Awakening from Grief: Finding the Way Back to Joy

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Summary: Helpful gift for a grieving friend
Review: A friend who recently lost her husband was very grateful for the consoling words in Awakening From Grief.

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Summary: A Wonderful Gift
Review: Awakening From Grief is wonderfully different from other books on this subject. It allows you to rediscover and embrace the memory of someone who has died rather than forcing you to "get over" the loss. As it turns out, the cure is not trying to forget, but encouraging you to remember, to allow yourself to feel the joy the person who has died brought you and still brings you.

John Welshons manages to pull this off not by resorting to Hallmark platitudes, religious quick fixes, or amateur psychology...but by simply telling his own story in a very compelling way.

I've now given this book several times to friends who have lost someone. The last person I gave it to (who lost a teenage son) told me it was the most wonderful gift she's ever received.

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Summary: Working one's way back to the experience of joy
Review: Awakening From Grief: Finding The Way Back To Joy by counselor, educator, lecturer, and grief expert John E. Welshon is a self-help guide to working one's way back to the experience of joy, finding forgiveness, and learning to pick up the pieces and start learning and living again. Very strongly recommended for the non-specialist general reader's personal/emotional self-help or spiritually oriented self-improvement reading list, Awakening From Grief embraces both the mundane and the spiritual in the quest to fully experience life yet retain one's love and memories despite tragedy and pain.

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Summary: Becoming Whole
Review: In about 725, Old English first recorded the word "haelan," meaning to make whole.In his profound book, Awakening from Grief, John Welshons explores the routes, variations and ultimately, common aspects of that inevitable quest from so many points of origin.

Mr. Welshons, who reached his approach by reaching others in change and loss, describes how, when all is lost, it may really be found.His is a journey of rediscovery, even joy, when the chips are most down.The book jacket refers to the text as a "roadmap" but that is too simple.Instead the book more resembles a tap to reach the stripped screws life deals so readily.Each reader will take it from there alone but not lonely.We are lucky to have John share his insights, sad, hilarious, compassionate and wise, to reach the state first published in Old English: To be made whole.

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Summary: A diamond of a book
Review: In my house I have a box in which I reverentially keep those few precious writings and items that most help me heal from the death of my daughter last year. "Awakening From Grief" is in that box. Believe me, I've read a whole lot of grief books and this is one of the best.

John Welshons has a genius for blending life experience and philosophy into a provocative healing balm for the soul. You can feel him reach out from the pages. "Awakening from Grief" helped me unite my emotions and thoughts so that they worked together to form a new outlook on the situation.

The book works as memoir as well as grief companion. Welshons shares touching stories from his own life that let readers know he has lived on the emotional landscapes about which he writes.

His writing voice is assuring, conversational, honest and caring.

This book will make you weep but when you finish it I believe you will find, as I did, that you walk more peacefully and happily in the world. You will feel, and be aware of, how your grief has deepened you.

If this book were a gem, it'd be a diamond.

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Summary: I do recommend reading this book...
Review: It's not the only answer to dealing with your grief but it's a start. The concepts discussed are not new or surprising to me. They're things I've known for years but occasionally forgot about. Life is a circle and every person, animal, plant, rock, molecule and atom in the universe is part of that circle. We are all connected and even though your loved one is gone they're still here. Every breath that you breath is the same air that they once breathed. Once you realize that, then grieving no longer weighs down your heart, it lifts it up. Mr. Welshons does an excellent job of explaining the grieving process and gives plenty of examples to back it up. If you're relatively new to thinking about life in this manner then this book will indeed help you.

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Summary: Comforting; A total paradigm shift
Review: My father passed away in August. I was devastated. September and October were such dark months for me. Then I read these customer reviews and purchased this book. I got the book and by the time I read the first 3 pages my perspective on my Dad's death had totally changed. I realized his death wasn't pointless. It actually made me realize that his death was his last "gift" to me. It was a total paradigm shift. It made me realize that life is all about joy and sadness. It's all part of the deal. Death is natural and sometimes even beautiful. The book made me realize that his death could actually enhance the way I live my life.

I highly recommend it for those who are hurting. I bought a copy for each member of my family. I also buy it for everyone I know who is taking care of someone who is very sick and for those who have lost someone already.

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Summary: 1 of the only 2 books I promise will REALLY HELP!
Review: This - and Surviving Grief (published by Judson Press for $6)
are THE 2 books (out of many) I checked out of the library that IMMEDIATELY made me feel more serene, accepting, as if I would get through this somehow. Not better, really - but more human and more in touch with the Divine. And somehow FINE in a decidedly UNFINE convergence of circumstances. A bargain for pain you'd pay $100s to ease. Thank you to both John Welshons and to Wayne Dyer for putting his weight behind the book. Invaluable. Priceless.

Rating:
Summary: One of the FINEST books I've ever read!
Review: This book has changed my life! It is far superior to any other book I've read on the subject . . . most of which tend to be much too syrupy. AWAKENING FROM GRIEF is Real, Honest, and straightforward. It never fails to look at the deepest aspects of the experience of loss and sadness, yet it always shows the reader the road to a new, healing perspective . . . the "Road Back to Joy." What's most remarkable about it is that it isn't really about grief as much as it is about happiness. By showing us the ways in which our attachment to feeling victimized stands in the way of our ability to be happy, this book offers a taste of true spiritual freedom and REAL healing. This book has helped me heal childhood wounds that have resisted all forms of therapy. It has helped me to find a lightness in my life that I've never felt before. I will be forever grateful for this book, and I highly recommend it!