A "grief warrior" helps others work through horrible loss

NEW MILFORD, Conn. - Amzeal -- When Marianne Bette was a young doctor, her fiancé died in a small plane accident. Years later, her husband died of lung cancer. She has spent years as a family practitioner counseling mourning patients and their families.

Bette, who describers herself as a "grief warrior," shares her experiences in Living with a Grieving Heart, a how-to book that will comfort and guide all those who have suffered terrific personal loss.

Living with a Grieving Heart, from Emerald Lake Books, was published this month. It is Bette's second book, following Living with a Dead Man, a memoir based on how she and her daughters faced her husband Thom's final year of illness.

By addressing the subject of grief and loss, Bette offers sensitive support and a matter-of-fact view: Grief can make you crazy. It can shut you down. But grief can also crack you open and change you like nothing else. You can become your best self. If you let it, grief can be the transformation of your lifetime. Living with a Grieving Heart will help readers learn how to embrace life again.

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Bette writes that "There is no finish line with grief," but Living with a Grieving Heart contains examples of how to cope and accept the reality that a life has ended.

Chapters deal with "Hurtful Things People Say," the struggle of reliving "Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda, If Only...," the many decisions the caregiver must make, and the hopeful "Moving On."

Bette says she wrote the book for all the people who believe there is no way out of the grief — an outlook she knows well.

"Patients of mine have confided that they were terrified they were losing their minds because of the trauma of a loss or depression, and they feared they would be overcome and unable to return to normal. They would whisper the word 'crazy,' and then look around as if someone would hear them and lock them up in an asylum."

Life does get better, as Bette knows.

"When trying to rebuild my life without Thom, I sometimes felt it was too hard to move on," she writes. "That was a bad attitude. I had to change my focus, stop looking back at what had been and what I no longer had, and start focusing on the future. It was his ending, and it was our ending, but it was not my ending. Now I needed a new beginning."

Living with a Grieving Heart is a guidebook to life after tragedy for readers who are at any point along the path to recovery.

For more information or to interview Bette, contact Paul Steinmetz at Paul@emeraldlakebooks.com