Download or read book Grief Like a River written by Mea Smith and published by . This book was released on 2021-07-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Even if the river dries to only morning dew and dust, the scar of it remains in the earth If the circumstances were prime, it could fill again, and that would be okay because I know why it flows now." Grief Like a River bares the iterative, complex process of grief through sincere, raw poetry. Smith's tender honesty delicately guides the reader through the human experience of loss. Her debut collection does not claim to be a solution or the final word on the matter. Rather, her personal revelations and inquiries offer companionship for those who have faced grief and for those who desire an example of hope. *This book includes a Reader's Guide*
Download or read book Crossing the River written by Carol Smith and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful exploration of grief and resilience following the death of the author's son that combines memoir, reportage, and lessons in how to heal Everyone deals with grief in their own way. Helen Macdonald found solace in training a wild goshawk. Cheryl Strayed found strength in hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. For Carol Smith, a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist struggling with the sudden death of her seven-year-old son, Christopher, the way to cross the river of sorrow was through work. In Crossing the River, Smith recounts how she faced down her crippling loss through reporting a series of profiles of people coping with their own intense challenges, whether a life-altering accident, injury, or diagnosis. These were stories of survival and transformation, of people facing devastating situations that changed them in unexpected ways. Smith deftly mixes the stories of these individuals and their families with her own account of how they helped her heal. General John Shalikashvili, once the most powerful member of the American military, taught Carol how to face fear with discipline and endurance. Seth, a young boy with a rare and incurable illness, shed light on the totality of her son's experiences, and in turn helps readers see that the value of a life is not measured in days. Crossing the River is a beautiful and profoundly moving book, an unforgettable journey through grief toward hope, and a valuable, illuminating read for anyone coping with loss.
Download or read book The River of Grief written by C. J. Hines and published by Tate Publishing. This book was released on 2012-07-03 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you picked up this book hoping to find an easy answer to grief, this isn't it.People die. It's inevitable. But when someone close to you dies, you may feel like you have died too. The trouble is that the rest of the world doesn't share in your grief. They are still alive, and their lives have gone on normally. Grieving is like being stuck in a murky, tangled, rock-ridden river with no way out and no one to throw you a lifeline. But God doesn't intend for you to make this journey alone. You'll see that with God's help and a little understanding of the grieving process, you can be happy again. Learn from author CJ Hines, who shows you, through sharing stories of her own grief, how to navigate the swirling waters of The River of Grief, with God's hand guiding you all the way.
Download or read book The Smell of Rain on Dust written by Martín Prechtel and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beautifully written and wise … [Martin Prechtel] offers stories that are precious and life-sustaining. Read carefully, and listen deeply."—Mary Oliver, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martín Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living. In modern society, grief is something that we usually experience in private, alone, and without the support of a community. Yet, as Prechtel says, "Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses." Prechtel explains that the unexpressed grief prevalent in our society today is the reason for many of the social, cultural, and individual maladies that we are currently experiencing. According to Prechtel, "When you have two centuries of people who have not properly grieved the things that they have lost, the grief shows up as ghosts that inhabit their grandchildren." These "ghosts," he says, can also manifest as disease in the form of tumors, which the Maya refer to as "solidified tears," or in the form of behavioral issues and depression. He goes on to show how this collective, unexpressed energy is the long-held grief of our ancestors manifesting itself, and the work that can be done to liberate this energy so we can heal from the trauma of loss, war, and suffering. At base, this "little book," as the author calls it, can be seen as a companion of encouragement, a little extra light for those deep and noble parts in all of us.
Download or read book Where the River Flows written by Rachel Havekost and published by . This book was released on 2021-05-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where the River Flows is an honest, poetic, heartbreaking account of how my divorce catapulted me down a yearlong obsession to find the answer to the burning question I had every single day after my husband asked me for a divorce:"Why?"Was it my inability to show him love like he'd told me? Was it an old attachment wound, still unhealed and bubbling at the surface? Was it the sexual trauma I'd never resolved and carried into our marriage? Was it my very real and frequent urge to end my life? Or was it him? Was it his lack of understanding for my mental illness? His lost patience for me as I tirelessly worked through old wounds in therapy? Stress from the yearlong motorcycle trip of his dreams that I vowed to go on, and did just after our wedding day?As I spiraled myself around this question and fell deeper and deeper into a depression, as the binges became more intense and the purges returned for the first time in years, as the urges to die grew stronger and when I curled myself in a ball on the shower floor, banging my fists against my belly like I'd first done seventeen years before, I started to believe that what my husband said to me in our last few days together might be true: "It's like there are three people in our marriage. You, me, and your Eating Disorder. And sometimes I think you love her more than me."If you or someone you know has struggled with an Eating Disorder, sexual or developmental trauma, depression, anxiety, suicidal thinking, divorce, grief, then it is my hope you will find yourself and your loved ones in the pages of this memoir.You are not alone.
