The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement
Bob Rich, Ph.D.
Loving Healing Press, 2025
ISBN: 979-8-89656-053-1 (eBook)
Ebook, 102 ppg.
Before I started reading The Hole in Your Life by Bob rich, Ph.D., I wasn’t sure what the hole in the title meant. I knew the book discussed grief and bereavement because of the subtitle, but what was this “hole” the title spoke of?
As I read the book, I found out, and the use of a hole to represent grief makes perfect sense.
For, you see, the hole represents the grief we must try to adjust to in our lives when someone we care about passes away. To call grief a “hole” is accurate, because that grief is like a gaping absence of someone who used to be there, but they are no longer there. The big thing about grieving the loss of a loved one is the fact that they are GONE – in the physical sense. We are no longer able to live life with them still here in a body.
Plus, the symbolism of a hole representing grief is accurate in that a person can fall into a hole, sometimes completely by accident, just as their life can come to an end and they are no longer there.
I had to marvel over the timing that I was asked to review this book. It came at a time when I was dealing with grief. I had recently lost my older brother, and the grief I was feeling was a real struggle. Bob’s former profession was a psychotherapist that included grief counseling, and while he was not able to counsel me while I was dealing with my grief over losing my brother, he was there in the form of his book, offering guidance and insight.
And reading this book while I was struggling with my own grief helped me a lot. Seriously.
Bob’s latest nonfiction book offers not just his professional wisdom about grief, loss and learning to adjust to life after losing someone we love, but it also shares stories from some of his clients who were also struggling with their grief.
This quote on page 21 really stood out for me: “The choice is to accept death as a part of life.” Yes, we all know that we will all die someday. It’s just that death usually happens when we least expect it (like, if someone perishes in an accident) or no matter what we try to do to prevent it from happening (as with the case of my brother; it just got to a point where the doctors were unable to do anything more for him). But as hard as it is to understand that death is a natural part of life, it’s harder to cope with the loss. Grief can hit people very hard. This happened for some of Bob’s clients, and reading about how he helped them was encouraging. It made me think that no matter how bad grief can get, there is hope that we can learn how to live with it.
In one part of the book, Bob writes:
“My mother died in 2000, and I wrote a book about her life.
Anikó: The stranger who loved me is the hardest book I have ever written—and the one that won the most awards. It is written from the heart. Writing that book put my creativity to use in processing my grief.” (page 27)
I could so relate to this. I, too, wrote a book while I was grieving the loss of my mother. However, mine was not a book about my mother’s life, but a children’s book about a little girl who finds comfort from her grief over losing her mother from a wolf. I was inspired to write this story because I found that, while I was mourning the loss of my mother, I found comfort in the companionship with my dog. So, too, after my brother’s death, I wrote a ton of poetry that expressed my grief.
Writing is a natural response to grief and loss, especially for people who are already writers. Putting our pain and sadness into words, journal entries, poetry and stories is a very therapeutic and comforting method in coping with our grief. So, I’m glad it was mentioned in this book, especially to write in a journal. It can definitely help people.
Here is another quote from the book which I related to: “The greatest resource for coping with grief is support from people who care.” (page 30) I have found this to be helpful, too. It really does help a lot to talk about our grief. I have done this, with friends and with family. Friends have poured in their love and support. And it has been immensely helpful to talk and share photos with my sisters as well. I strongly urge anyone who is struggling with their grief to find someone to talk to about it.
When I got to Part IV of this book, with the subtitle “Your Body is a Spacesuit for Surviving on this Planet,” I was intrigued. What does that mean? Turns out, it’s a quote Bob saw from a friend of his, whose name is Petrea King. After some introduction about Petra, he writes:
“What did Petrea mean by saying, “Your Body is a Spacesuit for Surviving on this Planet?”
Think about the implications. I am not a body, a mechanism of
meat and bone and nerves and hormones, but a passenger in such a thing, for now. I find this immensely comforting. If this is true, then death is not the end of a book, but only the end of a chapter.” (page 43)
Like Bob, I believe in reincarnation. I believe that we go on after death. Physical death is only death of the body; it is not the death of a soul. Our soul is eternal. Our soul is forever. So death of a person’s body is just a death of the body; they will now live on in spirit. Understanding this has helped in my many experiences of grief. Our loved ones are not really gone, because now they exist in spirit.
At the same time, however, in circling back to the topic of reincarnation, I believe that we are only visitors to this planet. The lives that we live on Earth will influence the next life that we live, yes (and, in the case of people who are religious, the life we live while here on Earth will affect what kind of result we will meet in the afterlife), but physical death is not the same as soul death.
But what we mourn in the physical death of someone is this person leaving our lives, leaving this world. They are not really gone, though. We can take comfort in knowing they are still “out there” – somewhere. They now exist in spirit.
In my conversations with a friend following my brother’s passing, she noted how I will have a new relationship with him now – with knowing him only as a spirit and not as a human. This brought so much perspective to my grieving process. It made me think about how, on one evening when I was really deep in my sadness, I started talking to my brother as if he was right in that room with me. And, in some way, I started to feel that he was. And I also just “knew” when he was at certain events and things he was experiencing. I don’t know how I knew these things, but that I just did.
It's the same thing that happened when I was in the hospital in 2017 and recovering from a life-threatening illness: I started to feel as though the spirit of my dad was in my room with me. This heavily influenced my healing process, although that medical fast was certainly hard to get through! But what I’m trying to say here is that, with a loved one who is on the other side, we tend to get a “feeling” about them. Like we know they are there or that they hear us or what they are experiencing somewhere. My dreams of lost loved ones play a big factor in revealing these things to me, but sometimes, there is that sense of “knowing” too.
Bob also writes: “Yes, our loved one has gone to another
place, for now, but when we have fulfilled our tasks in this life, we’ll meet again.” (page 43) I know that one day, I will see my brother again, but only when my time on Earth is over. I will be reunited with him again, as well as with my parents. That’s the thing about a person’s death: It doesn’t mean we’ll never see them again. We will, one day, when it’s our turn to transition to the afterlife.
In that same part of the book, he goes on to talk about people who are so entrenched in their grief that they just give up on living. I know this feeling well, as I experienced it myself when grieving the loss of my mother. Of course, I still had to function – I had kids to take care of, after all – but I could barely focus on my responsibilities. Bob offers good advice on getting through this experience in our grief journey, which is pretty much the same thing I wrote in a poem about this part of the grieving process.
What I love most about this book is that Bob talks about the different forms of grief we experience for different types of people, and animals, in our lives. (Yes, he does cover grieving the loss of a fur baby, something I know well.) It’s not just grief for losing a child or a parent or a spouse, but grief for losing a child AND a parent AND a spouse. The accompanying stories of how he counseled clients in those situations was also helpful, as was his recommendation of certain books to read that are helpful discussions on these topics.
At the end of the book, Bob writes that he hopes this book will be of service to many people. He can rest assured that it has been of service to me, a person currently going through grief. Reading this book has helped me a lot and I know it will help other people too.
The Hole in Your Life is a compassionate and well-informed source of advice and support for anyone who is currently struggling with grief, or who has to adjust to living with that certain hole in their lives. Written by a former psychotherapist/grief counselor who has counseled many clients to find a “new normal” while living with loss, this little book is full of large doses of insights and solutions to help readers who need that helping hand to ease the pain and get back to living. Losing a loved one can severely impact a person’s life, but there is hope following the loss. The Hole in Your Life by Bob Rich, Ph.D., will give you that hope, and lots more.
Five stars
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
