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Grief's Compass - by Patricia McKernon Runkle (Paperback)

Grief's Compass - by  Patricia McKernon Runkle (Paperback) - 1 of 1
$11.99 sale price when purchased online
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About this item

Highlights

  • "The Wilderness is new--to you.
  • Author(s): Patricia McKernon Runkle
  • 140 Pages
  • Family + Relationships, Death, Grief, Bereavement

Description



About the Book



"The Wilderness is new-to you. Master, let me lead you." Emily Dickinson wrote these words to her mentor shortly after his wife died, inviting him to trust her intimate knowledge of grief's landscape. In Grief's Compass, Patricia McKernon Runkle takes Dickinson for her guide after the devastating loss of her brother.



Book Synopsis



"The Wilderness is new--to you. Master, let me lead you."

Emily Dickinson wrote these words to her mentor shortly after his wife died, inviting him to trust her intimate knowledge of grief's landscape. In Grief's Compass, Patricia McKernon Runkle takes Dickinson for her guide after the devastating loss of her brother. As she charts a path through the holy madness of grief and the grace of healing, she finds no stages. Instead, she finds points on a compass and lines from Dickinson that illuminate them. Gently suggesting that you can take your time healing, she becomes your patient companion.

"The 'hand you stretch me in the Dark, ' I put mine in," Dickinson wrote. Here is Patricia's hand, reaching for yours.

2017 Nautilus Book Award - Silver Medal, Lyrical Prose
2018 Rubery Book Award - Short List, Nonfiction



Review Quotes




At times of great loss, it is hard to find a true companion, one who will understand your deep sorrow and not try to get you to move on. Patricia McKernon Runkle is that worthy companion. While recounting in searing detail her response to the loss of her brother, she shines the light of her attention on the poems of Emily Dickinson, whom she chooses as her own fierce companion, and they bloom for us as never before. Most powerful of all, she shares her own diamond-like work--finely wrought prose interwoven with her own spare, honest, kind, and deeply wise poetry. In Grief's Compass, she creates a space in which readers can visit their own grieving and explore the way stations she has found. This book is a sanctuary, a refuge. There is medicine in these pages.

-- Susan Deborah (Sam) King
Poet, teacher, retreat leader, consultant

Patricia McKernon Runkle's unfailing devotion to the ache of truth taps the universality of loss in lines like this--"Where was the Gardener in his life, at his death?" And this--"Where does the eye want to look?" And then--"Do parts of the self, like tendrils, latch on to truths until finally the whole self heaves into a new center?" Poetry by Emily Dickinson laces through Runkle's story without distracting from her own stunning voice. Slim and spare, Grief's Compass is a treasure to hold close.

-- Julie Maloney
Founder/Director
Women Reading Aloud

Grief's Compass asks us to step into the unknown and be made new. In this beautiful story, Runkle helps us feel the struggle between sorrow and re-emergence as she delicately searches for wholeness in the midst of grief. Along the way, she reminds us to help children navigate the chaos that grief creates and the self-discovery that awaits on the horizon.

-- Joseph M. Primo, M.Div.
Chief Executive Officer, Good Grief, Inc.
Children's Grief Support Centers

This story has the feel of a physical touch, of one griever reaching out to another with a clear message: you are not alone. Patricia offers grievers tangible hope--not merely a wish that things will get better--and meaningful points on a compass to navigate and gradually return to normalcy, comfort, and inner peace.

-- Judith A. Pedersen, MSW
Founder and Executive Director
Hearts of Hope Foundation, Inc.

Patricia McKernon Runkle's Grief's Compass is a luminous journey through the landscape of grief. Patricia's vivid collage--of memoir, journal, and poetry--dances with Emily Dickinson, who becomes a fearless muse helping Patricia navigate the tragic death of her brother. Patricia does not reduce grief to a neat Kübler-Ross process, nor does she offer advice. She embraces, as Emily did, the abyss: "Before me was a challenge: to give up wanting to know. Beyond that challenge was another: to give up assuming that I could know." So intimate and honest is this work, so vivid and insightful the writing, that, as a reader, you will feel that Patricia's voice is your voice; her pain, yours; her triumphs, yours. Grief's Compass proves what Dickinson wrote: "'Nothing' is the force that renovates the world." More than being a stellar addition to the treasury of works about Dickinson, this book is "a hand reaching for yours."

-- Susanna Rich, Ph.D.
Poet and Distinguished Professor
Kean University
Union, New Jersey


Dimensions (Overall): 9.0 Inches (H) x 6.0 Inches (W) x .3 Inches (D)
Weight: .43 Pounds
Suggested Age: 22 Years and Up
Number of Pages: 140
Genre: Family + Relationships
Sub-Genre: Death, Grief, Bereavement
Publisher: Apprentice House
Format: Paperback
Author: Patricia McKernon Runkle
Language: English
Street Date: October 1, 2017
TCIN: 88736060
UPC: 9781627201605
Item Number (DPCI): 247-48-8650
Origin: Made in the USA or Imported
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Shipping details

Estimated ship dimensions: 0.3 inches length x 6 inches width x 9 inches height
Estimated ship weight: 0.43 pounds
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