegele. 2017
From deep friendships to brief encounters, this is the story of the cats in Katie Haegele's life, or rather the…
story of her life in relation to the many cats she meets in Philadelphia's streets, alleys, houses, apartments, and bookstores. Through Haegele's sharp, wise, and at times hilarious gaze, we see cats for what they truly are: minor deities that mostly ignore the human foibles being played out around them. They accept our offerings with equanimity and occasionally bestow some nice thing on us. Haegele, author of White Elephants and Slip of the Tongue, has a unique and compelling sensibility, and it's a treat to see the world through her eyes as she shows us all the meanness, weirdness, and vulnerability of humans, against an ever-shifting backdrop of the cats we often take for granted, and who ignore us all democratically in return.By Julia Bueno. 2019
"Wise and compassionate . . . a profound game-changer of a book." --Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of YouThough approximately…
one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, it remains a rarely talked about, under-researched, and largely misunderstood area of women's health. This profoundly necessary book--the first comprehensive portrait of the psychological, emotional, medical, and cultural aspects of miscarriage--aims to help break that silence. With candor, warmth, and empathy, psychotherapist Julia Bueno blends women's stories (including her own) with research and analysis, exploring the effect of pregnancy loss on women and highlighting the ways in which our society fails to effectively respond to it. The result is a galvanizing, urgent, and moving exploration of a too-often-hidden human experience, and a crucial resource for anyone struggling with--or seeking to better understand--miscarriage.