Grief is a crazy-making complicated process a struggle to acknowledge the life-changing impact of loss. It affects every dimension of the self it is despairing isolating and overwhelming. It is depriving mischievous and keeps you unbalanced. Grief is so personally unique and ever changing that getting your hands around it once and for all seems impossible. Someone or something is gone and you are left broken empty and afraid. This Thing Called Grief shows that although grief and pain may be changing you now they have the potential to transform your life in a healing way. Ellis uses many real-life narratives of loss from his therapy practice to help illustrate various ways of grieving and shows how you can learn from the experience of loss and make your way towards a place of healing transitions and a renewed sense of life.

Thomas M. Ellis is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, clinical supervisor and executive director of the Center for Grief, Loss, and Transition, based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is a second-generation funeral director who lived and worked in a small-town funeral home. The author lives in Hastings, Minnesota, with his wife and two daughters.