Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Someone who was unfortunately in a similar situation to ours (although not exactly the same) sent us a book they said they felt helped pull them through their own difficult time.  The book is Called "Tear Soup", written by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen and illustrated by Taylor Bills.  

The story was simple.  A woman had suffered some sort of grief and goes through her "recipe" for getting through her grief.  It includes such ingredients such as a pot full of tears, some shed with others and some wailed alone.  At first it is bitter and salty and contains nothing by tears.  Soon it begins to include memories both good and bad.  It includes comforting things and comforting friends- as well as friends who get tired of and thing you should move on.  It touches on every single aspect of the grief that has permeated my life for the last 2 months.  It even discusses how different people, different genders, different ages, all make their own form for Tear Soup.  In the end, the tear soup goes away into the freezer and only come out for a sip or two before being put away again until next time it is needed.  

It even includes tips for creating your own tear soup.

In almost every single way the book hits the nail on the head.  It could not be more accurate to the way I have been feeling and reacting if it were written as a biography of my last 2 months.  

I actually find the book incredibly comforting.  The fact that it described what I have been going through to a "T" makes me feel like what I am dealing with is and how I am reacting is totally normal.  I am not going to go so far as to say that it makes me feel any better, but it does go a long way towards making me feel ok about where I am and where I am going.

Throughout the last 2 months we have been sent a number of books, some more helpful than others.  There was a fantastic one directed at Channah about making sense of the fact that the baby she was dreaming about was not coming home.  There was one written by a Rabbi which is a first hand account of someone having gone through the loss and confronts the issues finding a way to mourn a still born within a halachick framework.  There was an excellent one on dealing with the practicalities and emotional aspects of being a woman, having gone through pregnancy an delivery without the "prize" at the end.  Each of the books have been excellent in their own way.

But tear soup is not designed to deal with specifically a still birth.  It is designed to deal with any sort of grief and I find it truly interesting that grief can be so similar no matter what the cause.  I don't know what the authors went through that brought them to write this book, but I hope they know that by learning to deal with their own grief, they have helped many others to deal with their own.

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