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Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss
Grief is a personal journey, never the same for any two people and as unique as your life and your relationships. Although loss is an inevitable part of life, how you approach this fact can make the difference between meaningless pain and the manifestation of understanding and wisdom. This audiobook shares a mindful approach to dealing with grief that can help you make that difference.
By walking this mindful path, you will discover that you are capable of transforming and healing the grief you carry and finding the spiritual and emotional resilience you need to move through this challenging time. These mindfulness practices, explained here in simple and practical language, will help you bear your time of grief. But they will do more than that, too. They will guide you to a life more fully lived, with more meaning. These simple practices will help you experience what richness comes from asking deeper questions about loss and about life.
By walking this mindful path, you will discover that you are capable of transforming and healing the grief you carry and finding the spiritual and emotional resilience you need to move through this challenging time. These mindfulness practices, explained here in simple and practical language, will help you bear your time of grief. But they will do more than that, too. They will guide you to a life more fully lived, with more meaning. These simple practices will help you experience what richness comes from asking deeper questions about loss and about life.
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First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
December 1, 2008
I bought this book 3 days after my mom died and it took me more than a month to get through it. It was hard for me to read about what I was going through while I was experiencing it, but I'm glad I did.
Although this book comes from a Buddhist perspective, it presents a way of looking at loss and grief that can be helpful for anyone.
A few things that really stood out for me:
1. The amount a person is able to feel grief is the same extent a person is able to feel love. We grieve because we have loved and it is inevitable that someone who loves eventually feels the torture of loss. This pain is natural and a symbol of what is good within each of us.
2. When we experience acute grief, the ego is non-existent or at it's lowest point. This is an ideal time to be in touch with ourselves and explore what is really important in our lives. Through grief we will experience emotions and a place within that isn't accessible otherwise.
3. Grief can change the direction our lives take and awaken us to a higher sense of compassion and spirituality (as in understanding ourselves and our relationship to others and our place in the world, not necessarily having anything to do with religion).
This doesn't mean I wouldn't go back in time and never experience loss if I could, but it helped me feel like this will all be okay. I can come out of losing my mom a better person rather than a bitter depressed human being.
Although this book comes from a Buddhist perspective, it presents a way of looking at loss and grief that can be helpful for anyone.
A few things that really stood out for me:
1. The amount a person is able to feel grief is the same extent a person is able to feel love. We grieve because we have loved and it is inevitable that someone who loves eventually feels the torture of loss. This pain is natural and a symbol of what is good within each of us.
2. When we experience acute grief, the ego is non-existent or at it's lowest point. This is an ideal time to be in touch with ourselves and explore what is really important in our lives. Through grief we will experience emotions and a place within that isn't accessible otherwise.
3. Grief can change the direction our lives take and awaken us to a higher sense of compassion and spirituality (as in understanding ourselves and our relationship to others and our place in the world, not necessarily having anything to do with religion).
This doesn't mean I wouldn't go back in time and never experience loss if I could, but it helped me feel like this will all be okay. I can come out of losing my mom a better person rather than a bitter depressed human being.
February 15, 2022
This was a difficult book to read. But that's OK, it's meant to be.
I found myself in need of a book to read to help me make sense of my grief after losing my Dad this past January. I never expected to need a book of this sort - I am a Mental Health Counselor that has worked with countless people who have grieved all types of loss, including deaths of close ones ... these losses have included sudden and tragic events. Mine shouldn't be that difficult, right?
But it was. Even though it was a little sudden, and not after a very long, lingering illness (thankfully my Dad suffered less than a month), he lived a long and fulfilling life but I found myself throw off guard. I always tell my clients the first year is the toughest as one endures anniversary days of special events and the changing of seasons. What I did expect was that the further away I was from the day of his passing, the more severe my loss felt.
This book helped me make more sense of it. There is a standing "rule" when working with mindfulness as it pertains to mental health work - one needs to face the issue to make it real, and thus less able to harm. That being said, I found it difficult to get through this book. One of my problems was wanting to plow through it to tack on another read book in my yearly reading challenge (note: this challenge helped me get through the tough first few months of this year) - not a very mindful way to approach the book.
