The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement

by Bob Rich

The Hole in Your Life by Dr. Bob Rich is a heartfelt, practical guide to understanding grief and healing from it. Rooted in personal experience-most notably the loss of his daughter, Natalie-and decades of psychological counseling, Dr. Rich offers readers compassionate tools for navigating bereavement. Drawing on real-life case studies, mindfulness techniques, and the "seven magic bullets" for wellbeing, he explores the complexities of grief, from anticipatory sorrow to finding meaning and renewal. Blending storytelling, humor, and therapeutic insight, this book serves as both a comfort and a roadmap for anyone experiencing loss, emphasizing that while grief is unique and unpredictable, growth and peace are possible.

"Thank you for asking me to read The Hole in Your Life. Its insights will help countless people struggling with loss. I recently lost my youngest sister, and it was a blessing to read your thoughts on the paths I can take toward remembering her in healthy ways." -- Georgiann Baldino, author of A Family and Nation under Fire, and other books

"Dr Bob Rich's The Hole in Your Life is written from the heart. It shares his personal experience and many case studies with his clients, making research-based recommendations on how to process grief in a very readable and easy-to-apply manner." -- Dr David Morawetz, counselling psychologist, grief counsellor, and founder and director, Social Justice Fund

"Grief is something that touches everyone's life at some point or another, so it only makes sense to empower ourselves with the tools to cope-and who better to learn from than Dr. Bob Rich, a psychologist with decades of experience helping patients overcome a wide variety of life's problems, including of course, grief." -- I. C. Robledo, a bestselling author and editor in self-development.

"The Hole in Your Life is a good toolbox for coping with grief and I agree with all of it. Among the points that resonated with me most deeply are these grief is part of our life experience, so let's not be afraid of it; it is easier to recover from grief if you grieve before the person dies and suffer with them; and, that only way to learn from loss with meaning is through suffering, as long as it is not self-inflicted." -- Alfredo Zotti, author of Music An Introduction with case studies for mental illness recovery.

Learn more at Grief.LHPress.com

From Loving Healing Press

102 pages, Paperback

Published June 24, 2025

About the author

Bob Rich, PhD, is a visitor from a faraway galaxy, where he is an historian of horror. So, Earth is his favorite place in the universe. Nowhere else do sentient beings engage in a game of killing non-combatants (war). Nowhere else are child raising practices designed to harm children. And delicious for an historian of horror: nowhere else is the entire global economy designed to destroy its life support system.
Here on Earth, he is disguised as an Australian storyteller, with 20 published books, six of which, and over 40 short stories, have won awards.
He has retired five times so far. He still works as an editor for several small publishers and a steady stream of writers.
Above all, he is a Professional Grandfather. Anyone born since 1993 is his grandchild. Everything he does strives for a survivable future for them, and one worth surviving in. This means environmental and humanitarian activism: an attempt to change a worldwide culture of greed and aggression into one of compassion and cooperation.
When he was 23, a minister of religion told him he was a Buddhist. On checking, he found his philosophy set out in beautiful words. He decided not to sue the Buddha for plagiarism, as an act of metta (lovingkindness).

Reviews

[Carolyn Wilhelm · Rating 5 out of 5]

practical and gentle with resources

Excellent book for those grieving - what is “normal” and for how long, how to deal with the feelings, links to supportive readings, and more of a resource which could be consulted again and again. It is a shorter read but a longer supportive guide. Keep this on hand as life brings grief in different ways and at different times.

