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Saturday May 17,2008

Healing Grief

reviewed by Mark Holofcener

"Grieving in a way represents the final stages of one part of our lives, and at the same time signals the start of a new beginning. Grieving allows us to cleanse ourselves so that we can start a new part of our journey refreshed, energized, and a little bit wiser. The Universe has provided each one of us with all the necessary equipment to enable us to get through and over our losses.

Loss in any form, like any obstacle we encounter in life, represents real opportunity for each of us to challenge ourselves and to grow spiritually. Recognizing the opportunity will allow us to approach the experience as a voyage of discovery." -- Excerpt from book

James Van Praagh is both a medium and a psychic, a very rare combination indeed. In this book, Von Praagh warns against conforming our grief to what is expected as the "norm," and encourages each one of us to grieve in our own way, and in our own time, offering constructive guidance through each step of the grieving process. I didn’t want to like this book and was prepared before even reading it to not include it in my list of helpful books, primarily because I have an aversion to process books that tell you the stages of grief, etc. I simply don’t like being told what to think and how to react to a situation, in this case grief. However, this book was in fact quite helpful, as it deals with loss of all kinds, from loss of a child, to loss of jobs to loss of pets. The broad spectrum of stories gave me further insights that I couldn’t have obtained with reading this book. It is rather simplistic, but that may be just what you are looking for. And it is helpful to those seeking stories and anecdotes from the spirit world.

• This book helped reinforce my beliefs about the afterlife and also that there are no accidents, which is a very comforting thought.

• Knowing that our loved ones made their own decisions helped me to heal by understanding that there is a bigger picture that I wasn’t too aware of. Hearing about the bigger picture from those who have passed over is both illuminating and reassuring.

Mark is the author of Evan's Earthly Adventure and a regular reviewer for Beyond Indigo.