AN UNCONVENTIONAL LOOK AT GRIEF
In their non-fiction book, Living Life after Losing One (Cedar Fork), Oregon mother of seven, Alice Rampton, and her friend Nikki King, mother of five, joined forces to take on the daunting task of looking at their grief in an unconventional approach.
Contrary to a common belief that grieving is something you do and get through; these women show us great strength. Grief, as a process for the rest of your life, is what we see in their writing; it becomes more bearable, and your emotions are not as intense.
Grief occurs in all lives, and in many ways. Rampton and King’s book focuses on the grief of one child lost to cancer and another one to a car accident, as well as a myriad of other possibilities with additional interviews. They believe that grief does not have to destroy a family or a relationship, but that trauma can give new life and new meaning to families in different ways.
Just as a broken bone that has healed is often stronger than the original, similarly the heart has the capacity to grow stronger from grief. Nowhere is that demonstrated more clearly than with these two women and their friends. While dealing with their relationships under incredible stress, they now know a personal strength they did not recognize previously.
In this work, Rampton and King discuss the roots of grief, the triggers, the ways of coping with it, the process and stages of grief taken on your grief journey, and the secrets to maintaining a healthy healing. Grief is so common and so poorly understood, and yet it was a motivator for them to interview a group of other mothers with the same loss experience, both anticipated or unforeseen.
To look at a new perspective on grief and to choose their futures, all the women speaking to us in the book sought to be alive again. Each one, in their own way, resorted to leaving the constraints of grief to support each other and to give and receive kindness and joy.
They eventually felt free from the restraints of grief and understood they had the right to be happy, to move on, to be optimistic. They began to give themselves, and each other permission to be more than their loss situation.
Grief is a powerful alarm system for all members of a family. The siblings are also studied in the storytelling. Once the women dealt with the acute pain of the loss, of a future without their child, they looked more realistically at where their lives were going.
They each acknowledged the hurt, the guilt, and the mistrust, and began to live again. They found new meaning in all of it by asking questions of themselves and the others who share this unique bond of being the parent who’s lost a child.
What was this all about? What’s the insight? Why did this happen?
Conclusion: Grief isn’t black and white.
Celebrate My Sister’s Birthday – FREE EBOOK Gifts of Sisterhood-journey from grief to gratitude
Title: Gifts of Sisterhood-journey from grief to gratitude
Publication: December, 2011
Contact: Patricia L. Brooks, author
Address: 7970 E. Camelback Rd., 710, Scottsdale, AZ 85251
Cell (480-250-5556)
Email: [email protected]
Publisher: Brooks Goldmann Publishing, LLC
www.brooksgoldmannpublishing.com
Scottsdale Author/Publishing Consultant
Launches FREE EBOOK to Celebrate Sister’s Birthday Jan 14-16! Gifts of Sisterhood – the gifts that keep on giving!
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona, January 11, 2012 – To find hope in her
grief and to celebrate her sister’s life is God’s plan for this author. This past
month, Scottsdale author Patricia L. Brooks www.amazon.com/author/patricialbrooks
as Brooks Goldmann Publishing Company, LLC of Scottsdale, AZ enhanced her book Gifts of Sisterhood with updates in an Ebook now available to you
FREE for three days – Jan. 14-16 in celebration of her sister’s birthday. This new Ebook supports the importance of family relationships and the journey of grief when a loved one is lost. www.amazon.com/giftsofsisterhood.
In today’s firestorm of spiritual doubt, this book is a collection of heartwarming stories that should not be overlooked. Brooks gathered the stories from true
accounts of her relationship with her sister and their growing up in the upper
peninsula of Michigan. They experienced the unusual, the synchronistic, the amazing.
She tells them in her own words with her sister’s permission. Each one is a small miracle, often a life-changing experience that will touch your heart.
In addition to reducing the mystery of life, death and grief in her book, Gifts of Sisterhood, Brooks asserts life’s challenges occur all the time and change our lives forever; many times for the better.
Brooks, who represents not only her writing but her spirituality here, serves the community in many ways. She teaches and works within natural
approaches to the grief journey and offers her workshop outline in this revised
Ebook. Readers who sample this beautiful Ebook will become open to the possibility of achieving greater well-being and peace with life’s many challenges. Her Stop Smoking Sister campaign is introduced as well.
Patricia is the president/founder of the Scottsdale Society of Women Writers; building the group to 60 members since 2007 with monthly speaker/dinner meetings, critique groups and other outside book event activities.
The Brooks Goldmann Publishing, LLC website www.brooksgoldmannpublishing.com
provides information on their publishing services. As a published author and Scottsdale business woman, Patricia L. Brooks performs the duties of publishing consultant/book shepherd for the independent writer/author seeking information in the self-publishing maze. Patricia confirms her new Ebook is thought provoking and genuine and fits the other authors she has helped in the memoir, self-help and non-fiction arena.
Patricia can help you travel the writing and publishing maze. Feel free to visit her many posts on writing and publishing on their blog http://brooksgoldmannpublishing.com
We give and receive gifts, but the gifts that keep on giving – Faith, Courage, Love, Friendship, Happiness and Acceptance – are the gifts her youngest sister gave so freely. Too often it takes a life changing experience to recognize what we already have, affirm what we already know, welcome what is given to us and share it with others.