[Dr Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

In an ideal world, a book review should be written by a reviewer who is approaching the book under review neutrally, without bias or prejudice, and, in the case of books by Bob Rich, I cannot claim that neutrality, having been reading Bob’s writings for over 20 years, having reviewed previous books of his, having had an article published in ‘Bobbing Around’ some time ago, and having contributed 2 chapters to the book ‘Cancer, A Personal Challenge’ edited by Bob. I think it fair to say that I like Bob’s writings, and biases aside, this one is no exception. What follows is my best effort at holding a neutral stance.
Navigating grief and bereavement is a huge topic, and probably has as many styles of intervention as there are people experiencing it, so Bob has set himself a seemingly impossible task to produce a book which, despite its size (I read it in one sitting), contains sufficient knowledge and wisdom to be meaningful and useful. It is a tribute to Bob’s skill as an author, his experience as a therapist and his qualities as a human being that he has achieved this goal. The book is written as a mixture of anecdote, personal experience and scientific validation, with a lot of side-tracks to give valuable further illustration and explanation.
Perhaps inevitably, there are some potential interventions that are not included, probably because they do not form part of Bob’s clinical armamentarium (I’m thinking here of EFT, Emotional Freedom Techniques, which I have used to great benefit in working with ‘stuck’ grief), but that is OK, since, as indicated above, no single volume can cover every possibility. I have around 30 books on death, dying and bereavement on my bookcase, and ‘The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement’ is still a very welcome addition.
Thinking about what makes this book unique and special, I am reminded of a definition that I think originated with Ram Dass – compassion is when your pain touches my love, whereas sympathy is when your pain touches my fear. Bob Rich’s compassion and unconditional love shines through the whole (and hole) of this guidebook about navigating an inevitable part of life.

Dr Carl Stonier

[Michael Muntisov · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his latest self-help book author Bob Rich combines his immense experience as a counsellor, his calming philosophy and his quirky writing to provide an essential guide to dealing with grief. His stepwise approach is filled with case studies that resonate and make you nod your head in understanding. A key point he makes is that grief is a journey that you have to go on, and it is of variable duration and severity depending on circumstances. This is a must-have book for anyone experiencing grief and coping with loss.
And it would be remiss of me not to recommend another of the author’s self-therapy books: From Depression to Contentment. This book would be of help to anyone whether or not they think they are suffering from depression or anxiety. It’s a very insightful book that everyone should have at the ready on their shelves.

[Leah Boschert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bob is truly a gift. Regardless of where you are on your journey of grief, Bob meets you there. What I love most about this book is that Bob lays out a pathway for ANYONE to move from pain and the necessary emotional unrest that comes with a grief to a place of wholeness, joy, and peace. In fact, in some cases to a place that is better than where they started before the loss. This book may also be helpful to someone accompanying a loved one who seems "stuck" in the grieving journey, as Bob gives specific advice for how to walk alongside the grieving.

Bob's faith, wisdom, humility, and loving-kindness are evident throughout this beautifully written work. I highly recommend it!

[Skye Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Losing a loved one is never easy, even when it means that person no longer suffers. Even when that individual has made peace with their coming demise and is ready for it. It matters not if you are surrounded by family and friends, there is and always will be a hole shaped like the one you have lost. Coming to terms with the grief and loss is each person's journey, but this lovely book by Bob Rich is a good place to start. (It would also make a thoughtful gift for someone you know who is struggling with a recent loss, or even one not so recent they are still looking for ways to come to terms with.)

[Dawn Colclasure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I started reading The Hole in Your Life by Bob rich, Ph.D., I wasn’t sure what the hole in the title meant. I knew the book discussed grief and bereavement because of the subtitle, but what was this “hole” the title spoke of?

As I read the book, I found out, and the use of a hole to represent grief makes perfect sense.

For, you see, the hole represents the grief we must try to adjust to in our lives when someone we care about passes away. To call grief a “hole” is accurate, because that grief is like a gaping absence of someone who used to be there, but they are no longer there. The big thing about grieving the loss of a loved one is the fact that they are GONE – in the physical sense. We are no longer able to live life with them still here in a body.

Plus, the symbolism of a hole representing grief is accurate in that a person can fall into a hole, sometimes completely by accident, just as their life can come to an end and they are no longer there.

I had to marvel over the timing that I was asked to review this book. It came at a time when I was dealing with grief. I had recently lost my older brother, and the grief I was feeling was a real struggle. Bob’s former profession was a psychotherapist that included grief counseling, and while he was not able to counsel me while I was dealing with my grief over losing my brother, he was there in the form of his book, offering guidance and insight.

And reading this book while I was struggling with my own grief helped me a lot. Seriously.

