A FREE Kindle download promotion will be running from 1 to 5 November 2018: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Grief-36-Lessons-Life/dp/1720470537
PODCAST – “How caring support may help those suffering loss make their own decisions on how to grieve – An Interview with Author David Pierce Jr.”
An anthology with over 30 contributing authors experiencing personal loss through the death of a loved one, or the death of an essential part of themselves, tell their stories.
These stories are deep, rich and intimate, and they reveal the extreme pain and confusion, the shock and emptiness of living with death.
The message of hope that this anthology conveys lies in the fact that all contributors, in sharing their experience, also explain how they each found their own unique way to live with their heart-breaking pain, even though they might have at first felt absolutely lost, and decided to share their personal story with the reader or with whoever might draw inspiration and drive from their experience, in order to find in life a bigger picture and new reasons to carry on.
The editor, David Pierce, who with his wife Judy founded the social movement Friends Along the Road, has been working in the field of bereavement support ever since 1999, through the administration of dedicated message boards and Facebook groups and all sorts of activities and events designed to offer sanctuary and caring support to those in grief, a physical or virtual space where to rest and seek comfort along one’s path. Both David and Judy have contributed to the anthology.
This has been David and Judy Pierce’s mission ever since their lives were shattered and changed forever following the sudden loss of their precious fourteen-year-old daughter Lilli, due to an accident as she was crossing the road on her way back home in the late afternoon of a tragic Friday, on 12 November 1999.
In 2002, David and Judy embraced the philosophy of Sanctuary and Caring Support. Finding that there are many misconceptions about death and grief, they came to understand that grief is an entirely personal experience, and that no one should suggest how another ought to experience it. However, the Pierces were encouraged by wonderful professional counseling organizations and healing networks that adhere to the ideas of safety, comfort, and unconditional positive regard. Especially important to David’s thinking was Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death and the Theory of Caring as conceived by Kristen M. Swanson, Ph.D., R.N. Although Dr. Swanson’s ideas are directed toward nursing and clinical practice, David found them an excellent model for FAR’s work of creating sanctuary. David realized that sometimes, the best thing one can do for a person in grief is to offer safe and comfortable places. Friends Along the Road makes such places available, recommends similar places created by others, and teaches the art of Sanctuary Anywhere for those in grief.
David and Judy are currently living in Pueblo, Colorado.
David has written two books, Looking for Lilli: Living With the Death of Our Only Child and A Father’s Astral Diary: Looking for Lilli in the Otherworld. He has also written the foreword to my book Looking Beyond the Fishbowl: A New Comforting Perspective on Reincarnation (Between Heaven and Earth Book 2) (28 December 28 2017).
David enjoys writing flash fiction, hiking, gardening, treasure-hunting, body-surfing, and dreaming. He is the administrator of two dreaming forums on the Internet. It is his hope to someday write children’s books and other fiction.
The second edition of this anthology has just been published and will soon be made available in Kindle format.
