Giving Sorrow Words: How to Cope with Grief and Get on with Your Life

I started reading this book about 2 months after the death of my spouse at the age of 53 and after almost 6 years of marriage and a horrific death from a nerve disease. I never really knew what grief was until his death. Nothing seemed to help until I read Candy's book. I never realized how cathartic such as death could be. Candy provides such an insight into how I needed to not only pass through the sorrow and pain but into a totally changed life. She helped me understand how many more facets there were to what I was feeling. This is a wonderful compassionate work. I know Her daughter must be smiling down from heaven in pride on her mother today.

Candy Lightner's book was the most helpful guide through grief that I read after my own loss of a 14 year-old daughter in 1988. Here I am, 13 years later, still remembering passages from the book. A few months after my child's death, and feeling mired in a depression I had no idea how to lift, I bought or borrowed every book on grief I could get my hands on. This one stands out for its honesty and focuses on the fact that there are disparate ways of grieving, none of them wrong, and that those left to deal with the death of a loved one never "recover" as from an illness, but rather incorporate the experience into his or her life. The loss becomes, as one father described it (paraphrased) not a turbulent river, but a meandering stream that ebbs and flows through the remainder of one's life. I completely recommend this book, and in fact bought many copies which I have given away over the years. There are many interesting facts brought out in the book, for example that 80% of all marriages end in divorce after the death of a child. Although perhaps most helpful to those who have lost a child, the book has much to offer anyone learning to cope after the death of a spouse, relative, or dear friend.