The Courage to Grieve: The Classic Guide to Creative Living, Recovery, and Growth Through Grief

by Judy Tatelbaum

This unusual self-help book about surviving grief offers the reader comfort and inspiration. Each of us will face some loss, sorrow and disappointment in our lives, and The Courage to Grieve provides the specific help we need to enable us to face our grief fully and to recover and grow from the experience. Although the book emphasizes the response to the death of a loved one, The Courage to Grieve can help with every kind of loss and grief.Judy Tatelbaum gives us a fresh look at understanding grief, showing us that grief is a natural, inevitable human experience, including all the unexpected, intense and uncomfortable emotions like sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, or even the temporary loss of the will to live. The emphasis is to clarify and offer help, and the tone is spiritual, optimistic, creative and easy to understand. Judy Tatelbaum provides excellent advice on how to help oneself and others get through the immediate experience of death and the grief that follows, as well as how to understand the special grief of children. Particularly useful are the techniques for completing or "finishing" grief--counteracting the popular misconception that grief never ends. The Courage to Grieve shows us how to live life with the ultimate not fearing death. This book is about so much more than death and grieving it is about life and joy and growth.

Genres: Grief, Self Help

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 15, 2007

Reviews

[Kit Golson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m grateful I came across this comforting and pragmatic book four weeks after my beloved husband died quite suddenly.

It’s a fresh look at this difficult transition. Ms Tetelbaum’s tone is that of sitting down with your best friend, who happens to be brilliant, empathetic and able to steer your bereavement towards actions that can be taken to comfort yourself. And not the usual “warm bath with candles” advice. It’s a gutsy and I keep it close at hand these days.

[Betsy Carosella · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the book was common sense. The idea that you can “finish” your grief, however, seems unrealistic. My experience has been that grief comes up periodically even after a length of time. It is not finished by any stretch and I don’t think an exercise of talking to an empty chair is the magic. In any case, grief is the price of love and I welcome memories of my loved ones even when it hurts.

[Deborah Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Judy Tatelbaum, M.S.W., has given us by far one of the best, most supportive books written on the process of Grieving from both the practical, therapeutic and from the personal. As a friend and a Jungian Psychotherapist, I have over the years bought stacks of The Courage To Grieve to give out to my clients and loved ones when they suddenly find themselves plunged into the grief process when the death of a loved one opens upon them.

As someone who has had many deaths in my own life from the age of five when my brother's and my playmate, Johnny Richardson died of leukemia and shortly thereafter my beloved Cousin Tim was killed by a train - - - and then many deaths of close relatives and friends I found this book in 1984 when it was first published to be helpful in re-framing much of the work that I had not been supported to do in various therapies and Jungian Analysis. I also found it very helpful to clients and friend whether they were floundering in the first stages of their loved one gone or had been as many are in in our society, in years of unresolved grief.

As a working therapist herself, Judy realized twenty years after her brother had died that she still was unhealed and suffering unresolved grief. She had found, as had I, that there was not enough understanding and she thus used the working tools of therapy that she had to find her way through.

Although this book was published 28 years ago, clients and friends find it as helpful now as it was when it first came out. For the more "spiritually inclined" I also recommend that Buddhist psychologist, meditation teacher, and friend of Elizabeth Kubler Ross - Stephen Levine's books, Who Dies and Healing Into Life and Death. Between the three books, and with a good grief support group and therapist, it can help make the journey through the death of a loved one doable - and can help support us not to be left in years and decades of unresolved grief that so many have lived their lives with.

No healthy person wants to have our loved ones die. And our society as a whole tries to sweep death under the carpet - we are not given the tools for walking through grief. Often we don't want to face the grief process in a proper way as within our unconscious we fear that to do so may cause us to let our loved one go - to forget them. Our society encourages us - - even in many therapeutic venues - to repress and forget.

But the truth is that this is not the way of the heart - and if we were in our loved one's place - we would not want them to suffer. Nothing can bring our dear one's back - but for them - we can learn proper tools and have the Courage to Grieve. Please don't face your loved one's dying alone - - get this book and Stephen Levine's very helpful books - and a good counselor and support group. Do it for you and do it for your loved one.

And if you are a therapist or grief counselor I encourage you to have extra copies of this book on hand to give out at a first session. People who are in fresh grief often do not have the strength and energy to order and wait to get a book like this and Stephen Levine's books - -you will be doing your clients a great service to be able to send them home with this book. You will also find, no matter how much training and years of experience, that this book will give you some fresh insights that you can use to support your clients.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took me approximately forever to read this book, but as you might imagine, reading a book about grief takes time. This book has a lot to offer in terms of framing our reactions to loss and how it feels to grieve in a culture that simply doesn’t handle death well. We are encouraged in most ways to ignore or attempt to escape death, which can make it scary, angering, tragic, confusing, and myriad other emotions when it (inevitably) enters your sphere.

Being able to think about, understand, dwell on and process my emotions through some of these helpful lenses helped me make sense of a thing that scrambles the brain. I was especially grateful for some of the reflections on early grief and why some “helpful” approaches aren’t so helpful. The book is a little dated in some respects; and so there are some perspectives I found less helpful or more out of touch with current emotional and mental health practices. But overall a good read for those in the throes of grief.

[Kathryn Whitaker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven’t had the desire to read to many books about death and grieving after my dad died. This was my first and I had low expectations. A little bit of a slow start but something clicked a few chapters in and I just felt so seen. It was such a healing book for me.

[Chris Neville · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading to understand and manage your grief journey.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took awhile for me to finish this book. A hospice grief counselor suggested it after the death of a dear friend. I'm glad I did though; the last few chapters gave some really good advice about going on after losing a loved one. I ordered a copy for my library.

[Mysteryfan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm coming up on the one-year anniversary of a major loss and my counselor suggested this book. In some ways, it's dated (the references to Kahlil Gibran) but in other ways it's extremely helpful. In some ways, it's extremely pragmatic - what to do before you die - and in others, practical - what to do when others die. It addresses the completion of grief and unhealthy grief. I would recommend it to those in a similar situation.