Each person’s grief experience is as unique as their fingerprint.
Christine Pedley knows all about grief. She was a grief counsellor, she worked in palliative care, and she is a death doula, but when her son died by suicide all of her professional experience counted for nothing. The pain she felt was harrowing.
In this book, “Facing the Unfathomable,” Christine shares her journey with grief in the years that followed the death of her son. She shares what helped her to find a glimmer of hope on her blackest days, and how the padlock of love that she built with her family sustains her to this day. She offers helpful advice for those whose children have died, or those looking to support a bereaved person.
You will read about:
- The agony of grief following the death of a child
- Helpful ideas on being a compassionate listener
- Grief theories and whether they match up to lived experience
- The power of language, specifically around suicide
- How to find glimmers of hope when all seems lost.
Grief is a normal response when someone we love dies. Even though it can feel like a monster, grief simply ‘is’. Entering into a loving relationship with grief enables a person to keep living a meaningful life. Christine’s grief experience comes with a ray of hope for those who need it most. It is a must read for all bereaved parents.
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As a witness to just a fragment of the grief Christine has experienced after Jono died, reading this insightful recount of her depths of pain, sorrow, and the everyday journey she has and continues to walk is so heartfelt and clarifying.
This book may provide a lifeline in your tumultuous sea of sorrow. It may serve as a guiding light for you as a parent grappling with unimaginable death of your child. It may provide a sense of knowing and resilience or it may simply provide a valuable tool to assist you in knowing the right thing to say.
This book intertwines Christine’s wisdom from various disciplines, incorporating psychological insights and practical advice, creating a tapestry of understanding that speaks directly from the heart.
In the midst of sorrow, Christine’s book emerges as a beacon of solace, reminding us of the power of love, that is like a gentle embrace, assuring us that our emotions are valid and that support surrounds us, even in the darkest of times
Thank you Christine for the courage to share your story with such honesty, emotion and insight. A beautifully written, life impacting book. Rose
I have been privileged to see this book evolve from a fragile idea, to a torrential outpouring of emotion and insight, and into this beautiful tapestry. It tells a very personal story, but Christine invites the reader to consider it together with their own experiences, hoping that perhaps in that mix there might be found a little more light in one of the darkest chasms of human suffering. Peter
With its exquisite honesty, transparency and nuance, Christine Pedley’s book Facing the Unfathomable: Surviving your child’s suicide tells the story of love, loss and how we bear the unbearable. For most people, love is the most profound source of pleasure in our lives, while the loss of those we love is the deepest source of pain. Love and loss are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without risking the other.
Every story of grief is, at its core, a love story. Just as every love story is a potential grief story. If not, at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes for both. Facing the unfathomable is a love letter from a mother to a son. The author writes with honesty and simplicity about her relationship with her beloved son Jono.
We live in a culture obsessed with getting over grief, returning to normal, and moving on – these are misrepresentations of what it means to love someone who has died. People are attracted to the seductive simplicity of closure and resolution, but this isn’t how grief works. The process of grieving can feel wild, chaotic and unpredictable. This book tells that story.
There is a hard-won tragic wisdom that comes from loss and Chris shares her insights with clarity. She takes our hand and walks us through her complex story of loving, losing and her continuing process of reconstructing a world of meaning following the death of her son.
Grief is distinctive, personal and complex and, although not a toolkit for managing grief, Facing the Unfathomable, contains much wisdom. It examines the power of language, the management of anniversaries, how people engage with loss in myriad ways, and how death by suicide can complicate our journey through loss.
I hope that this book will be read widely – by those seeking a window into the intense experience of parental loss as well as those in the helping professions who want to have a deeper insight into the world of grieving people. This insightful book reminds us that for most of us, the fact that one day we shall lose the ones we love, and they us, draws us close to them but also brings to awareness our collective mortality. Christopher Hall
I was deeply touched by this story, by the courage of the author in her sharing, and her extraordinary ability to channel her pain into providing a handbook of help for us all, from the depths of a mother’s worst grief.
Both beautiful and educational. I for one will be changing my language around death because of her sincere words. A beautiful and exceptional book that all should read. Lynne
If you have experienced the death of someone close, this book will break your heart and also give you glimmers of hope.