How We Grieve: Relearning the World

If we wish to understand loss experiences we must learn details of survivors' stories. The new version of How We Grieve: Relearning the World tells in-depth tales of survival to illustrate the poignant disruption of life and suffering that loss entails. It shows how through grieving we overcome challenges, make choices, and reshape our lives. These intimate treatments of coping with loss address the needs of grieving people and those who hope to support and comfort them. The accounts promote understanding of grieving itself, encourage respect for individuality and the uniqueness of loss experiences, show how to deal with helplessness in the face of "choiceless" events, and offer guidance for caregivers. The stories make it clear that grieving is not about living passively through stages or phases. We are not so alike when we grieve; our experiences are complex and richly textured. Nor is grieving about coming down with "grief symptoms". No one can treat us to make things better. No one can grieve for us. Grieving is instead an active process of coping and relearning how to be and how to act in a world where loss transforms our lives. Loss forces us to relearn things and places; relationships with others, including fellow survivors, the deceased, even God; and our selves, our daily life patterns, and the meanings of our life stories. This revision adds an introductory essay about developments in the author's thinking about grieving as "relearning the world." It highlights and clarifies its most distinctive and still salient themes. It elaborates on how his thinking about these themes has expanded and deepened since the first edition. And it places his treatment of those themes in the broader context of current writings on grief and loss.

Table of Contents:
Introduction to the Second Edition ; Chapter 1 - Stories of Grieving: Listening and Responding ; *Martin and Louise ; *Jennifer ; Bill, Diane and Margaret ; Ed, Elise, and David ; Kathryn ; Colleen ; Stories Are the Heart of the Matter: The Point of Thinking about Grieving ; Why Do Persons Look to Books on Grieving? ; They Seek General Understanding ; They Seek Respect for Individuality ; They Seek Ways to Deal with Helplessness in Grieving ; They Seek Guidance for Caregivers ; Chapter 2 - Grieving Is Active: We Need Not Be Helpless ; *The Story of Martin and Louise ; *Jennifer's Story ; Bereavement Is Choiceless, but Grieving Is Not ; Grief Is an Emotion, Grieving a Coping Process ; Some Say We Grieve in Stages or Phases ; Some Describe Our Grieving in Medical Terms ; Is It Helpful to Talk of Stages, Phases and Medical Analogies? ; Some Say that as We Grieve We Address Tasks ; A Task-Based, Active View ; Some Choices We All Have as We Grieve ; Grieving Is Active: A Summary ; Chapter 3 - Respecting Individuals When They Grieve ; *The Story of Bill and Diane ; *Respecting Individual Flourishing ; Respecting Individual Vulnerabilities ; Acting Respectfully Once We Understand Individual ; Flourishing and Vulnerability ; What Our Self-Respect Requires ; Chapter 4 - Relearning the World: How We Grieve ; *The Story of Ed and Elise ; *How We Relearn Our Worlds ; The Worlds We Relearn ; We Relearn Our Physical Surroundings ; We Relearn Our Relationships with Fellow Survivors ; We Relearn Our Selves ; We Relearn Our Places in Space and Time ; The Power of the Relearning Idea ; Chapter 5 - Relearning Our Selves: Grief and Personal Integrity ; *David's Story ; *Margaret's Story ; How Are We to Understand Ourselves in Loss and Grief? ; An Image of How We Become the Selves We Are ; Our Selves in Loss and Grief: Elaborating the Image ; As We Cope, We Engage with and Move beyond Suffering ; We Struggle to Put Our Shattered Lives Back Together ; We Seek New Ways to Complete Our Life Stories ; We Become Whole Again as Parts of Larger Wholes ; Together We Reshape Our Families and Communities ; Advantages of This Idea of Relearning Our Selves ; Chapter 6 - Relearning Our Relationships with the Deceased: Grief, Love and Separation ; *Kathryn's Story ; *Colleen's Story ; What We Lose, and What We Do Not Lose, When Someone Dies ; Let Go We Must, but Not Entirely ; We Continue to Love and Cherish the Stories of Lives Now Ended ; We Still Care About What Those Who Died Cared About. ; Advantages of This Idea of Relearning Our Relationships with the Deceased ; Index