Enduring Grief : True Stories of Personal Loss

Editor Florence Selder and her team decided to write a book to help people learn how to pull their lives together after suffering a terrible loss. When they began researching the literature, they found mostly theoretical discussions of loss that were sorely lacking in accounts from people who had actually had first-hand experience with severe loss. To fill this void, to offer a penetrating look at the different ways that individuals react to and deal with loss, the editors collected stories from over 100 people, each of whom shared the story of a tragedy they lived through. Especially interested in the vicarious loss experienced by caregivers as a result of working with patients who have suffered a loss, Selder has included many stories and case reports written by nurses, therapists and social workers who not only describe how they have been affected by their patients' losses, but also what they did to help them.
The process of recovery from loss is different for each person, but one method that has proved extremely effective for many, many people is listening and talking to other people who have experienced a similar incident - the people-helping-people dynamic known as self-help. Enduring Grief is a self-help group in the form of a book. By reading these personal accounts, readers will be able to discover how others felt and reacted to a loss, how they solved their problems and coped - and, in many cases, how they didn't. Also, for those in the helping professions, whether nurse, therapist or teacher, this book presents a goldmine of information on helping methods in the form of case studies. The instruction by personal example offered by these storytellers will help readers learn how to cope with their own losses and also how to help others.