Healing After Your Child's Death

Aug. 8, 2012 - PRLog -- COPING WITH LOSING A CHILD

Dealing with a child’s academic, social and developmental challenges can be irksome and trying but, many times, wonderfully endearing when the parent-child bond continues to deepen. You cherish and look forward to more memories of laughter, love and thrill with your child, riding through the unpredictable good and trying changes of each day. Then, suddenly, one day it all stops. Shock and confusion, followed by irrepressible grief due to losing your child, change your life forever.

Avril Nagel and Randie Clark, MA, CCC, authors of WHEN YOUR CHILD DIES: TOOLS FOR MENDING PARENTS’ BROKEN HEARTS (New Horizon Press, August 2012), both of whom have endured this tragedy, provide grief-stricken parents tools, strategies and tips on how to heal from and handle the aftershock of this devastating loss. With compassion and empathy, WHEN YOUR CHILD DIES reaches out to console, relate, guide, converse and offer insight to parents on how to navigate the grief process. This may involve new internal and extraneous challenges, such as the intrusion of the media, the justice system, the healthcare system and even pre-existing family issues. Suggestions include practical tools for parents to help surviving children understand death and grief, handle reactions and sympathies from relatives and friends and come to terms with loss in their family in healthy ways.

No matter what age children are when parents lose them, the pangs of loss often besiege parents’ ability to move forward. WHEN YOUR CHILD DIES shows parents how to savor their past relationship by giving proven counsel on letting go of regrets, building a new life, incorporating the good memories in new ones and celebrating the joy and love that was shared with their children.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Avril Nagel has a professional specialization in emergency management. As a project manager and planner she has researched, written and edited numerous publications for the government and not-for-profit sectors. She graduated from McGill University, Montreal. Avril and her husband lost their son Alden when his heart stopped suddenly during birth. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her husband and two young children.

Randie Clark, MA, CCC, is a therapist/counselor for adults and is an on-call Emergency Mental Health Response worker. She also leads workshops for first responders, professionals and community members in intervention assessment and treatment approaches for victims of trauma, sudden and traumatic loss and individuals experiencing mental health crises. She maintains a private practice working with individuals and couples, specializing in complicated issues of loss and grief. She holds a master’s degree in psychology with a focus on post-traumatic stress syndrome and traumatic loss and grief from Antioch University, Seattle, Washington. Randie's twenty-six-year-old son David was stabbed to death in a street robbery. She and her husband reside on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.


http://newhorizonpressbooks.com/new/whenyourchilddies.php


WHEN YOUR CHILD DIES: Tools for Mending Parents’ Broken Hearts
By Avril Nagel and Randie Clark, MA, CCC
New Horizon Press, August 2012
Self-help/Caregiving & Grief
ISBN-13: 978-0-88282-391-1, (pb), $14.95