Grieving Us: A Field Guide for Living With Loss Without Losing Yourself

by Kimberley Pittman-Schulz

What happens to you when someone you love dies? Who was that person or animal companion in your life? Loss comes along. First it breaks your heart, then it stays. How do you live with loss without losing yourself? This book is about learning to live with loss and with joy every day. While loss comes along with you for life, grief doesn’t have to be forever.
Through storytelling and simple practices, you’ll take a break from grief , find new ways to hold on to the one you love , and design your life-support system for living with loss .
In Grieving A Field Guide for Living With Loss Without Losing Yourself , Kimberley Pittman-Schulz shares how she discovered the power of Tiny-Come-Back-to-Your-Senses Rituals to turn her two-year struggle with unrelenting sorrow after the death of her mother into a life of deeper meaning and joy. While writing the book, she also explored the realities of anticipatory grief as she helped her husband navigate advanced heart failure in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ultimately Kimberley offers those living with loss a fresh perspective
• explores grieving mindfully , including grief healing concepts based on experience & science,
• pushes back on societal biases that value some losses as more grief-worthy than others,
• challenges the idea that you should ‘bounce back’ from loss,
• encourages curiosity and reconnecting to what she calls “your animal body” to cultivate well-being,
• offers the missing “how-to” instructions for navigating a new world in which you get to go on living but have to do it without the person or animal companion that you love.
Kimberley speaks to you from a place of empathetic wisdom, with a poet’s sensibility and an understanding that human beings need to laugh and sing even when they’re sad.
Her life shaped by loss, beginning with the death of her two sisters in a house fire as a toddler, Kimberley went on to spend 25+ years as a philanthropic and end-of-life planning advisor. She’s worked with incredibly diverse people looking for meaning after the loss of a spouse, partner, child, parent, grandparent, sibling, friend, or beloved animal to illness, accident, suicide, or traumatic death.
Grieving Us is an upbeat field guide for living your one-and-only, heart-broken-and-still-beautiful life.

Genres: Grief

312 pages, Paperback

Published March 17, 2021

Reviews

[Susan J · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There is an authenticity that resonates from each story, personal or told in the second person that the author shares which validates your own grief story in such a present way. I downloaded the audio version of the book, and Kimberley's warm and engaging reading is reassuring and gives understandable definitions of grief, loss, and mourning. Her practical advice about being present with daily rituals and that grief is love that needs somewhere to go, touched my heart in a profound way.

My mother died last fall and I'm grateful this book appeared at the right time, with content that really speaks to me, my heart, and my grief process. Grieving Us is an extraordinary guide for working with grief and encouraging personal transformation."

[Sophie Bowns · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really lovely and helpful book.

[Lisa Mcbee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend!

This would help me to process some of the grief that I’ve been avoiding for the past five years. I lost my husband five years ago, lost my dad 4 1/2 years ago, and I lost my son Just over six months ago. The tools provided in this book have extremely helped me process and to try and find love, joy and purpose again

[Danielle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook and found the author's voice soothing. I appreciated the wide variety of stories and vignettes of loss the author and others have experienced, as well as some ideas of ways to implement moving forward and finding joy amidst grief. I'm 5.5 months post loss of my spouse and found this a helpful addition to my resources.

[Sandy T. Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fabulous book with practical ideas on how to deal with grief. The author’s background adds to her knowledge base. I have gifted this book to several friends dealing with grief.