Download or read book A Song for the River written by Philip Connors and published by Cinco Puntos Press. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Southwest Book Award, BRLA Notable Book, Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award Amazon Book Review Best Nonfiction of 2018 2018 Publisher's Weekly Best Books of the Year, Nonfiction 2018 Southwest Books of the Year Outside Magazine Pick for Best Adventure Books of the Season NPR Summer Reading List Pick From one of the last fire lookouts in America comes this sequel to the award-winning Fire Season—a story of calamity and resilience in the world’s first Wilderness. A dozen years into his dream job keeping watch over the Gila Wilderness of New Mexico, Philip Connors bore witness to the wildfire he had always feared: a conflagration that forced him off his mountain by helicopter, and changed forever the forest and watershed he loved. It was merely one of many transformations that arrived in quick succession, not just fire and flood but illness, divorce, the death of a fellow lookout in a freak accident, and a tragic plane crash that rocked the community he called home. At its core an elegy for a friend he cherished like a brother, A Song for the River opens into celebration of a landscape redolent with meaning—and the river that runs through it. Connors channels the voices of the voiceless in a praise song of great urgency, and makes a plea to save a vital piece of our natural and cultural heritage: the wild Gila River, whose waters are threatened by a potential dam. Brimming with vivid characters and beautiful evocations of the landscape, A Song for the River carries the story of the Gila Wilderness forward to the present precarious moment, and manages to find green shoots everywhere sprouting from the ash. Its argument on behalf of things wild and free could not be more timely, and its goal is nothing less than permanent protection for that rarest of things in the American West, a free-flowing river—the sinuous and gorgeous Gila. It must not perish.
Download or read book Grief s Country written by Gail Griffin and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-15 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate look at widowhood. Gail Griffin had only been married for four months when her husband's body was found in the Manistee River, just a few yards from their cabin door. The terrain of memoir is full of stories of grief, though Grief's Country: A Memoir in Pieces is less concerned with the biography of a love affair than with the lived phenomenon of grief itself—what it does to the mind, heart, and body; how it functions almost as an organism. The book's intimacy is at times nearly disarming; its honesty about struggling through grief's country is unfailing. The story is told "in pieces" in that it is ten essays of varying forms, punctuated by four original poems, that examine facets of traumatic grief, memory, and survival. While a reader will perceive a forward trajectory, the book resists anything like a clear chronology, offering a picture of deep grief as something that defies the linear and explodes time. "A Strong Brown God" tells the story of two of Griffin's significant relationships—with her husband, Bob, and with the Manistee River—and includes the history of what drew them all together. "Grief's Country" follows Griffin from the morning after Bob's death through the first disoriented, fractured months of PTSD. "Heartbreak Hotel" takes Griffin on a tragicomical flight the first Christmas after Bob's death to a Jamaican resort—which includes an unscheduled stop at Graceland—where she contemplates the notions of home and haven. Grief's Country will speak directly to anyone who has lost a dearly loved one, offering not one story but ten different faces of grief to contemplate. It will also appeal to general readers of memoir, including teachers and students of nonfiction, especially as it includes a variety of formal models. Those interested in the subject area of death and dying will find it useful as a book that bypasses recovery narratives, truisms, and "stages of grief" to get as close as possible to the experience itself.