Bob’s latest nonfiction book offers not just his professional wisdom about grief, loss and learning to adjust to life after losing someone we love, but it also shares stories from some of his clients who were also struggling with their grief.

This quote on page 21 really stood out for me: “The choice is to accept death as a part of life.” Yes, we all know that we will all die someday. It’s just that death usually happens when we least expect it (like, if someone perishes in an accident) or no matter what we try to do to prevent it from happening (as with the case of my brother; it just got to a point where the doctors were unable to do anything more for him). But as hard as it is to understand that death is a natural part of life, it’s harder to cope with the loss. Grief can hit people very hard. This happened for some of Bob’s clients, and reading about how he helped them was encouraging. It made me think that no matter how bad grief can get, there is hope that we can learn how to live with it.

In one part of the book, Bob writes:

“My mother died in 2000, and I wrote a book about her life.
Anikó: The stranger who loved me is the hardest book I have ever written—and the one that won the most awards. It is written from the heart. Writing that book put my creativity to use in processing my grief.” (page 27)

I could so relate to this. I, too, wrote a book while I was grieving the loss of my mother. However, mine was not a book about my mother’s life, but a children’s book about a little girl who finds comfort from her grief over losing her mother from a wolf. I was inspired to write this story because I found that, while I was mourning the loss of my mother, I found comfort in the companionship with my dog. So, too, after my brother’s death, I wrote a ton of poetry that expressed my grief.

Writing is a natural response to grief and loss, especially for people who are already writers. Putting our pain and sadness into words, journal entries, poetry and stories is a very therapeutic and comforting method in coping with our grief. So, I’m glad it was mentioned in this book, especially to write in a journal. It can definitely help people.

Here is another quote from the book which I related to: “The greatest resource for coping with grief is support from people who care.” (page 30) I have found this to be helpful, too. It really does help a lot to talk about our grief. I have done this, with friends and with family. Friends have poured in their love and support. And it has been immensely helpful to talk and share photos with my sisters as well. I strongly urge anyone who is struggling with their grief to find someone to talk to about it.

When I got to Part IV of this book, with the subtitle “Your Body is a Spacesuit for Surviving on this Planet,” I was intrigued. What does that mean? Turns out, it’s a quote Bob saw from a friend of his, whose name is Petrea King. After some introduction about Petra, he writes:

“What did Petrea mean by saying, “Your Body is a Spacesuit for Surviving on this Planet?”

Think about the implications. I am not a body, a mechanism of
meat and bone and nerves and hormones, but a passenger in such a thing, for now. I find this immensely comforting. If this is true, then death is not the end of a book, but only the end of a chapter.” (page 43)

Like Bob, I believe in reincarnation. I believe that we go on after death. Physical death is only death of the body; it is not the death of a soul. Our soul is eternal. Our soul is forever. So death of a person’s body is just a death of the body; they will now live on in spirit. Understanding this has helped in my many experiences of grief. Our loved ones are not really gone, because now they exist in spirit.

At the same time, however, in circling back to the topic of reincarnation, I believe that we are only visitors to this planet. The lives that we live on Earth will influence the next life that we live, yes (and, in the case of people who are religious, the life we live while here on Earth will affect what kind of result we will meet in the afterlife), but physical death is not the same as soul death.

But what we mourn in the physical death of someone is this person leaving our lives, leaving this world. They are not really gone, though. We can take comfort in knowing they are still “out there” – somewhere. They now exist in spirit.

In my conversations with a friend following my brother’s passing, she noted how I will have a new relationship with him now – with knowing him only as a spirit and not as a human. This brought so much perspective to my grieving process. It made me think about how, on one evening when I was really deep in my sadness, I started talking to my brother as if he was right in that room with me. And, in some way, I started to feel that he was. And I also just “knew” when he was at certain events and things he was experiencing. I don’t know how I knew these things, but that I just did.

