Books and Catalogs
By Charles A. Corr and Joan McNeil
This book provides helpful guidelines for counselors and other adults working with adolescents who are struggling with the different issues of dying, death and bereavement.
By Elizabeth McCracken
A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child. This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. With humor and heart and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love, and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.
Angelic Presence: Short Stories of Solace and Hope after the Loss of a Baby
By Cathi Lammert and Sue Friedeck
A collection of short stories reveals how individuals have senses the presence and love of their babies who have passed from this life. Provides hope and comfort to all.
Armfuls of Time: The Psychological Experience of the Child with a Life-Threatening Illness
By Barbara Sourkes
The author specializes in psychotherapy with children with cancer and other serious diseases. She provides a window into her therapy sessions, allowing the reader to listen with her to the children's stories and conversations and to see their drawings.
Bittersweet...hellogoodbye - A Resource in Planning Farewell Rituals When a Baby Dies
By Jane M. Lamb
A complete guide for anyone who is planning a memorial or funeral for a baby. Includes planning the service, prayers, reading, resources, and keepsakes.
Edited by Ann Goldman
This book reviews the medical, psychosocial and practical issues involved in caring for children dying from chronic disease. It is directed towards pediatricians, family doctors and other professionals who may be involved in caring for terminally ill children and their families, whether at home or in the hospital.
Edited by Lenore Hill
The contributors to this book have been privileged to share in the lives of families where a child has died. Each chapter deals with a particular aspect of care at/during the end of a child’s life.
7230 Maple Street
Omaha, NE 68134
402-553-1200 (phone)/402-553-0507(fax)
The Centering Corporation provides education and resources to support children and adults during their grief journey: books, videos, cards, dolls, workshops, etc..
Edited by Charles Corr and David Balk
Children struggling with death-related issues require care and competent assistance from the adults around them. This book serves as a guide for care providers, including counselors, social workers, nurses, educators, clergy, and parents who seek to understand and help children as they attempt to cope with loss. This book comprehensively discusses death and grieving within the context of the physical, emotional, social, behavioral, spiritual, and cognitive changes that children experience while coping with death. The chapters also explore new critical, imaginative conceptual models and interventions, including expressive arts therapy, resilience-based approaches, new psychotherapeutic approaches, and more.
Edited by Justin Amery
Written by a group with wide experience of caring for dying children in Africa, this book provides practical, realistic guidance by improving access to, and delivery of, palliative care in this demanding setting. It looks at the themes common to palliative care--including communication, assessment, symptom management, psychosocial issues, ethical dilemmas, end of life care, and tips for the professional on compassion and conservation of energy--but always retains the focus on the particular needs of the health care professional in Africa. While containing some theory, the emphasis is on practical action throughout the book. Can download book for free at:
The Deepening Shade: Psychological Aspects of Life-Threatening Illness
By Barbara Sourkes
An elegant synthesis of the psychology of life-threatening illness, this book’s power derives from the interweaving of clinical conceptualization with the words of patients and family members. Rather than focusing on death, Sourkes explores living with a life-threatening illness.
Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby
by Deborah L. Davis, Ph.D.
Ms. Davis offers reassurance to parents who struggle with anger, guilt and despair after the heartache of a miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death. She encourages grieving and makes suggestions for coping.
Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying
By Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley
Impressive insights into the experience of dying, offered by two hospice nurses with a gift for listening. The “final gifts”' of the title are the comfort and enlightenment offered by the dying to those attending them, and in return, the peace and reassurance offered to the dying by those who hear their needs. Practical advice is offered not only to involved family members but also to professional caregivers on how to recognize, understand, and respond to a dying person's messages.
Finding Hope When a Child Dies: What Other Cultures Can Teach Us
by Sukie Miller, Ph.D.
This book gives voice to the unpronounced fears and the consuming guilt that most people in Western cultures experience at the loss of children they have loved. Ms. Miller shares her research on rituals, beliefs, and practices that relate to the afterlife, and she offers healing stories from other cultures.
This book has been written for both parents and surviving children to provide insight and understanding into the death of a sibling, helping to aid in the grieving and healing process.
By Therese Rando
Chapter 13 of this book, The Dying Child, provides detailed information on societal reactions to the death of a child, adjusting to the terminal illness of a child, family responses to a terminal diagnosis of a child, while also providing suggested treatment interventions.
By Maria Housden
Ms. Housden shares the transformative lessons she received from her three-year old daughter, Hannah, who brought courage, honesty, and even laughter to her struggle with cancer in the hopes that her and Hannah’s story will bring comfort to those touched by a similar loss.
