Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Grief & Loss

Merging dreams and dailies, Pathemata recounts the narrator’s tragicomic search to alleviate her suffering, a search that eventually becomes a reckoning with various forms of loss – the loss of intimacy, the loss of her father and the loss of a pivotal friend and mentor. In exacting, distilled prose, her account blurs the lines between embodied, unconscious and everyday life.

After working as a hospice nurse for many years, Suzanne O’Brien founded the Doulagivers Institute in 2012, which has since trained hundreds of thousands of death doulas around the world to provide a peaceful and dignified death for loved ones and their families. The Good Death brings together everything Suzanne has learned during her decades in healthcare to provide you with a simple, step-by-step guide to preparing for the future death of someone close to you, as well as helping them through the actual passing when the time comes.

Writing an ethical will, a document that includes stories and reflections about your past, is an ancient tradition. It can include joy and regrets, and ultimately becomes both a way to remember a loved one who is gone and a primer on how to live a better, happier life. Beloved Rabbi Steve Leder has helped thousands of people to write their own ethical wills, and in this intimate book helps us write our own.

At the age of seven Gavanndra Hodge realised that if her home caught fire it would be up to her to rescue her family. Neither her mother lost in a world of grief, nor her drug-addled father were capable of even realising the house was burning down, let alone saving Gavanndra and her little sister, Candy. When Candy dies suddenly and tragically on holiday aged nine, their family already damaged and fragile, implodes, and a teenage Gavanndra is left to rebuild her life, piece by piece. But there is one thing missing in the happy ending she creates for herself....

Hailed by Glennon Doyle as 'the Christian Joan Didion', Kate Bowler was 35 when she was diagnosed with stage-IV colon cancer. Before she got sick, she'd accepted the modern idea that life was an endless horizon of possibilities, a series of choices that if made correctly would lead to a rewarding existence. But now she has to ask one of the most fundamental questions of all: how do we create meaning in our lives as we race against the clock?

Philip Roth watches as his eight-six-year-old father, famous for his vigour, his charm and his skill as a raconteur - lovingly called 'the Bard of Newark' - battles with the brain tumour that will kill him. The son, full of love, anxiety and dread, accompanies his father through each fearful stage of his final ordeal, and, as he does so, discloses the survivalist tenacity that has distinguished his father's long engagement with life. Written with fierce tenderness, Patrimony is a classic work of memoir by a master storyteller.

Dementia is an unmaking, a de-creation - an apocalypse of meaning. Since my father's slow-motion dying and his actual death in November 2014, I have been much preoccupied with dementia: by those who have it, by those who look after them, by the hospital wards whose beds are occupied by those in advanced stages of this self-loss, by the way society denies it, by the science of it, the art and literature about it, the philosophy, by what it means to be human, to have an identity. What is it to be oneself, and what is it to lose one's self?

Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, and a haven after the loss of her father, Catherine Coldstream trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfolds her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, only to find that all is not as it seems behind the Order's closed doors. Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself.

Talking about death has been deemed morbid, taboo, or even pathological. But in order to fully embrace life, scientists, psychologists, and spiritual leaders all agree—contemplating death is the key to living a life with meaning. This life-changing book will give you a 12-week program to befriend death in your own way, creating your own personal, daily meditation on what it means to be mortal.

Sarah Perry's father-in-law, David, died at home nine days after a cancer diagnosis and having previously been in good health. The speed of his illness outstripped that of the NHS and social care, so the majority of nursing fell to Sarah and her husband. They witnessed what happens to the body and spirit, hour by hour, as it approaches death.

When Bozoma Saint John's husband, Peter, died of cancer, she made one big decision: to live life urgently. Bozoma was no stranger to adversity, having lost her college boyfriend to suicide, navigated an interracial marriage, grieved a child born prematurely—a process that led to her and Peter's separation—and coparented the daughter who she and Peter shared.

Zoë Colville spent years in a fancy hair salon with a long list of clients, living on cigarettes, croissants, and a shoestring. It was everything she'd ever wanted. But when an unexpected and overwhelming loss caused her life to shift unexpectedly, she found herself on a different path. One where the only use for a hairdryer is warming new-born lambs; where the cycle of life on a farm gives new meaning on purpose, and where nature is both a strict teacher and a balm to soothe the pressures of everyday life.

In our lives, terrible things may happen. Michael Rosen has grieved the loss of a child, lived with debilitating chronic illness, and faced death itself when seriously unwell in hospital. In spite of this he has survived, and has even learned to find joy in life in the aftermath of tragedy. In Getting Better, he shares his story and the lessons he has learned along the way. Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played in his own life, Michael investigates the road to recovery.

Safiyya's beautiful baby daughter, Azaylia, was eight weeks old when she was diagnosed with leukaemia. By the age of eight months, Safiyya and her partner, Ashley, had to say their final goodbye. This is Safiyya's account of motherhood, hope and loss. It is about the unbreakable and incomparable bond between mother and daughter...about what happens to a family when they face a life without the person that completed them, putting listeners in the shoes no parent wants to be in.

Born blind in Vietnam, Julie Yip-Williams narrowly escaped euthanasia at the hands of her grandmother, only to have to flee the political upheaval of the late 1970s with her family. Loaded into a rickety boat with 300 other refugees, Julie made it to Hong Kong and, ultimately, America, where a surgeon gave her partial sight. Against all odds, she became a Harvard-educated lawyer, with a husband, a family, a life. Then, at the age of 37, with two little girls still at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began.

One night last winter, Antoine Leiris was at home looking after his son while his wife, Hélène, was at a concert with friends. Suddenly he started receiving text messages asking if he was okay. Turning on the TV, Antoine watched the terrorist attacks in Paris unfolding around him and tried to call Hélène. She didn't answer. That night Hélène was killed, along with 88 other people, at the Bataclan Theatre. Three days later Antoine wrote an open letter to his wife's killers on Facebook. He refused to be cowed or to let his 17-month-old son's life be defined by their acts.

It’s midsummer in Wyoming and Alexandra Fuller is barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, reeling from a midlife breakup, freshly sober and piecing her way uncertainly through a volatile new relationship with a younger woman, Alexandra vows to get herself back on even keel. And then – suddenly and incomprehensibly – her son Fi, at twenty-one years old, dies in his sleep. No stranger to loss – young siblings, a parent, a home country – Alexandra is nonetheless levelled.

Heartbreak can manifest itself as depression, anxiety, self-sabotage, an inability to feel emotions, make connections, or live life on your own terms. Donna's practical nine-step programme will empower you with the tools and support you need to gain clarity, identify what has hurt you and learn how to release the pain, fear and anger keeping you trapped. Donna will teach you how to care for yourself with love, give you the courage to really feel your feelings, step into your authentic self and move towards whole-hearted living.

Dave Myers lived his life with joy. He always told his wife Lili that, if you were going to do something, you should do it full-heartedly. With that in mind, Lili gives her whole self to writing a celebration of his life and their love, full of the warmth and joy that Dave and The Hairy Bikers brought to their fans throughout their career spanning two decades. Lili invites readers into her world, sharing her personal story and professional insights as a grief coach, offering a unique perspective on the complexities of loss and the healing process.

We all know what it’s like to experience the disappointments and sorrows of life. Unexpected circumstances like layoffs, divorce, illness, and death can leave us hurting and isolated. Add to that the unending anxiety we feel at the state of the world—political strife and global upheavals—and we end up with a recipe for . . . joy? Yes, says journalist Steven Petrow, who has lived through all of those things, and arrived at a surprising conclusion: Joy is always present—in our everyday routines, in ties to those we care about, even in our grief.