Patricia is a “sibling survivor” of the #2 killer of women today. While rejoicing in her sister’s memory she preserves her story and important legacy. Through emotional healing Patricia takes you on a journey of love and friendship, grief and acceptance as she gives her sister’s spirit back to their “roots” in County Tipperary, Ireland.
You will learn to awaken the compassion within you, forgive yourself when facing life’s challenges, find the hidden gift of hope in your life and have faith that nothing happens in God’s world by mistake.
Patricia reveals her upbeat and insightful personal story of the relationship she had with her youngest sister – her friend, her confidante, her soul mate. Their lives constantly intertwined, both growing up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and living 2,500 miles apart as adults.
Now God takes you on the Journey from Grief to Gratitude to a place of inspiration and acceptance. The faith Patricia has her sister’s life was not in vain calls her to share her gifts with you. By embracing her sister’s wit,
charm and beauty she weaves together a meaningful story of love and courage you can reflect upon as you travel your own life’s path.
A portion of the proceeds of this book goes to the Vital Care Hospice of the Straits of Mackinac County Michigan in memory of my sister. Thank you.
MEDIA RELEASE – Remnants – ready for new life – our author, Kiki Swanson
Media Release
Scottsdale Author launched by
Scottsdale Publishing Firm
in time for your Holiday Reading List
REMNANTS – ready for new life
Kiki Swanson (Brooks Goldman, $19.95)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Patricia L. Brooks, president/founder
Brooks Goldmann Publishing, LLC
[email protected] cell 480-250-5556
December, 2009 – You may not know the name Kiki Swanson, but chances are her books have been in your midst. Right where the lump in your throat meets the place in your heart, she gives us hope that retirement living in Scottsdale can be rewarding with her new book Remnants – ready for new life.
WHO: Kiki Swanson, author www.kikiswansonbooks.com discovers for us five women coming together in Scottsdale after a life time of joy and heartbreak to rekindle their lifelong friendships in their senior years with her new fiction release.
WHAT: Swanson writes about these unsung heroines in her new book Remnants – ready for new life. Those humble types who live ordinary lives until circumstances such as divorce, death widowhood or alcoholism force them to rise above the grief and pain to discover greater truths such as “life is for the living to the end.”
WHEN: Remnants – ready for new life, recently released by Brooks Goldmann Publishing, LLC of Scottsdale, AZ, is being launched now in time for your holiday reading list.
WHERE: www.kikiswansonbooks.com Kiki Swanson, Scottsdale, AZ author [email protected]
ISBN# 978-0-981-7881-4-2
WHY: People are yearning for earnest heartfelt stories they can relate to and learn from and Swanson delivers. Our society discounts the importance of the senior community in our society, while other cultures admire and honor them. Swanson [email protected] aims to change all that with the 2010 launching of her book Remnants – ready for new life.
HOW: Swanson seeks to find the extraordinary in what appears to be ordinary lives. Her lead character has gentle courage, a spunky and funny demeanor, while quietly doing the “right thing”, to make us smile.
Her readers will see themselves in her subjects; their strength, love and courage too. Swanson understands it is people’s lives she is dealing with and that they are important to the storyline. She peaks our interest often in short chapters that tie together nicely.
AUTHOR INFORMATION: As a minister in senior issues at her church, Swanson was an “advice source” for many. Now her advice is on paper in a loving and humorous fashion. She never forgets that even in this fiction work, she is writing about real people in some way.
Many told Swanson about their stories of loss and grief in her church ministry with seniors. She heard hundreds of stories – probably thousands – over the years. It was almost a relief to write Remnants so people would come up to her and talk more about friendships.
Swanson did not want to write a personal “tell all” and feels honored by those people in her life who trusted her to use their stories. She knew she had to be sensitive, a trait she honed during her many years as a practicing minister.
This is a book about women with friendships that span a half century, says Swanson, because these women have too much to offer at this age: love, friendship and wisdom.
She fills in critical details and emotions needed as she weaves the lives of Daisy and her friends together like Remnants onto a warm winter quilt. With the permission of her friends to embellish their stories and change names to produce a “new fiction” work, Swanson is cautious but strong in her pursuit of a good read.
PUBLISHERS COMMENTS: Swanson’s goals were met. She is emphatic, sensitive and touching in her portrayal of the women and their connections to each other. She’s both girlish and womanly in her revelations of these women and their issues later in life.
Are Swanson’s books good? (See www.kikiswansonbooks.com for others) Yes, some are dramatic, or inspirational, some spin a life into an engaging narrative, and another is oddly entertaining. Her books reflect our hopes of the world we want to know latter in life; filled with love and friendship, happiness and “busyness.”
With our country in two wars, a floundering economy and horrible stories on the evening news, we can get inside Remnants for 60 short chapters about women who have stayed friends forever, men who love and support them and a dog named Curly who teaches them the importance of loyalty one more time.
It is with earnestness that Daisy bonds with her friends at La Ventura and reminds us to stick to our convictions in laughter and in tears. Thank you Kiki Swanson for a fine read.
INTERVIEWEE: Brooks Goldmann Publishing Company, LLC
www.blog.brooksgoldmannpublishing.com book review on blog
Patricia L. Brooks, MAOM
Publishing Consultant, Author and Speaker
www.brooksgoldmannpublishing.com – cell 480-250-5556 [email protected]