So, after a few nights with some insomnia bouts, I slowed myself down. I tried to digest the information and take a more mindful approach to my situation. One of the key passages that got me through was this:
"You may year for youth long gone, unaware that your life today is what you will see as your youth in the future."
During the past few months I realized that a lot of my pain was not only losing my father, but losing the life I had when my father was raising me. This passage cracked me between the eyes - making me painfully aware that I was missing out on some pretty good years with a loving wife and an intelligent and terminally cute 11 year old daughter. Along the way I also realized that between the past I was mourning and the present I am taking for granted were some really crappy years filled with perpetually poor decisions being made.
This wasn't the only bit of wisdom I took from this book. I was constantly reminded that my spiritual practice (I identify mostly as Buddhist) has been lacking. But the good news is that this is considered normal in the grieving process. Spirituality often becomes stronger as we wrestle with our grief and loss.
This book is highly recommended whether you identify as Buddhist or not (it respects and even incorporates other beliefs), whether you are new to mindfulness work or not (I was surprised that the section on "what is mindfulness" wasn't just a rehash of the other hundred books on mindful living I have read -I found some new insight), or whether you are actively grieving or not (grief can be defined as any major loss, such as a breakup, losing a friend or moving away, not just death).
I already plan on rereading this book again, probably before the holidays. This time though, I am going to slow down and allow it to become a practice, not just a quick cure.
I found myself in need of a book to read to help me make sense of my grief after losing my Dad this past January. I never expected to need a book of this sort - I am a Mental Health Counselor that has worked with countless people who have grieved all types of loss, including deaths of close ones ... these losses have included sudden and tragic events. Mine shouldn't be that difficult, right?
But it was. Even though it was a little sudden, and not after a very long, lingering illness (thankfully my Dad suffered less than a month), he lived a long and fulfilling life but I found myself throw off guard. I always tell my clients the first year is the toughest as one endures anniversary days of special events and the changing of seasons. What I did expect was that the further away I was from the day of his passing, the more severe my loss felt.
This book helped me make more sense of it. There is a standing "rule" when working with mindfulness as it pertains to mental health work - one needs to face the issue to make it real, and thus less able to harm. That being said, I found it difficult to get through this book. One of my problems was wanting to plow through it to tack on another read book in my yearly reading challenge (note: this challenge helped me get through the tough first few months of this year) - not a very mindful way to approach the book.
So, after a few nights with some insomnia bouts, I slowed myself down. I tried to digest the information and take a more mindful approach to my situation. One of the key passages that got me through was this:
"You may year for youth long gone, unaware that your life today is what you will see as your youth in the future."
During the past few months I realized that a lot of my pain was not only losing my father, but losing the life I had when my father was raising me. This passage cracked me between the eyes - making me painfully aware that I was missing out on some pretty good years with a loving wife and an intelligent and terminally cute 11 year old daughter. Along the way I also realized that between the past I was mourning and the present I am taking for granted were some really crappy years filled with perpetually poor decisions being made.
This wasn't the only bit of wisdom I took from this book. I was constantly reminded that my spiritual practice (I identify mostly as Buddhist) has been lacking. But the good news is that this is considered normal in the grieving process. Spirituality often becomes stronger as we wrestle with our grief and loss.
This book is highly recommended whether you identify as Buddhist or not (it respects and even incorporates other beliefs), whether you are new to mindfulness work or not (I was surprised that the section on "what is mindfulness" wasn't just a rehash of the other hundred books on mindful living I have read -I found some new insight), or whether you are actively grieving or not (grief can be defined as any major loss, such as a breakup, losing a friend or moving away, not just death).
I already plan on rereading this book again, probably before the holidays. This time though, I am going to slow down and allow it to become a practice, not just a quick cure.