It's the same thing that happened when I was in the hospital in 2017 and recovering from a life-threatening illness: I started to feel as though the spirit of my dad was in my room with me. This heavily influenced my healing process, although that medical fast was certainly hard to get through! But what I’m trying to say here is that, with a loved one who is on the other side, we tend to get a “feeling” about them. Like we know they are there or that they hear us or what they are experiencing somewhere. My dreams of lost loved ones play a big factor in revealing these things to me, but sometimes, there is that sense of “knowing” too.

Bob also writes: “Yes, our loved one has gone to another
place, for now, but when we have fulfilled our tasks in this life, we’ll meet again.” (page 43) I know that one day, I will see my brother again, but only when my time on Earth is over. I will be reunited with him again, as well as with my parents. That’s the thing about a person’s death: It doesn’t mean we’ll never see them again. We will, one day, when it’s our turn to transition to the afterlife.

In that same part of the book, he goes on to talk about people who are so entrenched in their grief that they just give up on living. I know this feeling well, as I experienced it myself when grieving the loss of my mother. Of course, I still had to function – I had kids to take care of, after all – but I could barely focus on my responsibilities. Bob offers good advice on getting through this experience in our grief journey, which is pretty much the same thing I wrote in a poem about this part of the grieving process.

What I love most about this book is that Bob talks about the different forms of grief we experience for different types of people, and animals, in our lives. (Yes, he does cover grieving the loss of a fur baby, something I know well.) It’s not just grief for losing a child or a parent or a spouse, but grief for losing a child AND a parent AND a spouse. The accompanying stories of how he counseled clients in those situations was also helpful, as was his recommendation of certain books to read that are helpful discussions on these topics.

At the end of the book, Bob writes that he hopes this book will be of service to many people. He can rest assured that it has been of service to me, a person currently going through grief. Reading this book has helped me a lot and I know it will help other people too.

The Hole in Your Life is a compassionate and well-informed source of advice and support for anyone who is currently struggling with grief, or who has to adjust to living with that certain hole in their lives. Written by a former psychotherapist/grief counselor who has counseled many clients to find a “new normal” while living with loss, this little book is full of large doses of insights and solutions to help readers who need that helping hand to ease the pain and get back to living. Losing a loved one can severely impact a person’s life, but there is hope following the loss. The Hole in Your Life by Bob Rich, Ph.D., will give you that hope, and lots more.

[Bob Selden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. I was absorbed and read it in one sitting.

I’ve read a couple of Bob’s fiction books and loved them for their creativity and enjoyable stories. For example, as a Psychotherapist, in one of his earlier books, “Hit and Run”, the story enables Bob to provide positive personal change models through the voice of Sylvia as she ‘contacts’ Charles (the murderer) and assists many other people from the time of the murders through to Charles’ final sentencing. Whilst The Hole in Your Life is a non-fiction book, his wonderful writing style and ability to explain grief issues and models for managing grief through stories (all based on real-life experiences of his own and his clients), provided similar learnings for me.

The book too reminded me of my experience of recovering from cancer through chemo treatment. In my case, I sat in a nice easy chair in a large room at the hospital with half a dozen or so other patients, while we were all being pumped full of drugs. The Hole in Your Life reminded me of those patients who were not coping with continual comments such as, “Why me?”, and those who were coping who had a real interest in pursuing something outside of their illness (in my case, it was a new book I’d just finished writing). I can now see that those who were coping with their “grief’ were obviously using some of the techniques outlined in The Hole in Your Life.

In this book, Bob draws on his experiences of helping many clients deal with grief, as well as his own grief through the loss of his daughter, to provide some excellent advice to anyone who may be experiencing grief. Amongst the number of very practical techniques, I was particularly taken with that of giving grief a particular time of the day, for example 5-7pm, to acknowledge and feel for the loss, and so be able to live “normally” for the remaining 22 hours of the day.

Although the book is aimed directly at those suffering grief, my concern is whether those in that situation, be willing or mentally prepared to read it? My belief is that The Hole in Your Life is initially better suited to those in close contact or relationships with those grieving and who care enough to gently guide the grieving people to at the very least, try some of the techniques, or in the best-case scenario, to encourage them to read The Hole in Your Life. In doing so, I believe that Bob Rich’s words will greatly improve the lives of those who are currently suffering grief. This is a wonderful addition to our knowledge of how to manage grief in a very practical manner.

