It will happen one day; your family will have an older loved one like a grandfather or grandmother that suddenly passes away. Then after time has gone by, you'll discover that when the younger generations of your family start asking questions about the life and times of those past cherished relatives, you and rest of your family members won't have the answers to questions like: Where did my grandfather propose to my grandmother? What was life like...

Grief is all-consuming. Shattering. After the death of a loved one, we ask questions about the meaning of life, the whys of death, and how to carry our sorrow. The Spirituality of Grief honors the complex nature of grief and offers simple comfort: we are not alone, and there is no one right way to grieve. Author Fran Tilton Shelton, a spiritual director and cofounder of the nonprofit Faith & Grief, walks us through the questions that gather in the...

Suffering crippling losses can leave us feeling lost, abandoned and alone. THIS Somatic Compassionate Grief is a powerful collection of intimate reflections and expressions in an emotionally raw journey of weathering through the excruciating paths of grief after losing loved ones. Each unfiltered poem guides readers through the author's deep internal moments of far too often overwhelming feelings and emotions, and her healing practice by...

Abuse is hell. When you're born into it, it does terrible things to you. Getting out of that cycle is difficult at the best of times. It took me thirty five years. It took nearly dying to realize that I was still trapped in that cycle of abuse. The interesting thing is, my poetry from the three years prior suggests I knew I was being abused the entire time. When I walked away from the reaper, I started to walk away from the abuse I...

Blood Alluvium is a séance in free verse, lighting candles off the tension between Duncan's Ashkenazi Jewish and Appalachian-Gael heritage, measuring breath by the fragile stillness between trauma and music. It is a cartography of grieving charted as a process of transmutation. It struggles with identity, God (and goddesses), and the police. Through moments of incantatory transcendence and the rushed wallowing of modernity, this collection consults...

Adrift in an ocean of pain and confusion. Sorrow and pain are my ever-present companions. My life's path is a winding road to where? The work of salvation has been accomplished through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. There is a process of salvation, all the events of life leading up to faith in Christ. This book of poetry is a journey capturing the emotions, the questions, and the struggles of life on the redemption road resulting...

From a two-time winner of the National Poetry Series competition, a bold new collection of poems lamenting the state of the world-and offering poetry that might save it "Civil twilight" occurs just before dawn and just after dusk, when there is still light enough to distinguish the shapes and contours of objects but not the richness of their detail. Beginning with the idea that nothing can be seen clearly in the light of the present, the poems in...

"All is dark in cold arms lieGaze to you an empty eyeFingers laced for our descendingBeckon you come share my endingNo, the heat comes not from shameYou must, my love, take faith in flames" The graveyard awaits in rising mists while swirling leaves whisper secrets to the dark. Eyes, unblinking, gaze out from under coffin lids, black tongues roving over rotted lips. Something lurks in dusty corners gently rocking and chanting your name, hungrily. Light...

The Heavy Bag by Sarah Surgey is a children' s book that looks at the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Sadness and Acceptance. Children can experience grief for a loved one; a pet; or even moving on from a school or area. When all of the emotions build up inside a child' s mind, they can feel like they are carrying around a huge weight with them.‘ The Heavy Bag' follows a little girl called Enid who has...

Praise for Forever Baby - "Mary's writing has the quality of being both a participant and an observer. As a participant in a life and death voyage, she writes with emotional force. As an observer, there are some great passages of acute observation and stark - sometimes black - humor. "But the dominant emotion is love: love given by Mary and the Burbidge Family to their daughter Jenny; love given by Jenny to Mary and family. A special love for a special...