CHECK OUT: How to Go on Living When Someone You Love Has Died

Dear Friends,

I have come across this book on grieving that contains several of the challenges that cause grievers heartache. The book How to Go on Living when Someone you Love has Died by Therese A. Rando, Ph.D. It is my hope that you will find validation, comfort, clarity, relief and direction from all that her words have to offer.

What struck me most about this book and led me to believe that it would be helpful to others was knowing how limited and specific the current self-help literature is on grief and the lack of full spectrum resources available, not as much I discovered when I came across this book.

Within the first chapter, Dr. Rando identifies so many of the ways in which your journey of loss has been experienced; she does this by acknowledging and validating the broad scope of the messiness of it all, but also the challenges you still face. She provides easy to understand direction and pathways forward that are in accordance with your own personal loss and not that of a group (i.e., parental loss.) She also explains how to read through the book while providing the benefits and importance of doing so within the common language we speak, not that of medical, philosophical, or psychosocial jargon.

Further into the book, the pages she has compiled specific to your loss are powerful and enlightening. Here you will find a range of subject areas and with some, you may already identify with, but more importantly those you may not yet understand or be aware of.

With that said, allow me to bring your attention to her words on page 167 “Parental grief is vastly different from all other griefs.’

She also states that losing a child leaves a parent in a situation where there exists a much larger number of factors that will compromise your grief, leaving it unresolved in areas. Through some of our conversations together, we have discussed some of these unresolved issues. However, she picks up from where I left off in being able to further support you by offering more perspectives and guidance. When I read through this part of the book, it was along the lines of her coming to occupy the seat on the couch where I had previously been sitting with you, and she simply continued on from where in the conversation we’d left off. I also think you’ll find her insight on how to support your youngest son with his grief from the loss of his brother and his new role within the family unit, to be quite helpful. 

Throughout the last third of the book Dr. Rando sheds light on a myriad of ways to help you understand how to resolve your grief, how to adjust and adapt to it and why it is all so necessary. She then shares various roadmaps, for lack of a better term, for moving adaptively into the future without someone you love being physically present, yet without forgetting them and the life that you shared with them.

With much love,

Jen