title: The Disenfranchised: Stories of Life and Grief When an Ex-Spouse Dies (Death, Value and Meaning Series)
author: Peggy Sapphire
description: It s been worth the wait for such a comprehensive anthology of the bereavement stories of ex-spouses. Some relationships were happy, some less so. The relationships ranged from decades to just a few years, and we can learn much from the honesty of the experiences each writer shares with us. An excellent resource for both professionals and lay readers. --Rose Cooper, BTheol, MHSc, Grief Support Services, Melbourne, Australia<br /><br />Truth,' writes Peggy Sapphire, is how we remember, and what we bring to memory. In these pages, surviving ex-spouses speak from the heart of their emotional truth about a form of bereavement whose complexity is compounded by its lack of social sanction. Individually, the accounts lay bare in memorable poetry and prose the good, the bad, and the ugly of relationships lost twice once to divorce, and then to death and the nuanced empathic terrain into which family, friends, and counselors are invited to step in their aftermath. Collectively, the stories give new meaning to the term disenfranchised grief, encouraging a deeper reading of its implications, whether encountered between the covers of this remarkable volume or within the walls of our therapeutic practices. --Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD, Editor, Techniques of Grief Therapy: Creative Practices for Counseling the Bereaved<br /><br />From the Introduction: Bereaved readers then taught me one of the great values of that concept. As one reader wrote, It gave my grief a name. The fact that someone addressed these types of losses eased the isolation and the stigma. THE DISENFRANCHISED: Stories of Life and Grief When An Ex-Spouse Dies does that in a very powerful and personal way. The narratives and poetry reaffirm the many types of relationships that exist after a death, and myriad ways that ex-spouses mourn the demise of an erstwhile and failed partner. This alone is validating reminding surviving ex-spouses that others have experienced this grief as well. These stories offer more, though, than simple validation. They offer tools, strategies to cope with the loss. In doing so, they offer even another gift: hope. These stories reaffirm not only the complexity of human relationships but also the resiliency of the human spirit to surmount even the most complex and difficult losses. --Kenneth J. Doka, PhD, Professor of Gerontology, College of New Rochelle, NY, Senior Consultant, Hospice Foundation of America
zlib_text: Copyright © 2006 by Alloy Entertainment
  
  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of  
  1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or  
  transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or  
  retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
  
  Little, Brown and Company
  
  Poppy
  
  Hachette Book Group, USA
  
  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
  
  Visit our Web site at
  [_www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com_](http://www.HachetteBookGroupUsa.com).
  
  First eBook Edition: October 2006
  
  ISBN: 978-0-316-04207-9
  
  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real  
  persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
  
  >  **Contents**
  
  >  ** _Dedication_**
  
  >  ** _s and b peek into the fun-house mirror_**
  
  >  ** _n knows a desperate housewife when he sees one_**
  
  >  ** _twisted minds think alike oh, the places you’ll go!_**
  
  >  ** _oh, the places you’ll go!_**
  
  >  ** _b & v brea