November 28, 2022
It's been over four years since my dad died (in 2011), and I'm having real problems with grief despite a lot of work on it. This book is the first I've found that describes what I'm experiencing and explains that it can happen and how to work with it. The author might sound a bit dry on the audible version, but he is very thorough. I kept thinking, why couldn't my therapist just have read this book and then worked with me? It's obviously not new information since it was published in 2005. I've had major depression, but nothing ever made me feel the way grief has. I'm grateful for discovering this on audible and I'm getting the paperback version, too. I'm also grateful for just finding Cheryl Strayed and Wild by chance--the movie was on HBO Now; and I had hiked the Appalachian Trail on Outward Bound for a few weeks in my 20s. But I discovered we had a lot more in common--she was four years into her grief with no end in sight. I'm older than she was, and I get annoyed by the reviews that are so judgmental (but I didn't want a dumb, unprepared hiking movie, either--but Into the Wild people think is great, the way to go, ugh.) Anyway, grief is very personal. and you have no idea how it will affect you or someone else until it's on. Also, just because we all experience loss and death doesn't mean we get to decide how another person deals with it. Especially if they don't know what to do. I've been down some dark paths, but never had I felt crazy until grief came to find me. With this work, I am hoping for a better year in 2016.
January 19, 2012
The first grief book I've encountered that paints grief as something that possesses transformative power rather than a bevy of horrifying feelings to be gotten over as quickly as possible (which God knows is also an accurate description). I don't know why such a simple concept hadn't occurred to me before I read this, but it eluded me completely. Not much in the way of specific prescriptive advice - i.e., what to expect in the first month, the first six months, etc - but advice on how to integrate your loss into your identity in ways that neither minimize your relationship with your loved one nor concentrate solely on your own suffering.
July 30, 2017
I liked the Buddhist/mindful approach in this book but I disliked the psychological/approach. In fact I only skimmed the last 10 pages because I was feeling so horrible while reading it. I'm hoping that thoughts have changed in the 10 years that the author wrote this book. I'm saying this because I'm currently listening to an interview with Megan Devine, a grief therapist, Who suffered her own for profound loss, and her approach is so much more compassionate. This author definitely does not speak to my experience.
September 8, 2014
This is an amazing book and completely helped me calm my emotions during a very difficult time. You can't unlearn this stuff. I'll be able to use what i've learned forever.
November 17, 2015
I found this book tone very compassionate and helpful. It approaches the grieving process from a Tibetan Buddhist point of view. Very basically, mindfulness plus grief equals opportunity for growth.
January 12, 2014
Aside from Tear Soup, this is the best book I have read on the subject.
I intend to buy this one for my reference library.
I intend to buy this one for my reference library.
June 25, 2018
A beautiful , insightful,conforming book.
July 19, 2023
A friend bought me this book at some point in the last year. I found it to have many helpful concepts and ideas. Though the author is a Buddhist, he is clear that the reader does not have to be to gain from his ideas. One idea that really resonated with me is the alchemy of grief. The author stated that alchemy was an ancient philosophical and scientific tradition that was often thought to be concerned with transforming base metals into more valuable metals, like gold. "Although they were seemingly involved in a purely materialistic pursuit, the alchemists were also concerned with a profound spiritual process - how to transform coarse experiences, such as distress, suffering, and ignorance, into meaningful and sublime experiences, such as compassion, transcendence, and self-actualization.... Spiritual evolution is not given to us. Instead, like pure gold, it must be mined and distilled from everyday experiences." The author uses personal examples, examples from his clinical practice, and research throughout this short non-fiction, educational book. I liked one section where he wrote about transforming "Why me?" to "Why not me?" He used examples from the teachings of Buddha as well as examples from the Bible. I think the book opened to my eyes to the truth of the universality of loss and grief, and this has helped me in this first year.
May 3, 2025
4.5 🥲 I learned a lot through reading this. Primarily that the arcs of grieving and mindfulness are equally long, unpredictable, and require immense self compassion.
April 30, 2018
Loved this read. Worked through it a chapter or two at a time. Book is repetitive, which is intentional due to the nature of the book. Compares grief to a spiral staircase instead of stages because grief itself is repetitive. Gives you tools to cope with upcoming triggers, acute grief, and the importance of realizing the impermanence of everything and being mindful that the good and bad don't last forever. Great read and has really helped me shape grief into a spiritual growth tool instead of drowning in it daily.
