MSI Press Blog

From the site: Julie Potter is a certified social worker who has experience in home care, hospice, nursing homes and hospitals. For 20 years, she turned her expertise toward coordinating a spousal bereavement program, as well as a hospital-based wellness program for people 60 and over. She has recently released the book “Harnessing the Power of Grief”. In this podcast we talk about being a social worker, burnout in the field, starting a spousal bereavement program, the death of her parents, her book, and grief dreams of her parents. Click HERE to listen to the podcast. For more posts about Julie and her book, Harnessing the Power of Grief , click HERE .  

  MSI Press books have, historically, won many awards from a wide range of competitions. This is the first in a series of sharing the various awards that our books have earned. The first category is Best Indie Book Award. The following MSI Press books have been Best Indie Book Award Winners to date: A Theology for the Rest of Us (Arthur Yavelberg).  If God exists and is good, why is there evil? Avoiding such questions underlies the spiritual emptiness and anxiety in today's world. A Theology for the Rest of Us explores how to approach the divine through Eastern and Western religious traditions without dogma, challenging readers to "be you lamps unto yourselves."  This book also won the Literary Titan Silver Award. Read more about this book and its author  HERE . Andrew's Awesome Adventures with His ADHD Brai n (Kristin Wilcox & Andrew Wilcox).  T his book provides unique insights into ADHD behaviors and suggests highly pragmatic and successfully implemented stra

  Harnessing the Power of Grief is an enlightening book to help anyone process grief from numerous kinds of losses. It acknowledges that we all have a need for different ways to grieve, there’s no one way for everyone, and that many factors come into play. It is practical and spiritual, but not religious.   With that said, this book could be helpful to people of all faiths or none. This book is an “easy read” because it is so well written, and the chapters are short. I enjoyed Chapter 16,   which was helpful to me at a particular time in my life. I am looking forward to picking this book up again,   when other situations may arise that need my attention.          -Jackie Durham, Lay Chaplain For more information and commentary about Harnessing the Power of Grief and its author, click HERE .

  I have written a bit about the process of pets dying before, along with the ways in which vets can be (or not) helpful. In that post, I shared a book by Barbara Karnes on understanding the pet-dying process, which I had found very helpful and which would have provided me with a fair amount of relief and guidance had I known about while Murjan was still alive. It explained much about his dying process and death that was comforting in retrospect. You can read that post HERE . In this post, I want to share the emotional aspects not only of the dying itself but also of the role of the support community (which should be supportive but in our case was not so, at least not to the extent that we needed and that could have been). As a result, my experience with Murjan's dying days were traumatic--more traumatic than they should have been because of lack of support from the veterinary hospital that should have been my source of support.  As I explained in the earlier post, Murjan had been

SADNESS, THE PAIN OF LIVING  Because we live in bodies which constantly change and interact with the world, we have feelings. We naturally have emotional reactions to what happens to us. Unpleasant experiences repulse us, moving us to withdraw to protect ourselves. Pleasant experiences energize us to seek more of what we desire. In our ever-changing world, we naturally feel joy as new life unfolds and sadness as the old and familiar passes away. Our sadness and sorrow are natural reactions that serve survival purposes. In fact, they are signs of intelligence. Animals live by their instincts, only in the present moment. Because we are conscious, we humans are aware of the passage of time, alert to loss and gain. We are aware of changes around us and their consequences on our wellbeing, and so we make adjustments. Hardwired into our brains is a built-in threat protection and safety-seeking system. In the experience of loss, sadness prepares us to let go of the past and prepare for

  from Julia Aziz -- If you're having a hard time right now, you are most definitely not alone (though in observing all the hoopla, you certainly may feel that way!). December can be lovely when it involves slow time, good food, and heartfelt connection with people you love. It can also be stressful and heavy with illness, loneliness, and grief. In lightness and dark, this time of year brings up all the feels. I'm going to keep this one short, as I know your inbox is probably overfull. But here are some resources to use, again or for the first time, when you need a little extra support: When you're not sure how you or other people are changing   When you're misunderstood   When you're over-giving and doing too much Releasing negative emotions and what it means to surrender  (audio) On grief and loss  (audio- you can skip the first 10-15 minute intro to my counseling practice--after that, we dive into the topic) The challenge of being a helping professional and also

  (picture from 9/11 Tribute Museum) In honor of 9/11 and all the sorrow it has engendered and sorrowful memories it raises each year at this time, we have placed Harnessing the Power of Grief on half-price sale (closest we can come to half-mast) for today and throughout the weekend in our webstore . May you find in this powerful book thoughts, suggestions, and support that help you turn sad memories into positive energy. For more posts on Harnessing the Power of Grief , click HERE .

  Last Sunday, 3-20-2020, would have been the 52d anniversary for Carl and me had he not died in August. I make this post here and not Cancer Diary, although Carl died from Cancer, because Carl was an important member of the MSI Press staff from its inception in 2003 until the month before he died. He was still working on typesetting tasks on July 23, 2021 when he fell and was admitted to Stanford, then sent home on a very short 10-day hospice.  I am also including it here, on Caturday, because our cats were a very important part of Carl's life. Particularly Intrepid, who lived up to his name yet snuggled with Carl every night and, like Carl, died of cancer three years ago, resulting in a book named after him, and Murjan, shown here, who never know whether he was dog or human but certainly did not consider himself a cat, could be found at Carl's elbow every day, especially at mealtimes. He was a very polite cat and would wait his turn for food, and one could have a fairly long

  Just released -- the hard cover version of the powerful Harnessing the Power of Grief  by Julie Potter. Other versions of this book include  paperback  and  Kindle . For more posts about  Harnessing the Power of Grief , including excerpts, click  HERE . For more posts about Julie Potter, click  HERE .

  (Next Quest Podcast) MSI Press author Julia Aziz was recently interviewed on Next Quest Podcast on the topic of Loss and Grief. Click HERE to listen to the podcast. To see other posts by and about Julia and her book, click HERE . To see podcast interviews of other MSI Press authors, click HERE . To see more posts on grief and loss, click HERE .

  Excerpt from Widow: A Survival Guide for the First Year --  CHAPTER ONE Being Alone When I was in my mid-20s, I worked at Cosmopolitan Magazine as an Assistant Editor. My tenure there was short (barely a year), but because my editor liked me I was able to secure freelance assignments in later years. Writing for Cosmo , I learned that almost any problem can be remedied with concentrated self-nurturing and a few well thought-out lists. And so, throughout the years, I was able to handle two divorces, three marriages, many job changes and the untimely deaths of both my parents (although this last occurrence required the help of a very nice therapist). When Jack, my beloved husband of 16 years, died at the age of 71, I was devastated. There were days in those first months when I really didn’t see what I had to live for. Other times, I believed that I too would soon leave this earth, and so I scampered around trying to get my affairs in order. If you are a recent widow, you’re pro

  excerpt from Damascus amid the War (M. Imady) --              Commentary   In Muna Imady’s writing we witness a kind of devolution from poetry that was filled with vivid imagery and striking metaphors to that which was made to carry words of the brutality of war. Stripped of Muna’s imaginative, powerful, evocative language, her poetry becomes savagely direct, honest to the point of shocking readers with its transformation.   The world of Muna’s early poetry has become broken, brutalized, burned, and bombed. With it, Muna’s heart is broken; her imagination has been filled with what is dark and laden with grief. The simplicity of most of the war poems, when compared with those of her pre-war output give readers a stark reminder of the effects of war in ways that the news cannot. War breaks people and it transforms artistry into something it was never meant to be, painting a picture in words of the way the human spirit can be crushed, the way poetry becomes reportage. The poetry that h