[Book Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Bob Rich’s The Hole in Your Life is part memoir, part guidebook, and part quiet act of grace. It opens with a deeply personal account of his daughter Natalie’s final months, setting a tone that is both tender and raw. From there, Rich blends professional insight with lived experience, walking readers through grief’s unpredictable terrain. He writes about denial and despair, hope and healing, blending practical techniques, like scheduling grief time and mindfulness, with heartfelt stories from his counseling practice. The book never lectures. It feels like a hand on your shoulder, reminding you that pain is part of being alive, and healing, though never complete, is possible.

I found myself deeply moved by the book’s honesty. Rich doesn’t sugarcoat anything. He talks about loss as something brutal and transforming, a force that tears through you but can, somehow, make you more whole. His writing is simple and kind, with a quiet humor that lightens the heaviness. I liked how he tells real stories, of clients, friends, even himself, without turning them into neat lessons. It’s messy and human. Some parts made me tear up, others made me smile. There’s warmth in his words that feels genuine, like you’re listening to someone who’s been through hell and came back wiser, not just older.

Some sections sometimes read like therapy notes, but then I’d hit a line or story that stopped me cold and made me think about my own losses. Rich’s balance between intellect and compassion is rare. He talks about pain as a teacher, about finding meaning even when nothing makes sense. I felt comforted, not because the book promised easy answers, but because it didn’t try to.

The Hole in Your Life isn’t just for people drowning in grief. It’s for anyone who’s loved deeply and lost something they can’t get back. It’s for the quiet moments when you want to believe life can still hold beauty. I’d recommend it to therapists, caregivers, and anyone sitting in the dark looking for a light that doesn’t blind you with false hope, but steadies you with truth.

[Laurent Grenier · Rating 5 out of 5]

by Bob Rich, PhD

Bob Rich, the author of the book “The Hole in Your Life” (a most fitting title for a book on grief), is a seasoned doctor of psychotherapy that in recent years has let go of his practice to become a self-appointed “professional grandfather,” a help-minded friend of the world that will welcome anyone reaching out to him. This personal touch is palpable throughout the book, which is not only clinically sound and highly credible, but profoundly heartwarming. The reader is both accompanied and counseled in a way that feels equally intimate and appropriate.

When it comes to grief and the art of dealing with it constructively, the author is quick to point out, very wisely I might add, that life by its very nature is infinitely subject to change and therefore constantly exposes us to the experience of loss. Loss of youth as we age, loss of health as we fall ill, loss of a friend, family member or partner (lover or spouse), through death, conflict or divorce, are common examples. That is why a book on grief and the art of dealing with it constructively is of critical relevance and importance.

Having said this, the author very competently rises to the challenge of providing useful exercises and recommendations for sufferers to grieve effectively and grow from that experience into better people, wiser and kinder, more resilient and forgiving. In fact, no matter where you are in life's journey, you can benefit from his book "The Hole in Your Life." It is short, insightful, to the point, and easy to read. Go ahead and buy it.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I deliberately took my time reading this book as, like everybody else in the world, I have lost loved ones in my life. One loss in particular has held me in a vice of grief, shock, guilt and anger - even over four years after the events that led to the passing. It just didn't seem to matter how much time elapsed, nothing could take any of it away. Then, I was introduced to this wonderful book. I've followed Bob's 'meanderings' as he sometimes refers to them via email for a number of years and have even reviewed books of his in the past. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened to me once I opened the pages of this book and started reading.

From reading about his daughter and on to the last page, everything that was written resonated so truly within that I took time out to savour it all and to let the truthfulness of his words sink in fully. It all dove straight to the core of my being and something strange seemed to happen to that hard knot in the centre of me. Something seemed to unravel and begin to dissipate. Following Bob's process of dealing with grief I took on board the ritual of evaluating everything through the breathing technique and felt things drop into the place they belonged, finally.

