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.