After a loving, seventeen-year relationship with her husband, Gus, Michelle and her four children ages eighteen, fourteen, twelve, and ten each experience their own individual journeys into the storm of grief during and after the diagnosis of liver cancer. My Husband Our Father: A Familys Walk Through the Storm of Grief in Search of a Rainbow is comprised of personal memoirs from a young widow, Michelle, and each of her four children: Brittany, Gina, Louie, and Madeline. This book will lift your heart, as we have all gone through our own personal journey of grief at some point in our lives, searching for a rainbow of hope in order to move forward. My Husband Our Father: A Family's Walk Through the Storm of Grief in Search of a Rainbow provides unique insight and an honest perspective on how we all grieve differently and how this can weigh heavily upon a family. Experience the enlightenment, inspiration, and empowerment that this book will offer. Truly inspirational is the transition between love, loss, and healing, as our lives move forward with our lost loved ones nearby. Step inside the hearts and minds of each family member to better understand the grieving process and better recognize the storm of grief in search of a rainbow. Feel free to visit our website for blogs and updates: www.insearchofarainbow.com And our Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/insearchofarainbow The writing of My Husband Our Father involved each family member producing an unedited, candid memoir of experience before sharing with the family - and the result is a gripping chronicle of how life goes on and how recoveries happen at different levels. The result is a poignant and moving memoir, highly recommended for any who have struggled with grief during challenging processes and times, which documents the separate journals and experiences of a family connected by the bonds of love, pain, and survival. D. Donovan, Senior eBook Reviewer, MBR

When a loved one dies we mourn our loss. We take comfort in the rituals that mark the passing, and we turn to those around us for support. But what happens when there is no closure, when a family member or a friend who may be still alive is lost to us nonetheless? How, for example, does the mother whose soldier son is missing in action, or the family of an Alzheimer's patient who is suffering from severe dementia, deal with the uncertainty surrounding this kind of loss? In this sensitive and lucid account, Pauline Boss explains that, all too often, those confronted with such ambiguous loss fluctuate between hope and hopelessness. Suffered too long, these emotions can deaden feeling and make it impossible for people to move on with their lives. Yet the central message of this book is that they can move on. Drawing on her research and clinical experience, Boss suggests strategies that can cushion the pain and help families come to terms with their grief. Her work features the heartening narratives of those who cope with ambiguous loss and manage to leave their sadness behind, including those who have lost family members to divorce, immigration, adoption, chronic mental illness, and brain injury. With its message of hope, this eloquent book offers guidance and understanding to those struggling to regain their lives. Table of Contents: 1. Frozen Grief 2. Leaving without Goodbye 3. Goodbye without Leaving 4. Mixed Emotions 5. Ups and Downs 6. The Family Gamble 7. The Turning Point 8. Making Sense out of Ambiguity 9. The Benefit of a Doubt Notes Acknowledgments Reviews of this book: You will find yourself thinking about the issues discussed in this book long after you put it down and perhaps wishing you had extra copies for friends and family members who might benefit from knowing that their sorrows are not unique...This book's value lies in its giving a name to a force many of us will confront--sadly, more than once--and providing personal stories based on 20 years of interviews and research. --Pamela Gerhardt, Washington Post Reviews of this book: A compassionate exploration of the effects of ambiguous loss and how those experiencing it handle this most devastating of losses ... Boss's approach is to encourage families to talk together, to reach a consensus about how to mourn that which has been lost and how to celebrate that which remains. Her simple stories of families doing just that contain lessons for all. Insightful, practical, and refreshingly free of psychobabble. --Kirkus Review Reviews of this book: Engagingly written and richly rewarding, this title presents what Boss has learned from many years of treating individuals and families suffering from uncertain or incomplete loss...The obvious depth of the author's understanding of sufferers of ambiguous loss and the facility with which she communicates that understanding make this a book to be recommended. --R. R. Cornellius, Choice Reviews of this book: Written for a wide readership, the concepts of ambiguous loss take immediate form through the many provocative examples and stories Boss includes, All readers will find stories with which they will relate...Sensitive, grounded and practical, this book should, in my estimation, be required reading for family practitioners. --Ted Bowman, Family Forum Reviews of this book: Dr. Boss describes [the] all-too-common phenomenon [of unresolved grief] as resulting from either of two circumstances: when the lost person is still physically present but emotionally absent or when the lost person is physically absent but still emotionally present. In addition to senility, physical presence but psychological absence may result, for example, when a person is suffering from a serious mental disorder like schizophrenia or depression or debilitating neurological damage from an accident or severe stroke, when a person abuses drugs or alcohol, when a child is autistic or when a spouse is a workaholic who is not really 'there' even when he or she is at home...Cases of physical absence with continuing psychological presence typically occur when a soldier is missing in action, when a child disappears and is not found, when a former lover or spouse is still very much missed, when a child 'loses' a parent to divorce or when people are separated from their loved ones by immigration...Professionals familiar with Dr. Boss's work emphasised that people suffering from ambiguous loss were not mentally ill, but were just stuck and needed help getting past the barrier or unresolved grief so that they could get on with their lives. --Asian Age Combining her talents as a compassionate family therapist and a creative researcher, Pauline Boss eloquently shows the many and complex ways that people can cope with the inevitable losses in contemporary family life. A wise book, and certain to become a classic. --Constance R. Ahrons, author of The Good Divorce A powerful and healing book. Families experiencing ambiguous loss will find strategies for seeing what aspects of their loved ones remain, and for understanding and grieving what they have lost. Pauline Boss offers us both insight and clarity. --Kathy Weingarten, Ph.D, The Family Institute of Cambridge, Harvard Medical School

