The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience

Product Information

Gabrielle got her start in journalism writing obituaries for a local newspaper. She was 24 and in the newsroom doing that very job, when she found out that her father and stepmother had been murdered during a home invasion. No one wants this book but I do recommend it as a professional for other therapists and anyone helping another heal as an incredible resource Advice you won’t find in Soffer’s book? How to move on in a traditional sense. "Even if it was a negative relationship, you still examine or contend with it," she noted.

Info on our books – The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience and Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome. Think like a crab. Remember that if something isn’t resonating with you, you can always pivot and see what works better.” Modern Loss is all about eradicating the stigma and awkwardness around grief while also focusing on our capacity for resilience and finding meaning. In this interactive guide, Modern Loss cofounder Rebecca Soffer offers candid, practical, and witty advice for confronting a future without your person, honoring their memory, dealing with trigger days, managing your professional life, and navigating new and existing relationships. You’ll find no worn-out platitudes or empty assurances here. With prompts, creative projects, innovative rituals, therapeutic-based exercises, and more, this is the place to explore the messy, long arc of loss on your own timeline—and without judgment. Approach the big days – from birthdays to deativersaries, diagnosisversaries, and beyond – and form creative, personalized rituals and communal bespoke holidays.This book offers direct, practical, and funny advice on how you can live a life without your special person. The author talks about how to honor their memory, deal with triggers, and manage your career and relationships. The author shares everything she learned from her own experience with grief and from the experts she worked with across the spectrum of wellness and therapy, mental health, suffering, the arc of loss, and the incredible members of the Modern Loss community. The handbook also includes prompts, projects, exercises, and different ways that will help people deal with loss on their own timeline and without judgment. But she wasn’t alone. Together with Gabrielle and some other friends, Rebecca formed a monthly dinner party called WWDP (Women With Dead Parents, obviously). The WWDP conversations were wide-ranging, but the common denominator was a shared understanding. A general “I get it.” No apologies, no accusations, no questions asked. Other than: Who brought the chocolate cake, and can I get the recipe?

Corporations are still muddling their way through this era, because grief is such a delicate emotional issue. So if you are going through it on a personal level, you can help them understand what employees need and what they do not, suggests Soffer.Jennifer Richleris a freelance journalist living in Bloomington, Indiana. She writes about a range of topics, from grief and loss to Israeli culture to autism. You can find her at jrichler.wix.com/jrichler. I can’t imagine.” Families and individuals who have lost children, siblings, partners, and friends hear it all the time, this confession of an inability to imagine the worst, the unspeakable, the most feared event. I understand why people offer the phrase—as an earnest gesture of solace or a filler in lieu of anything else—but it rarely brings comfort. More often, the recipients are left feeling even more isolated at a time when grief has already banished them to a cold, dark place. The internet is terrific, in that it really allows for very accessible storytelling. But a book is different. It’s tactile and weighty in your hands; it feels good to have something meaningful and comforting you can hold. Our first book, Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome came out of that wish to create something physical, and working on it really allowed us to pull in a lot of different contributors for conversations around these themes. We were able to write extensively ourselves and to experiment with art and illustration. Doing that was a huge challenge and, ultimately, an amazing experience. When faced with grief, we must be able to feel like we can revisit, redefine, and talk about it for the rest of our lives. Adapting to major loss is a shifting landscape that each person must navigate. But nobody can “do grief” alone. We need each other, precisely because to grieve is to be human, and to be human is to be in relation with others.

I included a lot more information than I intended to, but I just couldn’t stop writing. There are so many things that work together to help somebody to build resilience when they’re moving through grief, whether that’s community support, individualized support, or personal reflection. In the end, this book is something that you really can use over the course of years. You don’t have to fill it all out in one sitting; it should be something that’s really part of your experience. The truth is, it’s not that we can’t imagine the experience. It’s that we don’t want to. In saying that the deep loss someone is feeling is too unbearable to picture, what we’re really doing is drawing a line: not mine, not ours, only yours. Perhaps we think we might prevent this pain, this chaos, this fear and uncertainty, from reaching our own lives. But if this global pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that grief doesn’t work that way. Grief belongs or will belong to everybody , if not today then someday. She recognizes that one size does not fit all. Everyone mourns in unique ways. This is a handbook of many tools and perspectives on the process. Bottom line, what impresses me most is the practicality of the methods within the book. I’ve had many a self-help book that were theoretical and wordy, but this book is all about the practice in a user-friendly format. Another section I felt important to me was working through to see if seeking a professional to help deal with grief would be a good fit.

Get in touch

Relief came from finding camaraderie in others who had also experienced loss. She joined a support group in Manhattan for families of homicide victims and became involved with a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting family and friends of those who have died by violence. This is honestly the first book related to loss/grief that I’ve ever found helpful. Rebecca Soffer’s approach is relatable. It’s gracious and sometimes it’s even entertaining. It’s very obvious from the beginning and throughout the book that this was developed by someone who has dealt with loss. There is a lot that I appreciate about this book and some highlights include:

This is one of the best grief resources for mental health, helpful and funny. This book is meant to help us stay connected to our people, stay connected to ourselves, and stay connected to the world around us even in grief. I think the "handbook" title doesn't really define the book. Even though it is a handbook and workbook you can use, it is also a deep and personal guide that provides a box of tools we can use in different situations of grief. We are also, like many of you, deeply concerned that a medical recasting of the very human and universal experience of loss will adversely impact our society’s perception of how grief “should” be versus how it’s actually experienced. Whether you are someone who has lost their “person” or want to give something meaningful and effective to someone who has, this is a place to explore the unspeakably taboo, unbelievably hilarious, and unexpectedly beautiful terrain of navigating life after a death. While it is true that 12 to 15% of people dealing with a significant loss will indeed suffer from what’s known as “complicated grief,” many of them will have been predisposed to depression or anxiety to begin with. The newly named PGD diagnosis is specifically for mourners like these, who are having enormous challenges going to work, maintaining relationships, feeling any sort of enjoyment, and even having suicidal ideation after a year. These individuals deserve validation and affordable access to professional treatment. Rest assured we will return to our regular programming of thoughtful essays and in-depth interviews with notable humans. But first, thank you for allowing me to pause and appreciate a moment like this one alongside this community. They don’t come along all too often.

Turn to a friend (either in person or online) who has experienced parental death. For example, the Modern Loss community hosts an international gift swap ahead of trigger holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and National Siblings Day. "People send each other gifts and a card to make the day less crappy," Soffer said. "When you give or create space for a community to form around a painful experience, really amazing things can happen." She said the project has led to many friendships, romances and business ventures. Know that grief isn’t linear This year on Mother’s Day (May 8), social media tributes and corporate advertisements could sting (although as previously reported by TODAY Parents, businesses are steadily offering customers opt-out tools). If you’re struggling, Soffer offered these coping tips: Find a 'grief buddy' One moment managing, and going about the business of living, the next sobbing with a pain out of nowhere unable to breathe and then like the clouds parting, a wonderful memory and I am able to go on. And then it repeats.