June 23, 2022
This honestly reads more like an advertisement for Buddhism than a book on how to cope with grief and loss. I'm not saying that this won't be helpful for some people, but I feel like if I lost someone and they handed me this book that tells me I should meditate, I would've probably thrown it across the room in rage. Also, I felt like the book was very repetitive and didn't give a lot of new, insightful information.
May 12, 2016
I don't know why I found this book, I'm starting to believe I was led to it deliberately. I wasn't ready to read some of it, or rather capable of having a clear enough mind to really be able to process the content. I am very thankful I pushed through and picked it up again when I was ready. It has changed my life!
October 29, 2009
I found so much insight into my life and the grief process. I highly recommend this book!
November 28, 2009
needs to be in your book collection
April 4, 2012
Highly recommend for dealing with any type of loss.
June 26, 2015
I thought this was an excellent book. It combines reassurance with opportunities to change. It asks relevant and appropriate questions and reminds us of why grief hurts and happens.
Read
March 9, 2021This book simply did not speak to my experience with grief, and it was hard to push through the redundancy of it.
April 18, 2013
Comforting text with the Buddhist perspective on suffering.
Grieving mindfully can be understood as being consciously aware of the intense pain of love after loss. Awareness is allowing yourself to accept the pain of grief, not running away from your loss. Using your emotional vulnerability to toward your growth as a human being. Come in full contact with yourself and learn to ride the waves of grief. Your thoughts, feelings, identity after loss all become vehicles for your own evolution.
By working to understand what drives this pain, you can release yourself to move closer to the people who matter the most, or change habits that keep you from living fully. Awareness can take you from living with misery to living with openness and passion.
Grieving mindfully allows us to use the tremendous influx of emotional energy that comes from experiencing loss to nurture life. Approach grief as an opportunity to grow by actively giving meaning to your pain.
At first, we only remember the last part of our relationship. Eventually, you can recall the beginning, middle and the end/current stage. Being able to recall memories of all your time together is a sure sign that you are making progress.
Acute grief and triggers in the first year
You may feel completely alone and vulnerable in the world. When we are confronted with intense pain and distress, our first reaction is usually to run away from it. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. Be careful not to channel it to anger. You don’t have to run away. Just accept yourself. Mindfulness can help subdue the mind, no matter how distressed or pained it may be.
The simple act of sitting down to meditate, paying attention to your thoughts and feelings (both pleasant and unpleasant), and focusing on breath. Guess what? you’re still breathing. You’re OK.
Know we will meet these triggers and allow yourself to go through them using acceptance as a core method of grieving mindfully.
Triggers can hurt because they highlight the loneliness you feel without the person you were sharing life with. Despite the pain, they teach us that although grief feels lonely and isolating, it is a reminder that we are meant to be with people. Grief reminds us of the almost sacred nature of human relationships, how important they are in all of our lives.
When you experience distress, it’s very easy to isolate and suffer in silences. Surround yourself with caring, understanding people.
The hardest part of suffering loss is often the moment when you are left alone for the first time. These first months will pass. The first part is the hardest because in addition to the loss being fresh, the form your grief will take is uncharted territory. Triggers release a set response of thoughts and feelings. When we think and feel a certain way, we sometimes are overpowered by the intensity of the feelings. They remind you of your loss and arouse the feeling of acute grief. When you go to a particular place, or hear a certain song, see a pictures, you may experience acute grief.
Accept the “Middle Way.”
Grief means reconstructing your identify and your world, as it has been forever changed. You might think it involves thinking about the past, but really it is about deciding how to live your life in the future!
The characteristics and features of your relationship with your loved one determine the questions that come up in that person’s absence, and they often shape how you go about answering them.
Some relationships are healing -- on that seems to embody health and well being. Talking with that person feels empowering and validating. Another relationship may evoke self-destructive tendencies. That friendship may bring out your negativity.
When a relationship ends, you fill up the space that it once occupied. The role that person played in your life becomes the focus of your thoughts and feelings. The themes may become integrated into your grief journey. You may find yourself emotionally disoriented without that person there.
Your emotions are a sign that you are finding your way in a new world, one that has been changed by your loss. Be an active participant to find understanding, acceptance and meaning - gives you power to change your life. (or just enjoy it :)
Actively finding meaning in loss is the heart of grieving mindfully.