A Walk Through the Storm is a labor of love, a collaboration of families coming together to share their stories of love and loss. The stories all begin the same, you wake up, you discover you're pregnant and are overjoyed by the news. You plan; you dream and prepare for the future arrival of this new bundle of joy. For some months go by and everything is perfect, for others on this journey the time is much shorter. You've heard those words that no parent wishes to ever hear.... "I'm sorry, there is no heartbeat". What do you do know, where do you turn? Who will help you through this journey? Sadly, Pregnancy and Infant Loss occurs more than people would like to think. However, due to society's views on child death, those numbers are silent. We're taught, or rather it's ingrained in us that it's one of those things you just don't talk about. Some believe it's too hurtful for the family if you mention it, others just simply believe that the less said the better. In this book you will find the stories of families wishing to break that silence, to tell society that it's okay to openly grieve, talk and love their child's memory. They have buried their child and their plans for the future that child would have had. They know firsthand, how painful it can be to see the looks in the faces of others when they talk about those children. To hear the whispers behind their back from those who think it is time for them to "move on". "Move On", what is that? There truly is no "moving on" or "getting over" the death of a child. It is a lifelong journey, one that is fraught with potholes, cliffs, ledges of mountains that they each must walk in their own time and space. They will never "get over" the loss of their child, they will only learn with time, to accept that loss as a part of who they are now. They will never be the same person they were before hand, as they now know that each life is even more precious than jewels. As they walk this journey, they will find that old friends will slip away from their new lives, but new friends will emerge. Friends, who will be there walking the path with them, friends who understand their pain even if their story for how they started this journey is different. A wise woman once told me, "There is no greater pain than the loss of a child. It's a pain you never fully accept, you just learn to live with it. You learn that it makes you who you are, who you want to be in the future. It's the love of a Mother that is ingrained in us that we never let go of our children whether they are with us or not, and what you do with that love is up to us." That wise woman was my Great Aunt, whose son was born prematurely and died just hours afterwards, to this day, she still grieves, she still mourns and she still visits and calls him her son.I hope as you read these stories, whether you have lost a child or not, you will learn from them. You will take in what each of these families have to say about how hard it truly is to lose a child and to know how to deal with that loss. Society doesn't need to dictate how we as parents deal with the loss of our children anymore. It's time to take a stand, to be the voice for the voiceless, to proudly wear our love for our children on our hearts. Each child you read about in this book has a story to tell, one that was cut short. Who knows one of these children may have been destined for greatness; one could have been a musician, an artist, a scientist. We don't' know because our children were taken from us before they even had a chance to know life outside the womb. These are our children, our stories of loss and love but most importantly they are our stories of hope and renewal. Our renewal in hope of changing society's views while helping grieving families to know they are not alone. Our hope to leave a legacy behind for our children, that they, themselves could not leave behind. This is their footprint on the world.

