Bearing the unbearable : love, loss, and the heartbreaking path of grief

Summary: Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life's most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore - bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and leading counselor in the field - accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love, loss and grief. Through moving stories of her encounters with grief over decades of supporting individuals, families, and communities - as well as her own experience with loss - Cacciatore opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honor our grief.

Record details

ISBN: 9781614292968 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN: 1614292965 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Physical Description: print
222 pages ; 23 cm
Publisher: Somerville, MA : Wisdom Publications, [2017]

Content descriptions

General Note:

Includes index.

Formatted Contents Note:

The role of others in our grief -- Public and private grief -- Ritual and artistic expressions of grief -- Nurtrient-deficient soil -- Cultural sensitivity -- Bearing the unbearable -- Pause, reflect, and feel meaning -- The terror beneath the terror -- The pursuit of happiness and the unity of opposites -- Bypassing grief, bypassing love -- Intensity and coping -- Contraction and expansion -- The collision of love and loss -- Boundless and timeless love -- Personifying grief -- Pausing with grief -- The practice of being with -- My heart cried many tears -- The barefoot walkabout -- The vitality of self-care -- Self-care and slee -- Ways to care for yourself -- Telling family and friends what we need -- Self-care as a distraction -- Learning, adapting, and trusting intuition -- Re-grieving -- Surrendering and stretching -- When we fragment -- Duration of grief -- The courage to remember -- Joining hands -- The power of unprocessed traumatic grief -- Silenced for decades -- Guilt and shame -- Inward and outward -- Works of love -- Waves of grief -- "Remember me," she said -- Ritual and microritual -- Meaning through compassionate action -- Kindness projects -- Through knowing suffering -- Fierce compassion -- The horse chemakoh -- The price of unrealized grief and trauma -- Transgenerational grief -- Grief broth -- The darkness has its gifts -- What I know.