The Sun Still Rises: Surviving and Thriving After Grief and Loss

I simply wanted to share my story so that you can know my view, my perspective, and what my perspective is based on. This is the real story of what I lived.

I am not a doctor or psychologist or an expert in any way relating to death and grief. I am, however, a simple man who has experienced the grief of losing a wife and the grief of losing a child. So while there are many books out there written by psychological experts and grief researchers I am not one of them. I do have loads of life experience to share and it is all real. I not only survived but, yes—I thrived.

I‘m sorry but I don't believe there are six magic steps or stages of grief. I don't believe there are any tips, tools, and techniques that work for everyone. There is no formula. Every person grieves differently, and I can’t say what will work for you. I don’t know if the things I did were “right”, but they helped me heal and worked for me. I wrote this book for some very specific and heartfelt reasons:

I want to help. I want to help people through the most painful agonizing and soul searing difficult times in their life and help them heal and move forward. As a professional speaker and author I have always specialized in motivation, and my personal and professional mission is to make a positive difference in people's lives. If you asked me before this all happened, I honestly never thought that I would make a positive difference in a grieving life, but if I can help someone or lots of people who are hurting, I have then served my purpose. It’s always a great feeling to give back to others.

I was told and encouraged to. I know that one sounds a little odd but many friends, relatives, and associates strongly suggested that I write a book about grief—why? For some reason, they were impressed about how I handled my grief, how quickly I seemed to recover and heal. They also noticed how I took, at times, a very different and unique approach to grieving. I had not thought of writing a book about grief, but so many people told me I should, I decided there might be something to it. After discussing it with my family and others and thinking about it for a while, I decided it was a good idea.

Experts are very wrong. I have noticed that experts who speak and write about grief often speak about it from a standpoint of academic study, or from research or interviews, but sometimes I think this is unfair because they have not experienced it personally. I have experienced it personally, and believe me, I wish I hadn't. I have lived it, and I will tell you what they got wrong.

Society is often wrong. I see people in society giving advice to people grieving, but far too often they have no real practical basis for giving this advice. They don’t know what they are talking about. They give horrible advice and say the wrong things. Maybe I'm a little bit of a rebel but I decided to ignore many of society's customs as it relates to grief, and did things a bit differently. So part of my mission in this book is to give someone who's grieving permission to handle grief in their own way and not worry about society’s “rules.”

Life is short. If life is short, (and I know it more than some people) then we should not be spending our time sitting in an empty room staring at the walls being sad. Please don't misunderstand what I'm saying—I'm not saying you should not grieve the loss of loved one. You always will. But what I have learned is you should mourn, but life is too short to sit around for too long grieving. My goal in this book is to help a person suffering through a loss to shorten the amount of time of misery and unhappiness so the person can move forward in a healthy way.

I want to give people hope. My Uncle Scott Camp, who is a pastor in California, spoke with me by phone only a few weeks after my wife passed away. His advice was some of the best because it was infused with a message of hope. He told me that I was going to be OK, that I was going to have a new life, that everything would work out, and that I was strong. I just needed to hear that from someone rather than the traditional doom and gloom. My hope is that this book can be a light of hope for you.

I want to shatter myths. For some reason there is a lot of strange, bizarre, and often misplaced advice surrounding how people grieve and what people should or shouldn’t do when grieving. I would like to shatter many of the myths to give grieving people comfort in knowing the truth about these misunderstandings. While you are grieving these myths can be very disturbing and sound like they're true. I'm here to say that many things people say are not true and in fact are detrimental for the person who's grieving. So be very careful who and what you listen to.

My new book The Sun Still Rises: Surviving and Thriving After Grief and Loss is available in Amazon and at other fine book sellers.

http://www.amazon.com/Sun-Still-Rises-Surviving-Thriving-ebook/dp/B00M6G0YBG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412631008&sr=1-1&keywords=the+sun+still+rises+by+shawn+doyle