Life is Goodbye/Life is Hello: Grieving Well Through All Kinds of Loss

Life is Goodbye/Life is Hello:

Grieving Well Through All Kinds of Loss

by Alla Renée Bozarth

Life is Goodbye. Life is change. Life means having and holding — then letting go and giving up — even what we love the best.

Life is also Hello. We can survive loss. We can move beyond endurance to accept new and different joys into our lives.

Discover the art of possibility. The tools are your own creativity and faith. You have it all within you. You can do what you need to do to be healed…

This pain won’t last forever.

Life is Goodbye/Life is Hello covers common and hurtful taboos against grieving, loss of self-image in grief, losses related to physical death but also infertility, loss of job, home, friendship, identity, work, a beloved landscape, divorce, illness and aging and other specific types of loss.

Readers' Responses

“Best book ever on grieving over anything! This book has helped me so much during a very rough time in my life where I’ve split from my husband, lost my house that I dearly loved, and move to a place that I hate. It helps you understand what you're going through, and it gives you things to do that can help. An amazingly good book!

Anonymous reader

amazon.com “

“I marvel as I read your books that you reveal yourself in such a bare-bones fashion.  There are your feelings, your desires, your wishes and your actions, your joys and your disappointments and your struggles – right there on the page, in printed words that can’t be taken back or obliterated or recanted if you have second thoughts about making such revelations about your deepest self.  I am most deeply touched when I read about your marriage.  Your love for Phil, your struggle to remain true to yourself within the marriage, your courage to move to Oregon, your ability to withstand the wonderings of others about the choices you made.  And finally, as the two of you connect in love and joy within each of your own comfort zones – poof – he is gone and grief is the new path to travel.

Powerful stuff!

Marlys Collom

San Diego, California”

“Alla Renée Bozarth is an excellent resource for anyone experiencing grief. This book is a profound mingling of sound psychological education and the emotional depth of one acquainted with grief. While she does not focus on the details of her story, I enjoyed the personal element of her personal grief poetry being interspersed throughout the book. Bozarth is both a priest and a therapist, yet she says her own grief journey was taken as only a broken human being.

The book is very thorough in its coverage of the various aspects of grief. She addresses cultural aspects of grief and how the loss of a significant person in our lives causes us to grieve other losses related to one’s self. She talks about how grief feels, its symptoms, and what you can do about it.

She also includes chapters on the grief caused through other losses in life such as change, separation, sickness, and even things we normally consider good such as the birth of a child and success.

One of the best things about the book is her reminder that suffering in and of itself has no value, yet we have the choice to teach ourselves and grow through our suffering. Bozarth shows her reader how, in the midst of their loss, they can teach themselves to have a new kind of joy and wholeness.

Anonymous reader

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