"Healing Through the Dark Emotions: The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair"
Written by Miriam Greenspan
Published May 2004, 336 pages (paperback)
Read: April 2013
During a Skype conversation
between my best friend and I (he was in India and I was in the US) in
September 2012, my best friend of 6 years told me "Katie, no matter what
happens, I will love you forever." The second most heartbreaking phone
call I've received in my adult life came just two months later when my
other best friend called me on a Monday morning in mid November. "Katie,
he's gone."
I've experienced deaths of loved ones in my life
(one of the most painful of my childhood occurred when I was just 11
years old)....but none of them have been quite as emotionally painful as
the sudden, unexpected loss of my young, kind, and loving best friend.
One day while talking about the difficulties of managing my grief/loss
while still going to work and trying to be a good therapist to my
clients, an intern whom had been doing clinical assessment training with
me told me about this book.
"Healing Through the Dark Emotions"
salved the emotional pain in my psyche like nothing or no one else
could during these last 6 months, for which I'm incredibly grateful.
Miriam Greenspan is not only a therapist whom offers professional
insights, she has been through her own personal battles with grief and
loss as well. Instead of perceiving it as a hopeless negative, however,
Greenspan seizes the pain as an opportunity for potential growth. She
encourages readers to look deeply within themselves with compassion and
curiosity, urging them to surrender to the pain instead of resist
it....because as painful as it feels to do so, it is more fruitful to
embrace it than let it fester into destructive pain that leads to
addiction and overall health dis-ease.
If you're looking for a
meaningful (possibly life changing)grief and loss book that strays off
the beaten path (ie, one that is not pop psychology-ish), this is the
one for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment