Grief expert Joanne Cacciatore (author of the bestselling Bearing the Unbearable) provides support and guidance, as writing prompts, for anyone experiencing traumatic loss and grief.

BEARING THE UNBEARABLE
A Guided Journal For Grieving
by Joanne Cacciatore
Wisdom Publications, April 2024

From the bestselling author of Bearing the Unbearable and Grieving Is Loving, here are 52 writing prompts for exploring grief and journaling about those whom we’ve lost. Writing about those we’ve lost can be part of a contemplative practice, alone or with therapists, family, friends, or with a grief support group. However you use this journal and its writing prompts, please take the time to write from the heart, really be with each prompt, dive deeply—and do so with a spirit of love and compassion for all beings, including yourself.

Dr. Joanne Cacciatore has a fourfold relationship with bereavement. She is herself a bereaved mother: her newborn daughter died on July 27, 1994, and that single tragic moment catapulted her unwillingly onto the reluctant path of traumatic grief. For more than two decades, she’s devoted herself to direct practice with grief, helping traumatically bereaved people on six continents. She’s also been researching and writing about grief for more than a decade in her role as associate professor at Arizona State University and director of the Graduate Certificate in Trauma and Bereavement program there. And, in addition, she’s the founder of an international nongovernmental organization, the MISS Foundation, dedicated to providing multiple forms of support to families experiencing the death of a child at any age and from any cause, and since 1996 has directed the foundation’s family services and clinical education programs.

Cacciatore is an ordained Zen priest, affiliated with Zen Garland and its child bereavement center outside of New York City. She is an acclaimed public speaker and provides expert consulting and witness services in the area of traumatic loss. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as The Lancet, Social Work and Healthcare, and Death Studies, among others. She received her PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in psychology from Arizona State University. Her work has been featured in major media sources such as People and Newsweek magazines, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, CNN, National Public Radio, and the Los Angeles Times. She has been the recipient of many regional and national awards for her empathic work and service to people suffering traumatic grief. She travels quite often but spends most of her time in Sedona, Arizona, with her family and three rescue dogs.