The Grief Walk - Print.

The Grief Walk: Losing, Grieving, and Journeying on to Something New 

By Alister G. Hendery

A compassionate guide for navigating grief, The Grief Walk offers support for the grieving, insights for those wishing to help, and reflections on the unique journey of loss.

This book:

• Offers compassionate insights to help individuals navigate their grief journey.
• Provides practical advice for friends and family on how to support those who are grieving.
• Encourages self-reflection on one’s own experiences of loss and grief.
• Explores disenfranchised grief, acknowledging losses often overlooked.
• Includes access to a free downloadable study guide for personal or group use.
• Integrates psychological and spiritual perspectives on grief.
• Fosters a sense of connection by illustrating shared experiences of loss.

Features

• Practical insights into navigating grief and loss.
• Exploration of disenfranchised grief across various contexts.
• Personal stories and reflections that highlight unique experiences of loss.
• Psychological and spiritual perspectives on grief and healing.
• Access to a free PDF Study Guide for further exploration and discussion.

Published: 15 June 2020
Language: English
Words: 67,533
B/W text, 216 pages
Soft cover
ISBN: 9781988572376

[In stock]

Click for eBooks  

See the free study guide download link at bottom of this listing.

Description

In The Grief Walk, Alister G. Hendery offers a heartfelt companion for those navigating the difficult journey of grief.

Drawing from decades of ministry experience, Hendery emphasizes the importance of walking alongside the grieving, echoing the sentiment of a friend who once said, “Someone who would walk with me.”

This book is not just about coping with loss; it’s a guide for embracing grief as a pathway to something new.

The author delves into the complexities of disenfranchised grief, addressing losses that often go unrecognized and the deep sense of isolation they can create.

With profound empathy, he invites readers to acknowledge their unique experiences of grief, providing practical tools and insights to help individuals and their loved ones navigate this challenging terrain.

This resource is ideal for anyone grappling with loss, as well as those supporting grieving individuals.

Alister’s compassionate approach encourages reflection and conversation, fostering a deeper understanding of grief's role in our lives.

With a free downloadable study guide, The Grief Walk offers both personal solace and a valuable resource for small groups seeking to journey together through loss.

Praise for The Grief Walk

“The Grief Walk has a freshness and honesty about grief, beginning with its imaginative title and sustained until the final affirmation of hope.

We all experience loss and grief in our lives. But, as Hendery writes, until we name and acknowledge a loss and recognise that we have a right to grieve, we are unable to come to terms with it.

He emphasises that grief doesn’t follow a predetermined path and nor can we close it off like a tap. He describes a perceived end process of “closure” as psychobabble. While grief may not be permanently disabling, we learn to encompass it. This is not the same as closure.

Grief may find expression in different physical and emotional symptoms and we can’t expect religious faith to provide a magical answer. Finding someone who listens and understands, who in a sense personifies the presence of God, can help us with the grief journey.

The Grief Walk confronts the idea that grief is momentary or experienced in clearly-defined stages and points to a hope. This book is a gift for all who grieve or who walk with those who grieve.” John Meredith in Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 253 October 2020: 27

“…Far too often, people present grieving as a one-way process with well-defined stages, concluding with something they call “closure”. I strongly reject such an extremely unhelpful model. Alister does also; he is clear that your grieving is unique to you…” Rev’d Bosco Peters on Liturgy.co.nz

“This book will read you as you are reading it. It is a book you will pick up and put down and pick up and put down as you find yourself walking again through parts of your life, maybe unexpectedly rediscovering boggy patches you had forgotten, or not realised are still painful… There is ancient wisdom here alongside modern psychology. There is gentleness, and there is a reality faced that grief is universal, painful, and not always an easy walk…
But beware. As I read Alister’s words I found myself thinking, lamenting, crying, and laughing… I surprised myself with the depth of some of what rose to the surface for me. Ancient griefs, recent disappointments, and the ambivalent feelings that came, like fish to breathe the air again.” From the Foreword by The Rev’d Rob Ferguson
    

