My Son . . . My Son . . .: A Guide to Healing After Death, Loss, or Suicide Paperback – January 1, 1983

After losing our daughter, we were searching for information to help us understand the intense grief her death had brought with it! This book is the most wonderful guide to understanding where you are in such grief! Have read & then reread! Outstanding! Gave copies to her adult children

This book offers solace to those in the depths of pain associated with losing a child. Should you ever have the misfortune to know that type of heartache, this book can help

A friend recommended I buy this book after I had read many similar ones but none of them really touched on how I felt. This book reached out and grabbed me right away. It's so true to how you feel, how you're dealing or not dealing. It's the perfect book to help you through all that you are going through. It's very informative and I have found it to be invaluable. Highly recommended.

The title of this book was gripping for me personally. I am a recent survivor of my son's suicide and this was the first of many books I purchased on the subject. The author speaks to me personally in that she suffered the same loss of her beloved son. That fact that she is caught completely off guard by her son's suicide (given her profession) gave me great comfort that I am not a horrible mother and that these things happen to good parents and to good children. I also, by the end of the book, got some comfort from some of her words, that her son had killed her son was a remarkable thing to be able to say and in some small way helped me to start on my path to grieving my own son so I will be able to celebrate my son's life one day.

As I write this review, I am still anxiously waiting for this book to arrive. My only son, Christopher age 17, took his own life 21 years ago. Although we have a huge family, I always felt so lost, broken and alone. I went to support groups. I read everything I could get my hands on. No book could really speak to me and my grief. When I read this many years ago, I began to heal from the hell I was experiencing. I gave the book away. I bought another copy and gave that away as well. It had to get into the hands of other suicide survivors. Just last week, my beloved 20-year old nephew took his own life in a very tragic and traumatic manner. In the early hours I began to search for this book, knowing it had been out of print. I could think of nothing else to give to my brother and his family. I am anxiously waiting for this so that I will have it available for them. Iris Bolton spoke to me. I cried through the entire book because she was speaking my feelings. I began to heal. It was the turning point for me.

Iris has written the perfect book for this stage of our healing process. One of the things I find myself looking for through this grief I'm living is someone who knows . . . it's more than understanding, it's knowing what it feels like, how much it hurts, and the energy it takes to choose to live your life and go on. Iris knows. She took me back to those awful days and helped me move through them again without having to tell my story one more time to someone I hoped was really listening. Then, she helped me move on, reminding me that the choice to do so was mine. Iris has written a remarkable guide for how to heal a broken heart after you lose a loved one to suicide. Included in the book is a card insert with a poem that acknowledges how we feel, what we're thinking and then reminds us that the choice to live the lives we still have is ours to make. It's tucked into my wallet and accessible on those days that I need that reminder. Thanks you, Iris.

I ordered and read this so I could send it to a friend who lost 2 sons to suicide. She said she read it all in one day. Couldn't put it down. It was very helpful.

This is an excellent book for anyone who has lost a child, especially to suicide. I can't say enough good things about it. This woman was, ironically, a psychologist and director of a mental health clinic. She and her husband both had very successful careers and were raising 4 sons in an upper middle class home. One of the boys killed himself in their home at the age of 20 back in 1977. She deals with every thought, feeling, and emotion you could possibly have in a situation like this.

it helped me a lot to get through the worst time in my life.

Very useful book to use with my counselling clients.

I found I could relate to some aspects of the book but not to others. I guess that is not surprising because for each individual it is a deeply different and personal experience.