Once upon a time I had a perfect life…and then it wasn’t. One day, my son woke up with a fever and was dead the next morning of bacterial meningitis. Nothing evokes a more profound life-change than loss. When it’s a child, it’s called “the worst that can happen.” The death of my son changed every chapter of my book of life. The chapters became chaotic and out of order, because I’d defied the natural order of life. My child left this earth before me and for that, I was forced to create a whole new way of life.
How to Survive the Worst that Can Happen, is a guide and workbook for recovering a quality of life after loss. The book offers an intimate insight, based on my own experience and drawing from my work with therapists, grief recovery groups, along with a tremendous amount of research. There are many books published on grief and the loss of a child, and their endurance transcends typical book sales. They have a long shelf life, because of their need. When the worst that can happen, happens to you, you’re driven to comb libraries, bookstores, and the internet for anything that will make you feel connected to someone who has survived such a tragedy.
While numerous grief books validated my feelings, I longed for guidance on practical steps and tools that could help me survive, and most of all, hope that I would survive the loss of my son. Over the course of my own heartbreaking and ultimately victorious story, I developed practical tools and life steps to healing. I began working with other parents to offer them hope and information to help them through their own bereavement journey. Here’s what I learned. No one is immune to loss. At some time in our lives, we all lose someone we love. But… the loss of a child? It’s the most tragic loss imaginable.
People like to say, “Time heals all wounds.” That saying may not feel true for a parent who’s lost a child. I would like to offer, however, it’s what you do with that time that can escalate healing and acceptance, and regaining a quality of life where you’ll feel joy again. Hard to imagine? I wrote this book in a workbook/interactive style format to shift the odyssey of grief from passive submission into active recovery. This is the part that really excites me because I know it works. Healing doesn’t mean you’ll never feel the pain. Healing doesn’t mean you won’t ever long for your child. Healing means you’ll find acceptance as a choice, and your light will shine again.
As a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist®, educated by The Grief Recovery Institute® in Los Angeles, I’ve seen first hand how recovery from loss can happen by discovering and completing things in the relationship that hold us in pain. I’d like to help you with that.
Your healing begins today…not tomorrow, not a week from now. How to Survive the Worst that Can Happen, A Parent’s Step by Step Guide to Healing after the Loss of a Child is the first step we will take together.