Healing a Parent's Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas After Your Child Dies

By Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.. Companion Press, Ft. Collins, CO for the Center for Loss and Life Transition, 2002. [105 pp.]

Reviewed by: Meg Wickes, Hospice Volunteer.

If this worst of blows that that life can offer has pitched you into this darkest moment of the soul, here is a life line you can hang onto for survival. Alan Wolfelt, through his Center for Loss and Life Transition, has thrown you a lifeline.

Andrea Gambill, editor of Bereavement magazine, writes in the foreword of this down-to-earth book: "Access to this kind of help when my daughter died would have made a major difference in my grief. I would have draped this gem over a silken cord and worn it around my neck 24 hours a day." It should be kept wherever you and your caring supporters can refer to it over and over again-as your pain and your moments of panic dictate.

Each of the one hundred pages of recipes for healing ends with a Carpe Diem [do it now.] These direct the reader to take an action relating to the message of the day designed to provide a small measure of immediate relief. For example, Number 45 involves the distress one will feel at the prospect of doing the right thing with your child's belongings. The one sentence directive for this is: "Bring some of the smaller items that belonged to your child into a frame shop and ask for help in creating a shadow box." Would you or I have thought of that?

The range of subjects cover the gamut from Number One: KNOW THAT YOU WILL SURVIVE to Number One Hundred: EMBRACE THE WAYS IN WHICH YOU ARE GROWING [are forced to grow] THROUGH GRIEF and everything in between. The author provides a comprehensive introduction as well as final words that give ample proof of his close personal involvement with the healing of truly broken hearts such as your own.