You Can Get There from Here: Journaling Through the Grief, a Guide for Teens and Young Adults

When death visits any family, it often meets young people and affects them just as deeply as it does the adults. But in our society, we adults tend to shield our youngsters by distancing or removing them from the grieving process, thus creating for them a most difficult recovery situation in which they simply do not have the resources they need to clear their sorrow and move ahead with their lives. Written by Leah Bailey Hawley, a career nurse who has spent more than 35 years in critical care units and other end-of-life environments and is fully trained to counsel and consult in situations involving death and dying, her book is a guide for teens and young adults that helps to resolve the dilemma or youthful grief. It has been specially written for those young people who are often “left out.” It looks directly at the many ways in which grief may be processed and successfully handled by younger sufferers. “Young people need real answers to their questions about death,” says Leah. “When they are not in close touch with their own thoughts and feelings, they are adversely affected from day to day, and the course of grief resolution is lengthened considerably, sometimes never resolved at all. I have discovered, though, that it is possible to reach out to these needy young people, to change their perceptions, expectations and uncertainties, and to create an environment that lets them express their pain and hurt in a safe and secure way, permits them to observe their innermost selves through journaling and elementary art therapy, and thereby brings their grief to satisfactory closure." "You Can Get There From Here" is a one-year program for accomplishing this necessary but often overlooked task.