Grief Biography

What started as a wonderful love story for Mélissa and Scott ended 16 years later with Scott’s dramatic death, leaving Mélissa and her two young children to endure the unimaginable. In her desperation, Mélissa prayed for guidance, and God responded by sending her an army of angels to make her transition from wife to widow more bearable. Since her husband’s passing, Mélissa has felt a strong calling to use her voice to address the stigmas around suicide and mental health.

Truth, Huxley will learn, requires the loss of everything that keeps her from it. Starting over on a small farm on the plains of Kansas, she will find a vast wilderness to cross, one where beauty will triumph over defeat and love overcome death, where the colors of promise and eternity are unveiled, illuminating further each small step on the way to the ecstasy of understanding. It will be ridiculously hard at times. But there, she will be reminded of who she is and where she is going. We are not such as dreams are made of. But sometimes dreams can lead us home.

In this unabridged audio download, Letters from the Land of Cancer, award-winning writer Walter Wangerin Jr. offers his profound insights into the greatest challenge we face: confronting our own mortality. Diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in January 2006, Wangerin began writing letters to his friends and family members. Now he offers these intimate letters to all who ask questions about living and dying well.

On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in the deadliest attack on France since World War II. Three days later, Leiris wrote an open letter addressed directly to his wife’s killers, which he posted on Facebook. He refused to be cowed or to let his 17-month-old son’s life be defined by Hélène’s murder. He refused to let the killers have their way: “For as long as he lives, this little boy will insult you with his happiness and freedom.”

Thaïs is almost two. Like most well-loved children, she is happy. She laughs as she runs on the beach. But her footprints in the sand, with toes turned out, tell a different story. Two Small Footprints in Wet Sand relates the overwhelming tragedy experienced by a family as a result of a genetic disorder.

Infertility is a battle that women have been fighting for centuries, but the seemingly taboo subject is rarely discussed openly. Here, Bailey Henry describes her journey with infertility, including four miscarriages, marriage, grief, love, and the chance she was never properly potty-trained. With raw honesty, heartbreak, and a bit of humor, Bailey discusses the trials of being pregnant but never having a baby. If you've known the devastating loss of a child, or if your life simply hasn't turned out the way you thought it would, this one is for you.

Liz Tichenor has taken her newborn son, five weeks old, to the doctor, from a cabin on the shores of Lake Tahoe. She is sent home to her husband and two-year-old daughter with the baby, who is pronounced "fine". Six hours later, the baby dies in their bed. Less than a year and a half before, Tichenor's mother jumped from a building and killed herself after a long struggle with alcoholism. As a very young Episcopal priest, Tichenor has to "preach the Good News," to find faith where there is no hope, but she realizes these terrible parts of her own life will join her in the pulpit.

A restless child of the 1960s, Marilyn yearns for love, hippiedom, and escape from her controlling mother. At fourteen, she runs nearly a thousand miles away to Vancouver, British Columbia, eventually landing herself in a Catholic home for troubled girls. At sixteen, she’s emancipated, navigating adulthood without a high school diploma, and craving a soulmate. When she falls in love with Jack, the grad student living next door, life finally seems perfect. The two embark on a cross-continental bicycle trip, headed for South America, but before they reach Mexico, tragedy strikes.

On July 23, 2007, Dr. William Petit suffered an unimaginable horror: Armed strangers broke into his suburban Connecticut home in the middle of the night, bludgeoned him nearly to death, tortured and killed his wife and two daughters, and set their house on fire. He miraculously survived, and yet living through those horrific hours was only the beginning of his ordeal. Broken and defeated, Bill was forced to confront a question of ultimate consequence: How does a person find the strength to start over and live again after confronting the darkest of nightmares?

Marsha Gray Hill’s Grief and Grit(s) is an emotional odyssey that illuminates the complexities of grief, while offering a beacon of hope and inspiration for those navigating their own journeys of loss. This extraordinary memoir serves as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of love to transcend even the darkest of times.

