The Living Book is a powerful and wise comfort to the grieving, says CAROLE ANN RICE
GRIEF like love is a personal and many faceted thing. Every loss and love is experienced in a unique way and as such we can never prepare for the texture and depth of the feelings that follow.
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A friend, a pet, an elderly distant relative, a colleague, neighbour, partner, parent or family member, each has its own special place and story in our life and hearts.
The loss, however of a child, is without doubt one of the hardest of life's burdens to bear. How we begin to overcome such an overwhelming emotional trauma is impossible to imagine unless you have had the deep misfortune to have experienced it.
Penny Waite, life coach, healer and author endured the loss of her son Barney, who committed suicide some years ago at the age of 21.
What followed was a maelstrom of guilt, confusion, blame and despair along with depthless sadness and grief.
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PENNY WAITE
I want this book to lift your spirit the minute you pick it up so you feel measurably different just by holding it.
Yet amid this fog of pain Penny saw a clearing in which lay a new understanding which shone a light through the dark; a place of comfort and a releasing of judgment and blame.
She says it took her just three days of writing in the flow to pen The Living Book - Surrender To Grace, which is like an angelic arm around the shoulder for the hurt and the bereaved.
"I want this book to lift your spirit the minute you pick it up so you feel measurably different just by holding it," she says.
"A lightness comes over you that you believe in. Dreams can come true here. It's not about exercises or deep self-analysis."
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This is a magic book and will change your life. This book heals. It releases anger gently. It calms and imbues with kindness.
Here, within its covers, is company for the lonely, kindness for the hurt. It holds a future for the broken hearted, it brings satisfaction for the unfulfilled, it gives strength in times of need, it moves to tears and releases souls from indecision - all this from being in its presence.
It is a book for the lonely lover of life. A blessedly and knowingly slim volume ("Who needs to read a weighty tome in times of crisis?" asks Penny).
The Living Book is a compendium of wisdom to help you through the deepest trauma, focusing on the energies of surrender, acceptance, permission, choice, gratitude, forgiveness and grace.
Its beauty is its brevity and it is wisdom and healing truth hard-won alchemised into easily absorbable chunks that is its power to pacify and provide peace.
Just what you need when dark clouds hover as they do for all of us at one time or another.
The Living Book provides the ray of blinding hope that there are gifts in the gloom and new beginnings waiting for us always and ever more.
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There ain't nothing like this Dame
NOT everyone's cup of Darjeeling, Dame Vivienne Westwood, punk, icon and activist, is doing the rounds on the big screen in a new documentary about her life.
A slight, spacey and curmudgeonly figure, she sounds like an awkward Alan Bennett but all wrapped up in tartan tucks and ruffles.
Despite her status as a game-changer in the world of fashion, she is a rock floating on a cloud of tulle while those fuss and fight around her. She is a stalwart of style and an anchor of élan while all around is chaos.
I loved the scene where she exits her chic Mayfair shop and hops on board her pushbike in platforms and her piquant clothing, dodging juggernauts and London taxis - a frail 76-year-old showing us how to age shamelessly, fearlessly and on our own terms.
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Be the victor not the victim
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BOREDOM is often overlooked as a blip. What it really means is a disconnect, a lack of interest or engagement with anything. In order to be happy we have to have meaning and a sense of purpose.
If you wish to go from ennui to energy try this: do something that utilises your best skills to the max and that can help someone and make a difference.
Commit 100 per cent to the task and share it with people you know and trust without ego.
Find positive meaning in past suffering. Even if it was painful and wounding, was there something that you learned and enabled change?
Actively decide to be the victor not the victim of your life and circumstances.
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Less 'window weather' would be nice
I want this book to lift your spirit the minute you pick it up so you feel measurably different just by holding it.
IT WAS with a collective sigh of relief that the UK exhaled after the grey skies cleared and the sun came out last week.
It makes you realise what a grey cloud we have been living under for months.
Icelanders have a great word - gluggadevur - "window-weather" that looks so inviting from the window but proves to be far from it outside. We know this concept so well.
Here's hoping for weather that looks good from the window but feels even better out.