Answer these questions personally: find your answers not for someone else or for everyone.
The answers to the riddle of your suffering - what you will get through it, and how you will grow because of it - unfolds over time. Human beings have been asking the same questions for thousands of years. Attempts to explain life’s basic mystery -- why we are... and then are not.
To Buddhists, there is no mystery to loss. It is a universal reality. “Everything that has a beginning has an end.”
To bring home the impermanent nature of everything: mandalas (Sanskrit for ‘circle’)
No matter how intricate, complex or beautiful, all experiences are temporary. With each breath, we exhale an ending, and a new inhalation -- a new beginning follows, and the cycle repeats, over and over. Our lives depend on it. The cycle of loss and regeneration evident in our breath.
Five Things:
1) I’m sorry - if you regret something
2) I forgive you - anything and everything
3) I love you - affirm the relationship
4) Thank you - what did you learn; what was special about your time together; how did your
life change because of your loved one’s presence or loss.
5) Good-bye - you have cherished his or her presence
Acceptance of loss is a gradual and constructive process that begins with closure. Acceptance is a path, not a goal. It facilitates the reconstruction of meaning. When you seek meaning or an understanding of what you are experiencing, you actively reconstruct your world to accommodate the changes you have experience and continue to go through.
Robert Niemeyer (1997) describes this potential for reconstruction as an indicator of how grief is an active process in which we play an important role. Our whole world changes when we grieve.
Emotional pain, especially during grief, is one of the emotions that defines us a human. Being in pain increases our love and compassion for others with an urgency and vulnerability that are rarely shown. When you suffer the pain of grief, you are in close contact with the most tender part of your heart -- that part of you that loves others. When we talk of the pain of grief, we are talking about the deep sense of compassion for yourself and those around you. The Mystery of Suffering is one that all world religions and spiritual traditions attempt to address.
Training the Mind
Tibetan Buddhism offers Lojong or mind training.
Developed in India and Indonesia in the 10th and 11th centuries.
The main purpose of our lives is to learn and practice compassion toward all beings, including ourselves.Compassion is the spirit of unconditional welcoming, of giving love by opening up to your own or someone else’s hardship and suffering. The spiritual path is built by acts of compassion and generosity.
The real challenge to living a spiritual and mindful life is when you feel depressed, irritated or angry. Bring a compassionate sense into all our difficult times and relationships.
If you are challenged, we it as a spiritual teaching. Com-passion -- with energy, emotion
Welcome hardship as a spiritual teacher, an opportunity to learn who you are, who you want to be, and what your core values are. When we suffer, we tend to appreciate the power, preciousness and importance of life and relationships. At other times, we may take things for granted.
Grieving mindfully can be understood as being consciously aware of the intense pain of love after loss. Awareness is allowing yourself to accept the pain of grief, not running away from your loss. Using your emotional vulnerability to toward your growth as a human being. Come in full contact with yourself and learn to ride the waves of grief. Your thoughts, feelings, identity after loss all become vehicles for your own evolution.
By working to understand what drives this pain, you can release yourself to move closer to the people who matter the most, or change habits that keep you from living fully. Awareness can take you from living with misery to living with openness and passion.
Grieving mindfully allows us to use the tremendous influx of emotional energy that comes from experiencing loss to nurture life. Approach grief as an opportunity to grow by actively giving meaning to your pain.
At first, we only remember the last part of our relationship. Eventually, you can recall the beginning, middle and the end/current stage. Being able to recall memories of all your time together is a sure sign that you are making progress.
Acute grief and triggers in the first year
You may feel completely alone and vulnerable in the world. When we are confronted with intense pain and distress, our first reaction is usually to run away from it. We seek pleasure and avoid pain. Be careful not to channel it to anger. You don’t have to run away. Just accept yourself. Mindfulness can help subdue the mind, no matter how distressed or pained it may be.
The simple act of sitting down to meditate, paying attention to your thoughts and feelings (both pleasant and unpleasant), and focusing on breath. Guess what? you’re still breathing. You’re OK.
Know we will meet these triggers and allow yourself to go through them using acceptance as a core method of grieving mindfully.
