978 0 232 52629 5
Paperback | 144 pp
 
‘A beautiful book in its honesty and common sense. The words are carved out of the author’s own grief, written with deep feeling. But she is also able to stand back, and to empathise with others in their grief. I shall give grieving: a beginner’s guide to those I know who are experiencing the agony of bereavement.’
– Sister Frances Dominica, founder, Helen House, Oxford
 
‘Chances are, if you are reading this, your heart is broken. This book is designed to help those in pain – and specifically those who have lost someone through death – to imagine the path before them. It is a path of suffering. But it is also a path that may lead to unexpected discoveries – and to peace.’
 
There is no sure route through grieving. Jerusha Hull McCormack provides instead a series of signposts by which we may find our own path to a new life. ‘We are all amateurs at grief’ she writes, ‘it comes to us all; we must all go through it. To treat grief as a problem to be fixed, or (worse still) to medicalize it, is to rob us of the extraordinary privilege of encountering this experience on our terms: for each of us has our own way of grieving, and each of us has something special to learn from the process.’
 
Jerusha Hull McCormack retired as Senior Lecturer from University College, Dublin to take up a position as Visiting Professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University. She has written widely on American, English and Anglo-Irish literature and culture, her latest book being The Man Who Was Dorian Gray (2005).