'How To Survive The Loss Of A Love': A Book Review.

This outstanding, healing book of survival is co-authored by Harold Bloomfield, M.D., a psychological educator, Peter McWilliams, author/poet, and Melba Colgrove, PhD, a scholar in the areas of literature and counseling, to name a few.

The book is a healing tool. The words create a shovel of relief to dig out your innermost grief. You come face to face with your own turmoil in a way that's deeply moving. It allows you to hold your loss closely and feel it for what it really is.

This collection of prose,  a natural flow of words and tenderness, is the most healing book I've ever read.

The book covers the various types of losses a person experiences: obvious losses, like the breakup of a love affair or marriage; not so obvious losses, like illness or drastic changes in your life; loss related to age, like growing old or feeling 'empty nest syndrome'; and limbo losses, like a partner leaving suddenly or not knowing the 'is it or isn't it' in a situation. 

The prose also describes inevitable losses, like facing death or the realization that a loss is about to take place.  Each loss is described in a way that is easy to understand and deeply moving, making you feel like the writing is directed specifically at you.

How to Survive the Loss of a Love touches on the stages of recovery when one is getting over a loss. These stages are:

Shock, denial, and numbness.

Fear, anger and depression.

Understanding, acceptance, and moving on.

Counselors and psychologists agree that these stages are real and necessary to fully recover from a loss.  There's no set order in which the stages take place.  Some people bounce around from one stage to another, feeling extreme anger to despair to relief in one day.  

There's no set time period etched in stone of how long it takes someone to recover.  Each of us has our own unique system of dealing with loss.  This book reveals it in a touching manner, allowing the reader to experience each emotion in a clarifying realization that the loss-feelings are normal and natural.

The book offers encouragement and uplifting reminders that we're only human. Each emotion we feel is not wrong, in fact, each sentiment is necessary to recover and move on. Reminding us that we're not alone in our grief and that it's okay to feel the pain, the healing words support the fact that it's also helpful to be with the pain. The expressions in the book lead us to the knowledge that we, ourselves, are wonderful! We deserve to take time to heal.

In addition to building and encouraging us, the words in this book remind us that healing has it's ups and downs. We may feel recovered one day, but sad and defeated the next. This is part of the healing process and perfectly natural.

The book articulates and models new coping skills for recovery. It suggests reminding yourself that things won't always feel this bad and, most importantly, take care of yourself! The book suggests breathing deeply, getting plenty of rest, and staying on schedule to promote your body's ability to handle the loss. In addition, the book maintains," trying to minimize making big decisions and remind yourself that it's okay to make mistakes."

The suggestions and tools in this book are communicated in a way that makes the reader feel as if the authors wrote the words especially for him/her. It's not boring, lengthy, or hard to understand. The best way to describe How to Survive the Loss of a Love is summed up in the text itself:

"I must be happy with myself
or I have
nothing
to offer.

Two halves have
little choice
but to
join,
and yes,
they do
make a
whole.

but two
wholes,
when they coincide. . .

that is
beauty.

that is
love."