Triggers can hurt because they highlight the loneliness you feel without the person you were sharing life with. Despite the pain, they teach us that although grief feels lonely and isolating, it is a reminder that we are meant to be with people. Grief reminds us of the almost sacred nature of human relationships, how important they are in all of our lives.
When you experience distress, it’s very easy to isolate and suffer in silences. Surround yourself with caring, understanding people.
The hardest part of suffering loss is often the moment when you are left alone for the first time. These first months will pass. The first part is the hardest because in addition to the loss being fresh, the form your grief will take is uncharted territory. Triggers release a set response of thoughts and feelings. When we think and feel a certain way, we sometimes are overpowered by the intensity of the feelings. They remind you of your loss and arouse the feeling of acute grief. When you go to a particular place, or hear a certain song, see a pictures, you may experience acute grief.
Accept the “Middle Way.”
Grief means reconstructing your identify and your world, as it has been forever changed. You might think it involves thinking about the past, but really it is about deciding how to live your life in the future!
The characteristics and features of your relationship with your loved one determine the questions that come up in that person’s absence, and they often shape how you go about answering them.
Some relationships are healing -- on that seems to embody health and well being. Talking with that person feels empowering and validating. Another relationship may evoke self-destructive tendencies. That friendship may bring out your negativity.
When a relationship ends, you fill up the space that it once occupied. The role that person played in your life becomes the focus of your thoughts and feelings. The themes may become integrated into your grief journey. You may find yourself emotionally disoriented without that person there.
Your emotions are a sign that you are finding your way in a new world, one that has been changed by your loss. Be an active participant to find understanding, acceptance and meaning - gives you power to change your life. (or just enjoy it :)
Actively finding meaning in loss is the heart of grieving mindfully.
Answer these questions personally: find your answers not for someone else or for everyone.
The answers to the riddle of your suffering - what you will get through it, and how you will grow because of it - unfolds over time. Human beings have been asking the same questions for thousands of years. Attempts to explain life’s basic mystery -- why we are... and then are not.
To Buddhists, there is no mystery to loss. It is a universal reality. “Everything that has a beginning has an end.”
To bring home the impermanent nature of everything: mandalas (Sanskrit for ‘circle’)
No matter how intricate, complex or beautiful, all experiences are temporary. With each breath, we exhale an ending, and a new inhalation -- a new beginning follows, and the cycle repeats, over and over. Our lives depend on it. The cycle of loss and regeneration evident in our breath.
Five Things:
1) I’m sorry - if you regret something
2) I forgive you - anything and everything
3) I love you - affirm the relationship
4) Thank you - what did you learn; what was special about your time together; how did your
life change because of your loved one’s presence or loss.
5) Good-bye - you have cherished his or her presence
Acceptance of loss is a gradual and constructive process that begins with closure. Acceptance is a path, not a goal. It facilitates the reconstruction of meaning. When you seek meaning or an understanding of what you are experiencing, you actively reconstruct your world to accommodate the changes you have experience and continue to go through.
Robert Niemeyer (1997) describes this potential for reconstruction as an indicator of how grief is an active process in which we play an important role. Our whole world changes when we grieve.
Emotional pain, especially during grief, is one of the emotions that defines us a human. Being in pain increases our love and compassion for others with an urgency and vulnerability that are rarely shown. When you suffer the pain of grief, you are in close contact with the most tender part of your heart -- that part of you that loves others. When we talk of the pain of grief, we are talking about the deep sense of compassion for yourself and those around you. The Mystery of Suffering is one that all world religions and spiritual traditions attempt to address.
Training the Mind
Tibetan Buddhism offers Lojong or mind training.
Developed in India and Indonesia in the 10th and 11th centuries.
The main purpose of our lives is to learn and practice compassion toward all beings, including ourselves.Compassion is the spirit of unconditional welcoming, of giving love by opening up to your own or someone else’s hardship and suffering. The spiritual path is built by acts of compassion and generosity.
The real challenge to living a spiritual and mindful life is when you feel depressed, irritated or angry. Bring a compassionate sense into all our difficult times and relationships.