Much-Afraid had been in the service of the Chief Shepherd, whose great flocks were pastured down in the Valley of Humiliation. She lived with her friends and fellow workers Mercy and Peace in a tranquil little white cottage in the village of Much-Trembling. She loved her work and desired intensely to please the Chief Shepherd, but happy as she was in most ways, she was conscious of several things which hindered her in her work and caused her much secret distress and shame. Here is the allegorical tale of Much-Afraid, an every-woman searching for guidance from God to lead her to a higher place.

The five stages of grief are so deeply imbedded in our culture that no American can escape them. Every time we experience loss—a personal or national one—we hear them recited: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The stages are invoked to explain everything from how we will recover from the death of a loved one to a sudden environmental catastrophe or to the trading away of a basketball star. But the stunning fact is that there is no validity to the stages that were proposed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross more than forty years ago. In The Truth About Grief, Ruth Davis Konigsberg shows how the five stages were based on no science but nonetheless became national myth. She explains that current research paints a completely different picture of how we actually grieve. It turns out people are pretty well programmed to get over loss. Grieving should not be a strictly regimented process, she argues; nor is the best remedy for pain always to examine it or express it at great length. The strength of Konigsberg’s message is its liberating force: there is no manual to grieving; you can do it freestyle. In the course of clarifying our picture of grief, Konigsberg tells its history, revealing how social and cultural forces have shaped our approach to loss from the Gettysburg Address through 9/11. She examines how the American version of grief has spread to the rest of the world and contrasts it with the interpretations of other cultures—like the Chinese, who focus more on their bond with the deceased than on the emotional impact of bereavement. Konigsberg also offers a close look at Kübler-Ross herself: who she borrowed from to come up with her theory, and how she went from being a pioneering psychiatrist to a New Age healer who sought the guidance of two spirits named Salem and Pedro and declared that death did not exist. Deeply researched and provocative, The Truth About Grief draws on history, culture, and science to upend our country’s most entrenched beliefs about its most common experience.

The Advocate is a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) monthly newsmagazine. Established in 1967, it is the oldest continuing LGBT publication in the United States.

Jeremiah Chapter 18 and Psalm 40 liken God to the Great Potter of our lives, molding us and shaping us according to His perfect plan. Emily Rose Massey shares her testimony of how the Lord delivered her out of the filth and bondage of sexual sin and into the glorious light of His saving grace. When she set her feet firmly on the foundation of Jesus Christ and allowed God to chisel away parts of her marred heart with His Spirit and Word, He was able to mold her into a beautiful vessel fit for His use. But this only happened when she yielded her life absolutely to Jesus and truly made Him Lord of her life. Using the steps a potter takes to complete a masterpiece made of clay as the structure of her testimony, the reader is afforded a glimpse into the life of the author, whose transparency and honesty provide a view of her journey from brokenness to beauty, through the strength and power of Jesus Christ.

Includes music.

From the beginning I always felt I didn’t belong. My own parents didn’t raise me, I felt unloved, unwanted, like it was my fault, the physical abuse, the sexual abuse, I thought everything was my fault, I didn’t feel worthy of love and I took that feeling into a 25 year marriage that ended in divorce. I still felt broken & unworthy of love, but the one thing I did promise myself was that when I had kids of my own they would never experienced what I went through. I had to be the one that broke a vicious cycle and I did it. Life’s began to look up for me, when I met my future husband on a blind date. Everything was so wonderful until March 7, 2014 when my world exploded into madness, my youngest son 35 was killed. My perfect world had fallen apart. I asked God “why him, why now?” Read how I found the resiliency to go on, I was heartbroken, how was I suppose to go on? How does any parent who loses a child move forward? I was much stronger than I ever thought I could be, but I survived and so can you.

Rainbows through the Storm shares a mother's story of her struggle with grief and faith. Her family endured one of life's worst nightmares, the deaths of two children.