Bearing the Unbearable
Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief
by Joanne Cacciatore, PhD
16 May 2021: This book is currently out of stock with TCF and the distributors. We hope that copies will be available soon. Please order and we will send the book to you as soon as we receive copies. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
When a loved one dies, the pain of loss can feel unbearable—especially in the case of a traumatizing death that leaves us shouting, “NO!” with every fibre of our body. The process of grieving can feel wild and nonlinear—and often lasts for much longer than other people, the nonbereaved, tell us it should.
Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore—bereaved mother, bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and leading counsellor in the field—accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love, loss, and grief. Through moving stories of her encounters with grief over decades of supporting individuals, families, and communities—as well as her own experience with loss—Cacciatore opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honour our grief.
"There are sentences in this luminous book that took my breath away. Dr Jo meets the broken-hearted where we live; in an utterly transformed and transformational space". - Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair
“An especially powerful book. It is not just for those who have suffered a loss. Anyone who’s trying to deal with a loss, or anyone who know someone dealing with a loss...will benefit from reading this amazing book.”—Foreword Reviews
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Joanne Cacciatore has a fourfold relationship with bereavement. She is herself a bereaved mother: her newborn daughter died on July 27, 1994, and that single tragic moment catapulted her unwillingly onto the reluctant path of traumatic grief. For more than two decades, she’s devoted herself to direct practice with grief, helping traumatically bereaved people on six continents. She’s also been researching and writing about grief for more than a decade in her role as associate professor at Arizona State University and director of the Graduate Certificate in Trauma and Bereavement program there. And, in addition, she’s the founder of an international nongovernmental organization, the MISS Foundation, dedicated to providing multiple forms of support to families experiencing the death of a child at any age and from any cause, and since 1996 has directed the foundation’s family services and clinical education programs.
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