If you are challenged, we it as a spiritual teaching. Com-passion -- with energy, emotion
Welcome hardship as a spiritual teacher, an opportunity to learn who you are, who you want to be, and what your core values are. When we suffer, we tend to appreciate the power, preciousness and importance of life and relationships. At other times, we may take things for granted.
May 21, 2023
Horseshit. Very disappointed. It tells you to radically accept grief and loss, but doesn't give you the steps how to do it. DBT is the only resource I have ever found four steps how to do it
This book says closure is the feeling that you have both said goodbye. What about people who have a struggle with goodbyes due to abandonment and trauma so you never do say goodbye. Plus, if you believe in afterlife, and that our loved ones don't really die, they go to a different plane, they still exist, then why the fuck would you ever say goodbye? There is no closure. That's just a myth, it's stupid.
The author talks about using your grief and loss to learn compassion and to not take your relationships for granted. What about people who don't take their relationships for granted, who are thankful for them and appreciate them every single day. What about the person who has so much loss in their life they already know this stuff? What if you are already an empath and you don't need to learn compassion? In fact, if your capacity for compassion is so great that it distracts from your own life? THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO LEARN? Have I learned everything?
This book is for beginners. The author has written this book to simply put his name on a book. I don't think he is smart, or knows anything more than what I have already learned through reading and therapies.
If anyone is reading this, just because he's a PhD doesn't mean he's smart. It means he had the opportunity. Money, time, resources, the list goes on.
I'm disappointed I wasted an hour out of my life on this book.
This book says closure is the feeling that you have both said goodbye. What about people who have a struggle with goodbyes due to abandonment and trauma so you never do say goodbye. Plus, if you believe in afterlife, and that our loved ones don't really die, they go to a different plane, they still exist, then why the fuck would you ever say goodbye? There is no closure. That's just a myth, it's stupid.
The author talks about using your grief and loss to learn compassion and to not take your relationships for granted. What about people who don't take their relationships for granted, who are thankful for them and appreciate them every single day. What about the person who has so much loss in their life they already know this stuff? What if you are already an empath and you don't need to learn compassion? In fact, if your capacity for compassion is so great that it distracts from your own life? THEN WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO LEARN? Have I learned everything?
This book is for beginners. The author has written this book to simply put his name on a book. I don't think he is smart, or knows anything more than what I have already learned through reading and therapies.
If anyone is reading this, just because he's a PhD doesn't mean he's smart. It means he had the opportunity. Money, time, resources, the list goes on.
I'm disappointed I wasted an hour out of my life on this book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 15, 2024
“When you experience acute grief, it is the only thing that you can attend to. It demands all of your attention, and you know that it is grief that is being experienced. It may gradually lose its intensity, but it can still interfere with your ability to do everyday tasks. When you reexperience it, acute grief makes you feel like you have gone back to the days when the loss you suffered was new and completely overwhelming. A lot of the time, feelings of acute grief will remind you just how nonlinear emotions can be; they may not follow a logical or straightforward pattern and may arise as if from nowhere, or for no apparent reason. I have found that during the process of grieving many people repeatedly reexperience the same intense emotions. Sometimes, these reexperienced feelings, described as “acute grief,” can be more intense than they were the first time around. You probably first experienced acute grief at the moment of your loss. Acute grief is the ground zero of grief; it is the reference point of all of your other emotions.”
― Sameet M. Kumar, Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss
― Sameet M. Kumar, Grieving Mindfully: A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss
December 3, 2022
Without doubt this booked restored my sanity . After losing my partner to cancer at 49 in 2017 I was catapulted into a state of mind I had never known or felt. Before in my life even though I grieved my father in 2011 it felt very different this time .
Every day was torturous & dark … I was filled with dark thoughts I didn’t care to exist anymore .
In don’t know how I found this book but it I am so thankful I did . It honestly saved my sanity . It made sense in every way & has enlightened me to accept death & life on another level .
It has been a spiritual journey & honestly and awakening to life loss & my spitual beliefs .
I have recommend the book so many times to friends dealing with loss of the people they loved.
After alll there is not one person in this universe who will never experience loss through death .
Every day was torturous & dark … I was filled with dark thoughts I didn’t care to exist anymore .