I'm not saying for one minute that I'm over it all or even that I'm done grieving for them. I AM saying that I can now process the grief and, although sense will never fully be made of what happened, I have begun to live beyond the barrier of protection that I built at the time.

If you never read anything else in your life make sure this is the last book you do read. It is powerful in its simplicity. It is written so that even those who struggle to deal with some everyday things will understand it. It is written from the heart.

I endorse and fully recommend this book to everyone.

[Max Overton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loss is something that will affect all of us at some point in our lives. I lost my mother and my wife a few months apart twenty years ago, and my stepson earlier this year. I wish I had had a book like Bob Rich’s The Hole in Your Life to guide me.
His book comes from his heart, from his personal experiences, and those of the countless people he has helped.
When grief strikes us, the road ahead may appear empty, or shrouded in darkness, but this book provides guidance, a step-by-step resource on how to process grief in a manner that is extremely easy to read and apply.
Dr Bob Rich is a psychologist with many years of experience helping patients overcome life’s problems, including grief. I cannot think of anyone I would rather turn to for advice and help, and this book, The Hole in Your Life, is a wonderful new resource. Thank you Dr Bob!

[Trudie Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The good thing about this book is it is written from personal experience, both of the author and others. It doesn’t tell the reader what they should do. Instead it talks about things that have worked for others and you can decide which, if any, you want to try. It makes it clear that grief is natural and you shouldn’t feel guilty about feeling it, even after a long time. Grief doesn’t have to be about just death, either. If you are grieving and need help coping, this is worth reading. If you are contemplating suicide, again this book is worth reading. However, if you are grieving as a result of suicide, I would not recommend this book.

[Laurent Grenier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bob Rich, the author of the book “The Hole in Your Life” (a most fitting title for a book on grief), is a seasoned doctor of psychotherapy that in recent years has let go of his practice to become a self-appointed “professional grandfather,” a help-minded friend of the world that will welcome anyone reaching out to him. This personal touch is palpable throughout the book, which is not only clinically sound and highly credible, but profoundly heartwarming. The reader is both accompanied and counseled in a way that feels equally intimate and appropriate.

When it comes to grief and the art of dealing with it constructively, the author is quick to point out, very wisely I might add, that life by its very nature is infinitely subject to change and therefore constantly exposes us to the experience of loss. Loss of youth as we age, loss of health as we fall ill, loss of a friend, family member or partner (lover or spouse), through death, conflict or divorce, are common examples. That is why a book on grief and the art of dealing with it constructively is of critical relevance and importance.

Having said this, the author very competently rises to the challenge of providing useful exercises and recommendations for sufferers to grieve effectively and grow from that experience into better people, wiser and kinder, more resilient and forgiving. In fact, no matter where you are in life's journey, you can benefit from his book "The Hole in Your Life." It is short, insightful, to the point, and easy to read. Go ahead and buy it.

Laurent Grenier, Canadian philosopher and author of the essay “Life Revisited: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Purpose of Existence.”

[Joan Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading, “The Hole in Your Life.”
It was helpful to learn a few of the things that helped the author and others handle the severe pain from grief. Grief shows up and lingers in ways that stop you from living, having fun, loving, creating, and realizing your purpose in being alive right now. This book may help you dispel a little of the spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional pain after the death of your loved one.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anyone in the throes of grief would benefit from this short, insightful book, written in Dr. Rich's typically succinct style. It offers practical advice for developing a mindfulness practice, presents 'seven magic bullets' for navigating mental and emotional challenges, and includes relatable examples from the author's psychological practice and personal life.

[Stacy Manson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Bob Rich doesn’t just write about grief, he walks with you through it. His voice is tender, grounded, and brimming with wisdom earned from both personal pain and decades of helping others. This book felt like holding the hand of someone who truly understands.

[Ella Carson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book, by a great author

[Don Lubov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whether from personal experience or from his extensive background in psychology, Dr. Bob Rich has scored another success with this book. There is much here to learn about dealing with grief. I give it five stars.