A catalyst for change can take many forms. For author Erin Burrell, that life-altering moment began with a jarring knock at the door. A solemn detective delivered the news that a loved one had died. The grief and heart-splitting loss sent her groping for answers. In her search, she was drawn toward an unexpected path - towards the metaphysical. After reading several books about psychic mediums, Erin wondered if she too might be able to connect with her deceased loved one.

Austen Years is a deeply felt and sensitive examination of a writer’s relationship to reading, and to her own family, winding together memoir, criticism, and biographical and historical material about Austen herself. And like the sequence of Austen’s novels, the scope of Austen Years widens successively, with each chapter following one of Austen's novels. We begin with Cohen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she raises her small children and contemplates her father’s last letter.

Two years after Marilyn loses her fiancé to cancer, she becomes a Christian and marries Henry, joining him in a worldwide ministry that leaves little time for family or personal reflection. When her old grief resurfaces, she’s shocked by the tsunami that rips through their lives. Intensive counselling fails to bring healing, and when Henry writes a public letter that decimates their churches and spins them out of fellowship—and lifelong employment—she faces an emotional and spiritual reckoning that challenges her to the core.

Lisa Lisson's life seemed perfect: she had married her high school sweetheart, applied her marketing degree to a position at FedEx Express Canada, and would ultimately become president of the company. One night, after putting their four children to bed, her husband, Patrick, marvelled at their lives. Just a few hours later, Patrick had a massive heart attack and was in a coma. Part leadership guide, part memoir of loss, and part personal empowerment primer on how to achieve your goals, Resilience is an inspirational story.

Embark on a life-changing encounter as you journey through the remarkable life and death of an accomplished naval flight officer and his grieving widow’s path from unimaginable heartache to unstoppable hope. With captivating novel-like and highly accurate military scenes, excerpts of touching long-distance love letters, and raw, unfiltered emotions, Providing Promise isn’t just another memoir—it is a lifeline. Experience your own inner healing and uncover your God-given destiny as you walk alongside one who has seen firsthand how God can turn tragedy into triumph.

Chiara Luce, a girl full of vitality, suddenly fell gravely ill. And, strangely, moment by moment, a new life full of light began to unfold for her. She was 18 when she died, yet she had lived to the full. On September 25, 2010, Chiara Luce was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI and is now known as "Blessed Chiara Badano".

Felix takes us through his life growing up in South West London and describes how his story is forever punctuated and given meaning by cricket. Through his own exploits as a slow left arm spinner of 'lovely loopy stuff', to the tragic illness of his mother, life with The Maccabees and his cricket redemption, Felix touches on both the comedic and the tragic in equal measure. Throughout, there's the ever-present roller coaster of following the England cricket team.

Este libro se enmarca en la más rabiosa y dolorosa actualidad: la autora escribe desde la certeza de ser sólo una más de entre los millones de personas en duelo, sobre las dimensiones culturales y familiares del mismo y, también, sobre la soledad y la ira inherentes a él. Sobre el duelo es un libro imprescindible para estos momentos. Y, sin embargo, resultará atemporal, duradero, y una adición indispensable al canon de la autora. En el mismo formato que Todos deberíamos ser feministas, el lector lo atesorará y compartirá más que nunca.

As a troubled teenager, Tamara Laroux just wants the pain to go away. Crying out to God for forgiveness, she makes the heart-wrenching decision to end her life. As she plummets from her body to a place of vast darkness, torment, and agony, Tamara instantly realizes the finality of her rash decision and begs God to save her.

I wrote this book during one of the most difficult years of my life. This is my journey through the grieving process of losing my 27 year relationship and trauma work before and after. It is a glimpse into how I used the therapeutic processes of Compassionate Inquiry and Internal Family Systems to navigate through the year, as well as chronicle how my childhood shaped my life and how I show up in relationship, my worldview, coping mechanisms, and more.