Contents

Title and Copyright

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

How I use certain Words

Authors who have Influenced Me

1 – Introduction

2 – Our Lives are Laden with Losses

• Acknowledging our Losses
• Disenfranchised Losses and Griefs

3 – Experiences of Disenfranchised Loss and Grief

• Grieving for Those Still Living
• Living Loss and Disability
• Relational Loss – Divorce and Dissolution
• Relational Loss – Ending of a Romantic Relationship
• Unrecognised Relationships
• The Loss of a Companion Animal
• Material Losses
• Infertility and Childlessness
• Grief in Foster Care
• The Losses of Miscarriage and Stillbirth
• Loss from Medical Termination
• Loss of Employment
• Discovering Disenfranchisement

4 – Understandings and Misunderstandings about Grief

• Our Loss and Grief is Unique – so Forget the Rules
• There’s No ‘One Size Fits All’ – so Forget Stages in Grief
• We Wax and Wane – so it’s Okay to Retreat from Time to Time
• A Continual Presence Which can Ambush us – so Forget the Timeline
• Continuing Bonds – So Forget about Having to Let Go
• Grief Doesn’t get Closed Off – so Forget about Closure
• Our Life has Changed – so Forget the idea of Returning to Normal
• We Grieve in Our Own Way – so Forget the Stereotypes

5 – Experiencing Grief

• More than Sadness
• Grief Isolates
• Experiencing Grief in our Body
• Experiencing Grief in our Emotions
• Experiencing Grief in our Thinking and Mental processes
• Experiencing Grief in our Behaviour
• Experiencing Grief in our Spirituality
• Secondary Losses and Loss of Identity
• When do we Need Professional Interventions?

6 – What do I say? What can I do?

• Sit Beside me on my Mourning Bench
• Some Dos and Don’ts
• Do Talk About the Loss
• It’s about Relationships
• Caring Companionship
• Silence, Tears, and Empathy

7 – Grief is about Love and Attachment

• Grief – the Price of Love
• Love as Attachment
• A Secure Base

8 – God and our Grief – But what Kind of God?

• Our Vulnerable God
• Good News Stories of Vulnerability, Loss, and Grief
• Becoming Vulnerable – Becoming like God
• Suffering Love that is With Us
• Discarding the Great Vacuum Cleaner in the Sky
• Jesus Began to Weep

9 – Words for our Grief – A Gift from the Psalms

• David’s Dirge
• Faith Incorporating Grief
• My One Companion is Darkness
• Challenging a Cover-up

10 – Walking with Job – A Story of Losing and Grieving

• The Scene is Set – Job 1:1 – 2:10
• Job’s Friends – Job 2:11–13
• What the Friends got Right
• Sitting Shiva
• What the Friends got Wrong
• Job’s Wife
• What Job Needed – Giving Voice to his Grief
• Anger and the Need to Blame
• Job’s Questioning
• Faith Containing Tensions
• The Climax – Job 38–41
• Our Faith may be Challenged and Changed

11 – The Easter Walk

• Waiting in the Darkness and the Absence
• Gradual, Imperceptible Resurrection

12 – A Choice – Do we go Through the Pain or Around it?

• Stewards of our Pain
• A Great Freedom – How do we Respond?
• 13 – Our Search for Meaning after Loss
• Moving Grief from a Noun to a Verb
• What is Meaning?
• Reconstructing our Meaning after Loss
• Meaning in Love
• Living in a Changed World

14 – Hope Emerges

• Hopes and Goals
• Hope Isn’t a Magic Potion
• Our Sustaining Hope: If God is for us

Selected Bibliography

Also by Alister G. Hendery from Philip Garside Publishing Ltd

Index

    
About the Author

Alister Hendery is an Anglican priest in Aotearoa New Zealand. Loss and grief have been a special focus of his ministry for the past 40 years. He has served as a parish priest, educator, counsellor, and funeral celebrant.

These days, as well as exploring with others what loss and grief can mean for us, he ministers with faith communities in times of change.

He is the author of Earthed in Hope: Dying, Death and Funerals, also from Philip Garside Publishing Ltd.

Click here for a free PDF Study Guide to The Grief Walk