Losing a Parent: Passage to a New Way of Living

by Alexandra Kennedy

Book Overview

Kennedy shares her own story of facing the loss of a parent and offers innovative strategies for healing and transformation. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0062504983
• ISBN13: 9780062504982
• Release Date: June 1991
• Publisher: HarperOne
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Lightpost for the inner journey

This book offers valuable insights into the personal journey each person must go through in grieving the loss of a parent, or even someone as close as a parent. Unlike some of the other reviewers on this page, I found her explanations of shamanism and spirit guides a refreshing and useful way to explore my own inner wisdom and find support and healing. For those unfamiliar with shamanism, or uncomfortable with practices different than their own, I encourage anyone to open their heart and mind to a new way of healing.

Parallel universes

I lost my Dad in September, days after the holocost in New York. He was a New Yorker and as such the days before the tragedy, was, himself, very agitated. Had I not read Alexandra's book I would have dismissed his need to get to an airport, get to New York, get to his old office on Hudson St. as the rantings of a man in his death throws. Not! It was true, he was reacting to the universal energies that were out there long before the plane crashes and it was a profound moment for me and my brothers and sisters that he shared it with us. He was courageous in dying, sharing every moment with us, but more important, we were able to share every moment with him because of the blue print Ms. Kennedy provided us with. This book needs to be read by anyone who's involved in the culmination of life as we know it and what's more important, by anyone that still has doubts about the dignity death. I shall be forever grateful for the bridge that Alexandra has created for those of us that survive.

A NEW WAY OF SEEING LIFE AND DEATH

LOSING A PARENT IS A BOOK WITH A UNIQUE WAY TO WORK THROUGH GRIEF. EVEN IF A PARENT DIED YEARS EARLIER, THE BOOK PROVIDES NEW, INSIGHTFUL WAYS TO DEAL WITH ISSUES AS THEY COME UP IN LIFE. ALEXANDRA IS BRAVE AND GENEROUS TO SHARE HER OWN EXPERIENCES WITH US. JUST KNOWING OTHERS EXPERIENCE THOSE MOMENTS IS EMPOWERING.

Losing a Parent

I found Ms. Kennedy's book extraordinarily helpful. Although both of my parents are alive, I had a stepmother whom I loved dearly who died when I was 20 and away at college. I had been told that she died of a broken heart. ( She was mentally ill and depressed and had ten shock treatments.) Twenty years later, my father informed me that Leila, whom I had loved like a second mother, had killed herself. I had lived with a lie for twenty years. The grief I felt was almost overwhelming: to think that she had died in such a terrible lonely way. Ms. Kennedy's book helped me find ways to clarify my relationshiop with Leila, with her death, and to work through all those years of unresolved loss, confronting the truth from a different perspective. Although my parents are alive, her book has also prepared me for the fact that although I will never really be ready for their death, being clear and direct in the relationships I have now will help when it is time for them to pass, and that I will have tools with which to cope when it is their time to leave this Earth. I am glad to have this book in my library. I gave it to all four of my cousins when their wonderful father dropped dead of a heart attack at 63.( The circumstances, in which he chose not to go to the hospital, made it almost like a suicide, creating unresolved feelings).They found it remarkably helpful. Death seems so final when we think of the object as being unable to receive our communication or to transform. Ms. Kennedy's book points out in a very meaningful way, that "the object", the loved one, in this case is anything but an object, but a living spirit with which we can continue to interact... " the object" is no more outside ourselves than we are outside ourselves: it is a matter of defining who they are and how they live within us that creates the healing. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

A landmark guide through an emotional maze

Until I became familiar with Alexandra Kennedy's work, I thought my caregiving was pathological and that I was a neurotic mess. Her insight and wisdom, the clarity and compassion of her understanding of this life passage, was the guiding force behind my ability to overcome clinical depression."Losing a Parent" is a comfort book. Although it is a personal memoir of sorts, its issues and lessons are universal. There is hope in suffering, there are great possibilities for spiritual growth when a parent's illness forces us up against death for the first time."Losing a Parent" is a must-read for anyone negotiating this passage. It could save your sanity.