[Magdalena]

It would be a rare person whose life hasn’t been touched by grief. As Nick Cave* put it in a recent Red Hand File newsletter: “I see heartbreak as the most proportional response to the state of the world - to say I love you is to say my heart breaks for you.”  Of course there are griefs that we can recover from relatively easily and those that threaten to destroy us. The difference between those impacts is often down to time, as grief is a shapeshifter, morphing and transforming, moving through phases, but it is also about changing perception. Dr Bob Rich is an expert on the subject. He has been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, both in a clinical practice and through extensive volunteering of his services in multiple forums. He also has firsthand experience of the most intense kind of grief, having recenly experienced the loss of his own daughter Natalie to liver cancer in December 2024. The Hole in Your Life, Rich's 20th book, is dedicated to Natalie and draws heavily on both personal experience and Rich's extensive clinical understanding of the many pathways grief can take.

The book offers very practical ways of moving more quickly through the phases of grief to get to a place of some equanimity, where the pain has at least become bearable rather than a blockage. I particularly like the suggestion, fairly close to the start of the book, of scheduling the grieving process; allowing for a few hours a day each day in which you give yourself permission to cry, rage, or grieve in any way.  The rest of the time you can get on with things and even have some enjoyment with the knowledge that there will be time to feel the feelings. As with all of the suggestions in this book, there are several real-life anecdotes of people this has worked with:

This worked remarkably well for Rose, for me, and for everyone else who has given it an honest go. As long as you meticulously keep the appointment, the grief (or other consuming worry) is willing to wait for it.

Grief needs to be experienced. It needs to be felt—but not 24 hours a day.

Rich provides information about the nature of grief and the many forms it can take.  In this instance he uses Elizabeth Harper Neeld’s model of grieving from her book Seven Choices: Finding Daylight after Loss Shatters Your World. This is a more fluid model than Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ more well-known stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The Seven Choices model is not a progression but rather a "back-and-forth, up-and-down process that can progress toward resolution if we make the right choices—or fail to do so if we don’t.” (14) These choices are Impact, Second Crisis: Stumbling in the Dark, Observation, The Turn, Reconstruction, Working Through, and Integration. As with all aspects of The Hole in Your Life illustrates these stages with a wide range of anecdotes, both personally and from Rich's practice.

The Hole in Your Life is a welter of tools and information that will help not only the grieving but carers or anyone who wants to offer support. In the e-book version, there are twenty-five hyperlinks to stories, additional information, personal reflections and chapters from some of Rich’s other books. These add extra depth to the book, making it quite an extensive resource.

There is also a philosophical quality to the work with overarching world view that life is temporary (we all know this), that, in a Hindu or Buddhist sense, souls return, and that suffering can be managed through mindfulness:

I am not a body, a mechanism of meat and bone and nerves and hormones, but a passenger in such a thing, for now. I find this immensely comforting. If this is true, then death is not the end of a book, but only the end of a chapter. (43)

While these perspectives may not suit everyone, and certainly won’t help in the earliest stages of shock, they are comforting ways to manage the later stages and reframe the pain. The stories, anecdotes, poems, exercises, and personal reflections are never facile, and always have the bigger picture in mind. Ultimately, the message of The Hole in Your Life is that we are always in one form of grief or another - that grief and love are both part of what it means to be a human. Rich talks about finding meaning in our loss and making sense of it by using the pain to make us a better person, or in the words of Nick Cave again:

Create your spirits. Call to them. Will them alive. Speak to them. It is their impossible and ghostly hands that draw us back to the world from which we were jettisoned; better now and unimaginably changed.

*https://www.theredhandfiles.com/commu...

[John Rosenman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Showing us a Path

Of all the burdens that life has to offer, perhaps none is as cruel and painful as the death of a child. Such is the case with this heartfelt book, which is inspired (if that is the word) by the death of Natalie, the author's daughter.

What makes this book so effective and useful is that it not only makes his daughter Natalie come alive to the reader but provides comprehensive, step-by-step counseling for the bereaved. "I hope this little book will be a source of solace and healing for you," he begins. And then he says, "I will also show you a path to becoming a stronger, wiser, better person after your period of grief." It is to Dr. Bob Rich's credit that he fully succeeds in keeping his difficult promise.