ADVANCE PRAISE FOR
GRIEVING IS LOVING
This book is filled with a deep wisdom that, when applied, can heal the pain and grief one experiences from losing a loved one.
The Minimalists
This inspiring book provides heartful reminders that love and grief are in an eternal embrace.
Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Fully
This book is a gentle and kind guide to navigating the journey of loss and sorrow, keeping one company along the way.
Narayan Helen Liebenson, author of The Magnanimous Heart: Compassion and Love, Loss and Grief, Joy and Liberation
Grieving Is Loving is a good spiritual friend, a warm hand to anyone seeking companions in bearing the unbearable. With tender compassion and insight, Joanne Cacciatore walks with us shoulder to shoulder in our grief, bringing us into a world of tender vitality.
Koshin Paley Ellison, author of Wholehearted: Slow Down, Help Out, Wake Up and an editor of Awake at the Bedside: Contemplative Teachings on Palliative and End-of-Life Care
Even when every fiber of our being is quietly calling us to yield to the sacred shattering that is the grief experience, it can feel overwhelming to fully inhabit our pain and allow it to transform us. But we do not have to do it alone. Joanne Cacciatores new book is a warm, loving, fiercely protective companion on the journey into the holy fire of loss. With this luminous collection of reflections from one of the foremost wisdom teachers on the alchemy of grief and loss, we can meet and bless the fullness of our experience as an offering of love to the one who has died and an affirmation of the innate wisdom of the broken-open heart.
Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair and Wild Mercy
Grieving Is Loving is a wise, moving, and compassionate book. Reading it brought tears to my eyes as it reminded me of the loss of loved ones thirty and forty-five years ago. Not only should its message be read and internalized by those suffering the loss of a beloved, but also by those with friends who have lost or are likely to lose someone in the future in other words, by everyone.
Irving Kirsch, PhD, Harvard Medical School, University of Connecticut, University of Hull, author of The Emperors New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth
The engaging sentiments in this book, shared by someone who has been there in the depths of grief, will provide comfort and confirmation to every bereaved person who opens it. This compilation of writing by some of the sharpest minds and sacred souls, including the authors, begs to be read, reread, and shared.
Donna L. Schuurman, EdD, FT, senior director of advocacy and training, the Dougy Center for Grieving Children and Families
From INDIES Gold Medal Award Winner and Bestselling Author Joanne Cacciatore
If you love, you will grieve and nothing is more mysteriously central to becoming fully human. This book of poems, quotations, reflections, and stories is a companion to carry with you throughout your day, to touch in with and be supported by when bearing the unbearable pain of a loved ones death whether weeks or years since their passing. Our culture often makes the bereaved feel alone, isolated, broken, and like they should just get over it but this book offers a loving antidote. Open to any page and youll find something that will instantly help you feel not alone, while honoring the full weight of loss.
Grieving Is Loving includes quotations from Bearing the Unbearable, and other sources, plus an enormous amount of new material from Dr. Jo. This book is especially well suited for the grieving mind, which may struggle with concentration; just thirty seconds on any page will empower, hearten, and validate any bereaved person.
Writing with tenderness, simplicity, and care, Dr. Cacciatore offers a profound guide to healing and wholeness in the midst of grief and loss. Each page is a balm for a wounded heart. Anyone who has suffered in this life will find helpful wisdom here.
RICK HANSON, PHD, author of Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness
A book of profound compassion and wisdom and strength.
from the foreword by Johann Hari
A beautiful contemplation on grief that is wise and will serve so many.
Roshi Joan Halifax, author of Being with Dying
Wisdom Publications
199 Elm Street
Somerville, MA 02144 USA
wisdomexperience.org
2020 by Joanne Cacciatore
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system or technologies now known or later developed, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cacciatore, Joanne, author.
Title: Grieving is loving: compassionate words for bearing the unbearable / Joanne Cacciatore.
Description: Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, [2020] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024980 (print) | LCCN 2020024981 (ebook) | ISBN 9781614297017 (paperback) | ISBN 9781614297024 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Grief. | Love. | Consolation.
Classification: LCC BF575.G7 C275 2020 (print) | LCC BF575.G7 (ebook) | DDC 155.9/37 dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024980
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024981
ISBN 978-1-61429-701-7 ebook ISBN 978-1-61429-702-4
24 23 22 21 20 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design by Jim Zaccaria. Interior design by Gopa & Ted2, Inc.
FOREWORD BY JOHANN HARI
I N THE UNITED States, many people have a startling experience when a loved one dies. Shortly after catastrophic loss sometimes a day, or a week, or a month they are told something jarring, often by a doctor. The distress they are feeling is often explained as abnormal, and all too often treated as a mental illness. Dr. Joanne Cacciatores research has shown this is not a rare occurrence with nearly one-half of grieving parents, for example, being prescribed psychiatric medication within a week after their painful loss.
For Dr. Jo, this is just one extreme manifestation of how we often respond to grief in our culture: as something shameful, abnormal, something to be shunted aside or suppressed. But for her, having done this work since 1996, grief is not a malfunction grieving is not a sign that you have gone haywire and not an indication that something is broken and needs to be fixed. Rather, it is a sign you are a feeling and loving being. Grief is a form of love. This beautiful book will help you to see a more truthful, tender vision of what grief is and how to live with it, rather than fight, manage, or avoid it.
To understand how Dr. Jo came to this vision, I think it might help you to picture her as I do in two different scenes, at two different moments in her life. She described the first to me when I interviewed her for my book Lost Connections: Why You Are Depressed, and How to Find Hope, and Id like to recount some of that now.
Many years ago, in 1994, her doctor reassured her when, at the end of a long pregnancy, she expressed concern about her babys well-being. Oh honey, he said, you just need some attention. She had been having extremely painful contractions for three weeks, and she thought the baby needed help. She was a very diligent mother-to-be she wouldnt even chew gum with aspartame in it because she was worried it might harm her baby. So she kept insisting: These are really painful contractions they dont feel normal to me. But the doctor repeatedly placated her: Its normal.