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    At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend
    At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend
    At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend
    Ebook67 pages44 minutes

    At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend

    By Steve Dehner

    ()

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    About this ebook

    This powerful little book will help you help a friend, partner, relative, coworker, or classmate — anyone you care about — who has suffered the loss of someone they love. Is someone you know suffering the depths of grief? Are you at a loss for what to say, what to do, how to help?

    Millions of people grieve every day, and for every bereaved person, there are those who are not grieving but want to help the one who is—countless people at any given time. The problem is, most people in our society do not know anything about grief when they find themselves in it. Nor do their friends. Now you are one of these friends, and you need to know how to help.

    This book is for all of you who walk with the wounded and hurting so that you may give practical expression to your empathy and compassion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreentown Press
    Release dateJan 30, 2019
    ISBN9781733517416
    At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend

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      Book preview

      At a Loss - Steve Dehner

      At a Loss

      How to Help a Grieving Friend

      ––––––––

      By

      Steve Dehner

      ––––––––

      Greentown 2

      This publication is intended to provide accurate and reliable information regarding its subject matter. It is sold and distributed with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, medical, legal, or other professional advice. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a licensed professional should be sought.

      At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend

      © 2018 by Steve Dehner. All rights reserved.

      Greentown Press supports copyright. Copyright protects those who create, invent, build, and beautify. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, storing, transmitting or distributing any part of it, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, without prior written permission from the author at: steve@stevedehner.com

      Published by Greentown Press, Forest Grove, Oregon.

      greentownpress.com

      Cover design by Grant Hawley.

      ––––––––

      Dehner, Steve (Stephen Joseph), 1963 -

      At a Loss: How to Help a Grieving Friend / by Steve Dehner

      pages cm.

      Grief2. Bereavement

      ISBN 978-1-7335174-0-9 (Paperback)

      Printed in the United States of America.

      For all our comforters

      who walked with us and

      taught us how to comfort others.

      May you receive as much

      in your hour of loss.

      Teach me to feel another’s woe...

      —Alexander Pope,

      The Universal Prayer

      Table of Contents

      1: First Things First    7

      2: A Friend in Crisis    13

      3: Understanding Grief    20

      4: Recovering from Grief    25

      5: Things That Help    32

      6: Things That Can Hurt    40

      7: The Long Haul     47

      Appendix 1: Grief Letters    55

      Appendix 2: Depression & Trauma   61

      1: Depression: Mood or Mental Illness?  61

      2: Trauma: An Assault on the Psyche  66

      Postscript: Recovery, Ten Years Later  72

      What a Stone Weighs   73

      Key Points from Each Chapter   82

      Acknowledgments     89

      1

      First Things First

      Can I see another’s woe,

      And not be in sorrow too?

      Can I see another’s grief,

      And not seek for kind relief?

      —William Blake,

      On Another’s Sorrow

      Helpless.

      That is the feeling when someone close to you desperately needs your help and you don’t know what to do for them. That wall of helplessness is precisely what most people face when a friend or family member has lost a loved one, an event that casts them into the shadow-valley called grief. For those who find they don’t know how to care for and support their grieving loved ones, it can feel like a failure of love or friendship—but it is not.

      You Can Help

      When someone suffers such a loss, many people may surround them, wanting to offer help but soon realizing that knowing what do or say—how to be their friend—is not always obvious. That is not because they are uncaring or insensitive. It’s because they have never experienced this type of grief or this type of helping before, and it is all new to them. If you see yourself as one of these people, wanting to care for and support someone close to you but unsure how, this book will help.

      Most books on grief are written for your grieving companion. Most of them are too long. Some of them tell stories so sad or traumatic that the reader might not get past the first few pages. It may be a while before they can even think, without sheer dread, about what lies ahead for them in their journey through grief.

      But you can think for them.

      At a Loss is for you, the companion who is not bereaved.

      You likely feel some urgency in learning how to be a friend to someone in pain. This book is short and to the point. If you want something you can read in a day, that cuts to the chase and gives you what you need to know now, you’re holding the right book. If you don’t have the patience, or the time, or the emotional bandwidth for plodding though long, tragic, fluffy, or perhaps horrific anecdotes before getting to the information you need, you’re holding the right book.

      I write as someone who has experienced devastating

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