If I Get to Five -- What Children Can Teach Us about Courage and Character
by Fred Epstein, MD and Joshua Horwitz
Throughout his career as pediatric neurosurgeon, Dr. Epstein's young patients have been his most important teachers and trusted guides. These patients teach us the lessons we all need to learn in order to lie life to the fullest -- lessons about seizing the moment and facing our deepest fears, about holding someone's hand, and about embracing the joy and wonder of everyday life.
A heartfelt sharing of 22 stories of babies born prematurely as written by their parents. This book shares the ordeal, fears and joy of having a baby who is between life and death. It also includes tips on where their parents turned for help during this difficult time.
By Carol Henderson
Based on her journal entries captured while her son was dying, this book captures many of the universal themes families feel and experience during the death of a child. Its lessons will “appeal to those who’ve suffered the loss of a loved one, those who know someone who is suffering, and those who are interested in reading about the tragedies and triumphs of others.”
By Kenneth J. Doka and Terry L. Martin
This book provides suggestions on ways to intervene and help those experiencing grief due to the loss of a loved one. It emphasizes there are many healthy ways to cope with grief and examines different methods of coping (e.g., intuitive vs. instrumental).
Parental Loss of a Child
By Therese Rando
This book has been written to familiarize professionals in a variety of disciplines with the experience of the parental loss of a child. It provides perspective on different types of child death as well as the treatment needs for a variety of situations.
Edited by Jo Anne Earp, Elizabeth French, and Melissa Gilkey
This book identifies patient advocacy from individual, to organizational, to grassroots policy advocacy as a powerful source of pressure and as a potentially effective way to initiate needed changes in U.S. health care. As a contribution to the emerging healthcare quality movement, this book is distinct from any others of its kind in its focus on the consumer’s perspective and in its emphasis on how advocacy can influence change at multiple social levels. This introductory volume synthesizes patient advocacy from a multi-level approach and is an ideal text for graduate and professional students in schools of public health, nursing and social work.
The Private Worlds of Dying Children
By Myra Bluebond-Langner
This study of awareness and communication in terminally ill children represents an effort to gain insight into childhood socialization and social order. It asks how terminally ill children come to know that they are dying when no one tells them, and how they conceal this knowledge from their parents and the medical staff.
Shadows in the Sun: The Experience of Sibling Bereavement in Childhood
By Betty Davies, R.N., Ph.D.
This book is a combination of insightful caring, informed scholarship, rigorous research, and practical utility. Ms. Davies provides an introduction to sibling bereavement in childhood and directs an intelligent appreciation of its nature, characteristics, and significance.
Shelter from the Storm -- Caring for a Child with a Life-Threatening Condition
by Joanne Hilden, MD and Daniel R. Tobin, MD with Karen Lindsey
This book was developed to help families cope with whatever happens throughout the course of a child's illness. The goal is to empower families to fight for a child's life as long as recovery is a reasonable expectation, while at the same time preparing them to deal with the process of dying, if that turns out to be inevitable. A child can have a peaceful death, and families can learn to achieve whatever peace of mind is possible in such a shattering situation.
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down -- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
by Anne Fadiman
This book explores the clash between a small county hospital in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy.
Transcending Loss: Understanding the Lifelong Impact of Grief and How to Make it Meaningful
By Ashley Davis Prend
Ms. Prend asserts that death doesn't end a relationship, it simply forges a new type -- one based not on physical presence but on memory, spirit, and love. She addresses the issue of grief's ongoing impact and how it changes through the years.
Waiting with Gabriel -- A Story of Cherishing a Baby's Brief Life
by Amy Kuebeleck
Ms. Kuebeleck was five and a half months pregnant with her third child when she received the devastating news: her baby had a malformed heart, and the condition was fatal. Faced with an impossible choice, Ms. Kuebeleck and her husband, guided by faith and supported by friends and family, set out to make the most difficult decision of their lives.
By John W. James and Russell Friedman
Children grieve at all kinds of losses…from the death of a relative (sibling, parent, grandparent) or because of divorce, to moving to a new neighborhood or losing a prized possession. This book helps to guide children through their grief, even as a sibling/friend is dying. This book is from the authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook.
By Marge Heegaard
This resource helps children learn the basic concepts of illness. It includes various age-appropriate ways of coping with someone else’s illness by helping the children draw out their feelings about what they’re going through. A Facilitator Guide for helping children draw out their feelings is also available.
Writing to Heal the Soul: Transforming Grief and Loss Through Writing
By Susan Zimmermann
A believer in the therapeutic effects of journaling, the author speaks of how writing can allow emotions sparked from any loss to be expressed, thence allowing the writer to grapple and come to terms with grief. Zimmerman uses anecdotes from her life to introduce exercises designed to get readers writing about their feelings and their own life experiences.
www.compassionatepassages.org