In don’t know how I found this book but it I am so thankful I did . It honestly saved my sanity . It made sense in every way & has enlightened me to accept death & life on another level .
It has been a spiritual journey & honestly and awakening to life loss & my spitual beliefs .
I have recommend the book so many times to friends dealing with loss of the people they loved.
After alll there is not one person in this universe who will never experience loss through death .
September 18, 2017
Helping find spaciousness and sunlight in what could have been a terrible state of claustrophobia. The concept of "radical acceptance" for example is an unconventional tool in the face of immense pain. There must be unorthodox ways of breathing through and living with loss; namely embracing the sharp pains when they arise, meeting them head-on, instead of letting them get subsumed into dark closets. Sometimes thinking your way out of acute loss and pain and memory is a fool's errand. You literally have to drop what your fixating on and make space for much larger and beautiful universal forces in order to get through it. It's a form of surrender, which is a tall order for a non-deist like me, but somehow the Buddhist approach to grief allows for the "even me's" in the world.
March 31, 2019
Loss in Western Culture is Hard
The book is a useful tool for improving your mental resilience after a loss. One of the better and more useful books out there. The top rated books have too much of here is my experience (with no tips on growing, or perhaps the goal was to emotionally overload you by letting you know other people have gone through this).
It would have been helpful if there were some texts / mantras for meditations.
Such as:
may I be happy, may I be wise, may I be free from suffering...
Religion is present in the book, but pretty light. Mindfulness / meditation is a mental discipline that is a core part of the teachings of Buddhism, but is not in itself religious. Prayer is very similar in effect to meditation, where you are focused on an activity.
The book is a useful tool for improving your mental resilience after a loss. One of the better and more useful books out there. The top rated books have too much of here is my experience (with no tips on growing, or perhaps the goal was to emotionally overload you by letting you know other people have gone through this).
It would have been helpful if there were some texts / mantras for meditations.
Such as:
may I be happy, may I be wise, may I be free from suffering...
Religion is present in the book, but pretty light. Mindfulness / meditation is a mental discipline that is a core part of the teachings of Buddhism, but is not in itself religious. Prayer is very similar in effect to meditation, where you are focused on an activity.
March 26, 2024
I started this book back in November & I have been reading a little bit at a time, purely because there’s so much information in this book and I wanted to get the most out of it. The focus of this book is to bring an element of mindfulness to your grief, to weave compassion and gratitude into your grieving process, ultimately to bring about healing in a healthy way. There were some amazing explanations, especially of acute grief vs subtle grief, which I wasn’t aware of & can now identify both in my own life. I felt no pressure from this book, which is important especially around a topic that can put a lot of pressure on the grieving individual. A great educational resource if you’re grieving or are supporting someone in grief.
June 26, 2019
Of the many, many helpful and healing books on grief and loss that I read after the tragic death of my husband, for me, this book was the most inspirational and transformational. It became my bible---my "go-to" book when I found myself in the deepest throes of grief, and then even later on, when my grief became more subtle in nature. Based on Buddhist insights and practices, Dr. Kumar's words became a soothing balm to my scorched soul.
May 11, 2022
I hate this book. It says that mundane things like "moving to a new city" are grief. Like if that's true than the definition of grief is so broad that this book will be useless to people who've lost a loved one.
What does moving to a new city have in common with losing a loved one? Absolutely NOTHING.
What does moving to a new city have in common with losing a loved one? Absolutely NOTHING.
December 18, 2022
"Mindfulness teaches you that it all starts with accepting the precariousness of this very moment. The way that grief can fold itself into your life meaningfully is by awakening compassion based on the realization of impermanence."
This is a book to own and reference throughout life, which is inevitably full of losses to grow from.
This is a book to own and reference throughout life, which is inevitably full of losses to grow from.
December 14, 2023
I looooved this book. It reaffirmed my grief work and could easily recommend this to clients after they've completed their sessions with me.
The Buddha beliefs woven in throughout are not intrusive, the content can still be adapted to any belief system. The important take away is that the reader feels understood and validated and this book does that!
The Buddha beliefs woven in throughout are not intrusive, the content can still be adapted to any belief system. The important take away is that the reader feels understood and validated and this book does that!
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