Finding Your Way After Your Spouse Dies [Paperback]

~Li Po (701-762)

The loss of a friend or lover can be one of the most painful and disorienting experiences life can offer. Life seems bleak and empty, your mind becomes a pool of muddled thoughts. Losing your spouse is even more painful and the grief a person feels when they have to struggle through the grieving process can be overwhelming.

When you are trying to pick up the pieces and move on, it helps to know that there is someone out there who understands what you are going through. Marta Felber has dedicated this book to the reader with the hope that it will be of help in the journey through grief.

Drawing on her training as a therapist and her experiences in self-healing after the death of her husband, she has written this guide as if she was a friend sitting with you and you were both drinking a cup of tea. She starts by expressing her heartfelt sorrow for the reader's loss and then proceeds to speak from the heart in small easy-to-read chapters. She deals with the deepest feelings in a very gentle way.

She talks about how you should accept crying as a natural process, how you can start a journal and how you must still think about eating well and exercising even in this stage of grief. She speaks of how to forgive, accept and let the healing process begin.

I think this is a book everyone should read whether they have experienced a loss or not because all of us will come into contact with someone in our lives who is experiencing loss. This will not only help you understand grief, but will allow you to understand what someone is going through. I think this book could also be used for when you have lost a very good friend who is very important to you as some of the same principles apply.

I think writing can be theraputic and Marta has also written a companion book called Grief Expressed: When a Mate Dies. The second book consists of 64 written exercises that she completed for herself in the first year after she lost her own husband. She deals with a wide range of emotions and issues, such as loneliness, insecurity, friends, finance, sleeplessness, health and anniversaries.

If you have a friend who has experienced a great loss, perhaps you could give this book to them with a flower and a ribbon tied to it and I think it will be a gift they won't forget. Actions do speak louder than words, in most things in life.

I felt very calm and nurtured after reading both of Marta's books.

Healing.