Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World

I have read almost all of Elizabeth Harper Neeld's books and never cease to find them insightful and just the key for sorting out and triumphing over life's many difficulties. I originally read this book to deal with personal loss but have found over the years that its lessons help to deal with all life events. The challenges to understand oneself broaden everyone's ability to finally find happiness and to thrive - not just survive. I cannot recommend it highly enough to everyone!

This was an excellent book to read after my mother's death. My parish priest recommended it and I found it VERY helpful. Several people had given me other things to read but the checklists and personal testimonies in this book helped me figure out where I was in my process. The checklists for how to get through each stage are also very helpful. I keep referring back and rereading.

In late of 1989 I had a devastating head injury. I think the popular wording now is a traumatic brain injury. I was in a coma for 12 days and in the hospital for three months. After I got out of the hospital, I had to go to outpatient speech therapy for another six months.I found out over the next two years that the person who used to have my name had died. I went back to Georgia State University to find out I had a severe speech impairment and had no short-term memory. I could not remember anything new.I had been high school valedictorian of my class. At the time of my head injury I was supervising third shift in a printed circuit board plant, as well as going to GSU almost full time. When I realized that person was dead, it was like the most important person in your life had died - and that person was me!A close friend of mine recognized the grief I was going through and urged me to go to the GSU counseling center and get some help. I did. The psychologist I saw wanted me to read On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I think it is the classic on grief. It studies the grief that terminally sick patients go through before they die. I could not read it. I was too close to dying myself when I had the head injury.I felt the grief I was experiencing would permanently drown me in sorrow and sadness. One week when I saw the psychologist, I was told I would not help myself because I would not read the grief book. I immediately went to the library and found Seven Choices. The book changed my life. It specifically addresses losing a loved one unexpectantly. That is exactly the way I felt, except the loved one I lost was the old me.The book was a tremendous help to me. It gave a blueprint of the process I would have to go through to get better. I can not say enough good words about it. Over the next ten years I got better, but it took a long time. When I think of what I went through, I think of the book. The book meant that much to me. It is a super book on one of the most devastating emotions one can feel. That emotion is grief.

I can honestly say that Seven Choices saved my life.I began to dip into it when my husband died but soon found that it was my constant companion, providing solace, comfort and hope and I read it slowly and meticulouslyas I passed through the long and painful grief process.In despair it gave me comfort; it allowed me to cry and to understand my strange and seemingly irrational needs.It taught me that I was not alone. it gave me courage to work through the long months of agony. It was always there - a friend to guide and steer me to the world beyond grief.Eight years on - I still read it from time to time. Over the years I have personally bought ove 20 copies and always have "library copies" in my home to send to friends in need.I read all the bereavement books I could find - this one was and still is the only one that gave me the will to continue life without my husband.

After losing my husband at the age of 33 I found myself with nobody in the same situation to share my feelings with. This book helped me focus the feelings I had, which were often so overwhelming and confusing. I found myself reading her quotes of other people's feelings and experiences and saying "yes - that's it - I feel that too". The book was such help to me that I buy a bunch of them from time to time and share them with friends who lose someone close to them.