Audiobooks narrated by Claire Bidwell Smith

Conscious Grieving: A Transformative Approach to Healing from Loss

An intimate guide to grieving that offers hope and healing within loss from one of the nation's top grief therapists. Conscious Grieving is a book for anyone seeking guidance and support after loss. Renowned grief therapist Claire Bidwell Smith combines her deeply personal experience of loss with her long career spent working with thousands of people to introduce a new approach to grief, one that promotes hope and even transformation. What does it mean to grieve consciously? Most of the time, when we lose someone we love, it feels like grief is just happening to us. We feel out of control, and overwhelmed. Claire reminds us that while loss is something that inevitably happens to all of us, how we choose to grieve is up to us. When we can consciously engage with our grief, rather than avoiding it, we can access profound pathways to healing. Presented in a series of thoughtful, brief vignettes that don't overwhelm the reader, Conscious Grieving offers a new framework for each stage of grief: Entering, Engaging, Surrendering, and Transforming. - Entering - staying present and taking care of ourselves as we navigate the shock and upheaval of a new loss. - Engaging - navigating that first year after a loss by staying in tune with our needs as more complicated feelings of depression, guilt or anger surface. - Surrendering - facing the changes to our identity and who we are becoming in the face of loss. - Transforming - through ritual, honor, hope, and grace, and learning to carry our grief with intention so that we can continue to grow, heal, and thrive. Grief asks a lot from us. But the ability to grieve is a birthright. We grieve throughout our lifetimes. We grieve the deaths of loved ones yes, but also moves, divorce, illness, injustice, time lost, changes in the world and healing from these losses requires that we evaluate everything we ever considered meaningful. Healing means making our lives worth the pain we endure when we lose someone we love. And transforming through grief is an opportunity afforded to all.

Claire Bidwell Smith (Author), Claire Bidwell Smith, TBD (Narrator)

Audiobook

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief: A Revolutionary Approach to Understanding and Healing the Impac

A groundbreaking book exploring the little-known yet critical connections between anxiety and grief, with practical strategies for healing, following the renowned Kübler-Ross stages model Anxiety disorders are on the rise; many people are looking for resources to help them cope with anxiety, yet most people aren't aware that unresolved grief is a primary underpinning--or that the two are related at all. In her therapy practice and in her own life, Claire Bidwell Smith discovered the connections between anxiety and grief. Now, backed by research, case studies, and interviews, Bidwell Smith breaks down the physiology of anxiety, giving readers a concrete foundation of understanding in order to help them heal the anxiety caused by loss. Taking a big step beyond Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' widely accepted five stages, Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief explains the intimate connection between death and grief and how they specifically cause anxiety--unpacking everything from our age-old fears about mortality to the bare vulnerability a loss can make us feel. With concrete tools and coping strategies for panic attacks, getting a handle on anxious thoughts, and more, Bidwell Smith bridges these two emotions in a way that is deeply empathetic and eminently practical.

Claire Bidwell Smith (Author), Claire Bidwell Smith (Narrator)

Audiobook

After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?

Claire Bidwell Smith follows The Rules of Inheritance with After This—an exploration of the afterlife that is part personal and part prescriptive, an invitation on a journey into the unknown. In her therapy practice specializing in grief, Smith confronts the quandary of what happens next. In a dynamic five-part structure, she answers the unanswerable questions—Will I ever see my parents again? Can my parents see me now, even though they are gone? Will I remain connected to my own daughters when I die?—for herself and for all of us. Chronicling our steps along the path that bridges this world and the next, she undergoes past-life regressions, sessions with mediums and psychics, and immerses herself in the ceremonies of organized religion and the rigors of scientific experimentation. After This is unique in the power of the personal that underlies the book’s message: what we believe about what happens next affects everything about how we live—and love—right now. “With wisdom and grace, Claire Bidwell Smith navigates the mysteries of grief to show us that there is great meaning and even magic to be found in exploring the unknown.”—Maria Shriver, New York Times bestselling author of What’s Heaven?

Claire Bidwell Smith (Author), Claire Bidwell Smith (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Rules of Inheritance

A resonant memoir of the ways untimely good-byes echo through the years by a writer who has considered every nuance of grief. At age fourteen, Claire Bidwell Smith-an only child- learned that both of her parents had cancer. The fear of becoming a family of one before she came of age compels Claire to make a series of fraught choices, set against the glittering backdrop of New York and Los Angeles - and the pall of regret. When the inevitable happens, and Claire is alone in the world, she is inconsolable at the revelation that suddenly she is no one's special person. It is only when Claire eventually falls in love, marries, and becomes a mother that she emerges from the fog of grief. Defying a conventional framework, this story is told using the five stages of grief as a window into Smith's experience. As in the very best memoirs, the author's powerful and exquisite writing renders personal events into universal experience.

Claire Bidwell Smith (Author), Claire Bidwell Smith (Narrator)

Audiobook

Audiobooks Narrated by Claire Bidwell Smith