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FREE Now through December 31!
Your friend will feel seen—you’ll feel great!
Appropriate for someone suffering any type of loss
—death, divorce, illness, bankruptcy—
Loss is loss.
Coming in the new year!
A full line of Condolence Cards will be available for sale soon!
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CONDOLENCES POCKET GUIDE
What to Say and Not to Say to Grievers
Grievers live in a demanding world, on the other side of a seemingly uncrossable canyon where their previous life with us, their friends and family, has always been. If we’re to help a grieving friend, we must learn how to say Be a Bridge style condolences that span the gap between our griever and us.
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Learning to say helpful condolences is simple once we understand why most popular condolences tend to be of the burn-the-bridge variety instead. So, why do we say them?
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Good question.
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This and other questions are answered in Condolences Pocket Guide, along with suggestions for how to say helpful condolences, and how not to say the hurtful ones.
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In short, learn how to Be a Bridge to your griever.
What a gift for friends and family of grievers, to have a guide for appropriate responses to bereavement. This book provides simple and helpful phrases to respond to sorrow with kindness, love and respect. Condolences Pocket Guide transcends the topic of grief, and provides the basic framework for communication and human connection.
—Dr. Stefani Madison, Director of Palliative Care,
Stephenson Cancer Center, Univ. of Oklahoma College of Medicine
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As someone who has worked in the funeral industry for over 48 years, the Condolences Pocket Guide is the most useful and helpful guide that I have come across in my career. Anyone that is assisting those that are grieving, would greatly benefit from having this very informative booklet.
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—Patrick M. Gormley, California Licensed Funeral Director,
Past Pres. Sacramento Funeral Directors Association
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Condolences Pocket Guide is a great little book that all people should read before talking to someone who has suffered a loss. It is so difficult to know what to say during these terrible moments, but Dana Lacy Amarisa has distilled the essence of saying helpful condolences into a useful guide.
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—Dr. Joan Fisher, Medical Director,
George Mark Children’s House, Pediatric Palliative Care
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As one who has worked in end-of-life care for 30 years—in a children’s cancer ward, and as a bereavement counselor for Hospice—rarely have I come upon such a gem of a book as Condolences Pocket Guide. It provides a fresh, new way of understanding the important topic of how to help a friend through grief and loss.
–Christine Welch, MTS
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Although many of us have experienced pain in one way or another, we may not know which words of consolation may come off as rash. Reading Dana Amarisa’s book has given me guidance on the appropriate words to use during someone’s grieving process. Excellent work for such a difficult time.
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—Mayte Prida, TV and Radio host of “Arriba con Mayte”
author of 9 motivational books, mayteprida.com
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I read your book. First of all you are really a great writer and it was so so helpful to me.
Thank you so much.
—Ruth Stern, Psychologist
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With Condolences Pocket Guide, author Dana Lacy Amarisa solves the most common problem
separating us from each other in times of sorrow, when we need each other most: “I just don’t know what to say.” This book is a gift to humankind.
- Fran Moreland Johns, author of “Dying Unafraid”
franjohns.medium.com/what-to-say-to-someone...
Dana Lacy Amarisa’s book is a guide that anyone can benefit from. Reading the list of “thumbs down” statements will immediately summon up memories of either saying or hearing those very words, that are meant with the best of intentions, but fall completely flat for the griever. Just that learning alone is a gift of compassion in the world.
- Fran Shelley Pearce, Psychotherapist, Spiritual Counselor,
“Write a book review here”
Coming in 2023!
The companion book to Condolences Pocket Guide is coming to book stores in 2022!
It includes these must-read pointers:
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Specific feedback from grievers on many common condolences that hurt, that help, and why​​​​
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Stories written just days and weeks after losing first her daughter, then her father, and then her son, that show the darkly humorous situations that many condolences cause.
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Quotes from experts in the field
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How to change the push-pull dance between grievers and their support people (you!)
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What to say and do at first, later on, and when you see the griever in public.
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