Download or read book Like a River written by Granger Smith and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, ECPA Bestseller 'Country music artist Smith debuts with a sensitive and moving recollection of his path through grief. . .In stark, intimate prose, the author candidly renders the realities of suffering while articulating a moving message of renewal. Those seeking a faith-based path through grief will find this instructive and affecting.' -- Publishers Weekly Like a River, a triumphant story of new life birthed out of tragedy, will teach readers how to face their failures, confront their pain, and connect with God—the true source of life. On June 4th, 2019, country music singer Granger Smith was enjoying a final evening with his kids before heading to Nashville for the CMT Music Awards and his next tour. While helping his daughter London with her gymnastics, his youngest son fell into their pool. Granger did everything he could to get to him, but he was too late. River drowned, and Granger's world shattered. The days, weeks, and months that followed River's death sent Granger on a dark and painful journey. Every time he closed his eyes, he replayed the horrific event in his mind, and every time he opened his computer, he was bombarded by the critique and criticism of people who blamed him for the accident. Despite his best effort to get back on stage with a smile and song, it was all a façade. On the inside he was dying. Fortunately, that's not how his story ended. And now he is compelled to help people all around the world find strength, peace, and hope on the other side of tragedy. Like a River, life is full of twists and turns. Like a River, people pollute our world with their critique and criticism. Like a River, tragic events keep us dammed up. But like a river, we can find the courage to keep moving downstream. Rivers don't run on their own strength; they flow from their source. When we try to keep going on our own, we won't make it, but when we connect to the greater source, we will find the strength and the faith to keep living after loss. This triumphant story of new life birthed out of death will inspire every reader to live Like a River.
Download or read book Next Door Savior written by Max Lucado and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We applaud men for doing good things. We enshrine God for doing great things. But what about a man who does God things? One thing is certain. We can't ignore him. If these moments are factual, if the claim of Christ is actual, then he was, at once, man and God. The single most significant person who ever lived. Forget MVP. He is the entire league. The head of the parade? Hardly. No one else shares the street. Who comes close? Humanity's best and brightest fade like dime-store rubies next to him. Dismiss him? We can't. Resist him? Equally difficult. Why would we want to? Don't we need a God-man Savior? A just-God Jesus could make us, but not understand us. A just-man Jesus could love us, but never save us. But a God-man Jesus? Near enough to touch. Strong enough to trust. A next door Savior.
Download or read book Peace Like a River written by Leif Enger and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bag with ten copies of the title that may also include miscellaneous notes, discussion questions, biographical information, and reading lists to assist book group discussion leaders.
Download or read book Finding Meaning written by David Kessler and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking new work, David Kessler—an expert on grief and the coauthor with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross of the iconic On Grief and Grieving—journeys beyond the classic five stages to discover a sixth stage: meaning. In 1969, Elisabeth Kübler Ross first identified the stages of dying in her transformative book On Death and Dying. Decades later, she and David Kessler wrote the classic On Grief and Grieving, introducing the stages of grief with the same transformative pragmatism and compassion. Now, based on hard-earned personal experiences, as well as knowledge and wisdom earned through decades of work with the grieving, Kessler introduces a critical sixth stage. Many people look for “closure” after a loss. Kessler argues that it’s finding meaning beyond the stages of grief most of us are familiar with—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—that can transform grief into a more peaceful and hopeful experience. In this book, Kessler gives readers a roadmap to remembering those who have died with more love than pain; he shows us how to move forward in a way that honors our loved ones. Kessler’s insight is both professional and intensely personal. His journey with grief began when, as a child, he witnessed a mass shooting at the same time his mother was dying. For most of his life, Kessler taught physicians, nurses, counselors, police, and first responders about end of life, trauma, and grief, as well as leading talks and retreats for those experiencing grief. Despite his knowledge, his life was upended by the sudden death of his twenty-one-year-old son. How does the grief expert handle such a tragic loss? He knew he had to find a way through this unexpected, devastating loss, a way that would honor his son. That, ultimately, was the sixth state of grief—meaning. In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss. Finding Meaning is a necessary addition to grief literature and a vital guide to healing from tremendous loss. This is an inspiring, deeply intelligent must-read for anyone looking to journey away from suffering, through loss, and towards meaning.
Download or read book Peace Like a River written by Leif Enger and published by Atlantic Monthly Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Davy kills two men and leaves home. His father packs up the family in a search for Davy.
Download or read book The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams written by . Nasdijj and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001-09-17 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE BLOOD RUNS LIKE A RIVER THROUGH MY DREAMS transports readers to the majestic landscapes and hard Native American lives of the desert Southwest and into the embrace of a way of looking at the world that seems almost like revelation. Born to a storytelling Native mother and a roughneck, song-singing cowboy father, Nasdijj has lived on the jagged-edged margins of American society, yet hardship and isolation have only brought him greater clarity--and a gift for language that is nothing short of breathtaking. Nasdijj tells of his adopted son, Tommy Nothing Fancy, of the young boy's struggle with fetal alcohol syndrome, and of their last fishing trip together. It is a heartbreaking story, written with great power and a diamondlike poetry. But whether Nasdijj is telling us about his son, about the chaotic, alternately harrowing and comical life he led with his own parents, or about the vitality and beauty of Native American culture, his voice is always one of searching honesty, wry humor, and a nearly cosmic compassion. While Nasdijj struggles with his impossible status as someone of two separate cultures, he also remains a contradiction in a larger sense: he cares for those who often shun him, he teaches hope though he often has none for himself, and he comes home to the land he then must leave. THE BLOOD RUNS LIKE A RIVER THROUGH MY DREAMS is the memoir of a man who has survived a hard life with grace, who has taken the past experience of pain and transformed it into a determination to care for the most vulnerable among us, and who has found an almost unspeakable beauty where others would find only sadness. This is a book that will touch your soul.
