Helping Grieving People – When Tears Are Not Enough

Book excerpt: Helping Grieving People – When Tears Are Not Enough is a handbook for care providers who provide service, support and counseling to those grieving death, illness, and other losses. This book is also an excellent text for academic courses as well as for staff development training. The author addresses grief as it affects a variety of relationships and discusses different intervention and support strategies, always cognizant of individual and cultural differences in the expression and treatment of grief. Jeffreys has established a practical approach to preparing grief care providers through three basic tracks. The first track: Heart – calls for self-discovery, freeing oneself of accumulated loss in order to focus all attention on the griever. Second track: Head – emphasizes understanding the complex and dynamic phenomena of human grief. Third track: Hands – stresses the caregiver's actual intervention, and speaks to lay and professional levels of skill, as well as the various approaches for healing available. Accompanying these three motifs, the Handbook discusses the social and cultural contexts of grief as applied to various populations of grievers as well as the underlying psychological basis of human grief. Throughout the book, Jeffreys presents the role of the caregiver as an Exquisite Witness to the journey of grief and pain of bereaved family and friends, and also to the path taken by dying persons and their families. The second edition of Helping Grieving People remains true to the approach that has been so well received in the original volume. It includes updated research findings and addresses new information and developments in the field of loss, grief and bereavement.