BOOK REVIEW

'Daring to Breathe: Stories of Living With the Foreverness of Grief'

Posted

Every one of us has suffered a painful loss, even if it’s only your memory of losing your faithful childhood dog that brings a pang of sorrow.

At some point in our lives, we all will lose someone dear to us. How we deal with that deep mourning will be unique and personal, but also human and shared by everyone who has lived on our planet. How have you overcome your grief?

The stories of the individuals in — "Daring to Breathe: Stories of Living With the Foreverness of Grief" — are intensely personal and heartbreaking.

Some were so difficult to read that I had to put the book down for a day before picking it up again. Grief is an emotion so painful and dark that sharing it can be too difficult for many.

Yet, the writers who shared their stories spoke of this emotional rollercoaster to help others navigate through grief by allowing us to see that we can survive it and go on living.

Lanie’s story, “Beauty For Ashes” on page 112, was particularly poignant for me because Lanie wrote so beautifully about her ongoing grief in dealing with cancer treatment.

Her essay sums up the messages of grief told by every other writer in the book, although she is not describing the death of a beloved person, simply the loss of parts of her body and health.

“We all suffer. There is no choice in that. Suffering changes us. Our choice lies in how: Hope or despair. Peace or bitterness. New life or living death. Help others and be helped by others or wallow in alienation and self-pity," she wrote.

None of the stories in this small book are trite or Hallmark card messages. Each is so emotionally personal and individual, yet each represents the universal pain of loss. Humanity suffers when we lose a loved one, no matter at what age or status in life.

Our society makes little provision for expressing grief openly. Carrying grief inside of us when we want to cry and scream and cover our heads gives us little chance to recover emotionally. Perhaps society should reinstate allowing us to wear black for a time just to let others know that we’re hurting.

If you have suffered a deep loss and want to know how others have coped and still functioned afterward, this book may be a comfort to you. It’s not one I could read straight through like a novel, as the stories were too emotionally difficult to process all at once.

But reading individual stories for the human touch, to share their personal experience is touching in the way reading poetry makes one pause and think about one’s own life.

"Daring to Breathe: Stories of Living With the Foreverness of Grief," edited by Armen Bacon and Nancy Miller, is published by The Press at California State University, Fresno.  ISBN 978-1-959274-10-0

Ginny Ith, of Lacey, volunteers in several capacities for The JOLT News Organization. We appreciate her involvement with us.