Download or read book The Yearling written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-28 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American classic—and Pulitzer Prize–winning story—that shows the ultimate bond between child and pet. No novel better epitomizes the love between a child and a pet than The Yearling. Young Jody adopts an orphaned fawn he calls Flag and makes it a part of his family and his best friend. But life in the Florida backwoods is harsh, and so, as his family fights off wolves, bears, and even alligators, and faces failure in their tenuous subsistence farming, Jody must finally part with his dear animal friend. There has been a film and even a musical based on this moving story, a fine work of great American literature.
Download or read book Gold written by Barbara Crooker and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-06-10 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barbara Crooker's new book Gold focuses on one of the most profound life-altering experiences possible: losing one's mother. This collection is an elegy, not just to the speaker's mother, but to a lost Eden that cannot be reclaimed. Beginning with a series of lyrics set in autumn, the poems become more narrative, recounting the long illness of Crooker's mother, her death, and the profound journey along the shores of grief. Throughout, Crooker is aware of the complexity and strength of the mother/daughter relationship and the chasm that this loss opens. The book includes other themes: poems about aging and the body, the loss of friends, the difficulties and joys in a long-term marriage, and always, the subtle ways faith influences the way Crooker experiences life. Her work has great scope, spanning the globe from rural Pennsylvania to Ireland, and reaching not just within herself but also outside of herself, to ekphrastic poems on the paintings of Gorky, Manet, Matisse, and others. This is the book of a mature writer, one who demonstrates an awareness of our own impermanence, our brokenness, and one who knows that if our parents go before us, we will have to learn to live with loss. In this book, we see the redemptive power of poetry itself to heal and to console.
Download or read book Poetry as Survival written by Gregory Orr and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for general readers and for students and scholars of poetry, Poetry as Survival is a complex and lucid analysis of the powerful role poetry can play in confronting, surviving, and transcending pain and suffering. Gregory Orr draws from a generous array of sources. He weaves discussions of work by Keats, Dickinson, and Whitman with quotes from three-thousand-year-old Egyptian poems, Inuit songs, and Japanese love poems to show that writing personal lyric has helped poets throughout history to process emotional and experiential turmoil, from individual stress to collective grief. More specifically, he considers how the acts of writing, reading, and listening to lyric bring ordering powers to the chaos that surrounds us. Moving into more contemporary work, Orr looks at the poetry of Sylvia Plath, Stanley Kunitz, and Theodore Roethke, poets who relied on their own work to get through painful psychological experiences. As a poet who has experienced considerable trauma--especially as a child--Orr refers to the damaging experiences of his past and to the role poetry played in his ability to recover and survive. His personal narrative makes all the more poignant and vivid Orr's claims for lyric poetry's power as a tool for healing. Poetry as Survival is a memorable and inspiring introduction to lyric poetry's capacity to help us find safety and comfort in a threatening world.
Download or read book The River Mouth written by Karen Herbert and published by Fremantle Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Darren Davies is found facedown in the Weymouth River with a gunshot wound to his chest. The killer is never found and his death remains a mystery. Ten years later, his mother receives a visit from the local police. Sandra' s best friend has been found dead on a remote Pilbara road. And Barbara' s DNA matches the DNA found under Darren' s fingernails. When the investigation into her son' s murder is reopened, Sandra begins to question what she knew about her best friend. As she digs, she discovers that there are many secrets in her small town, and that her murdered son had secrets too.PRAISE FOR THE BOOK'The River Mouth marks the debut of a brilliant new voice in Australian crime fiction.' David Whish-Wilson&‘ The River Mouth is the kind of crime novel which hooks you in from the first chapter and doesn' t let up until the very end.' Better Reading&‘ ... works to gradually ramp up the suspense as Herbert advances her intricate and deftly handled puzzle of a plot ... ' West Australian&‘ ... a stunning debut that will keep you guessing till the
