In this new approach to understanding the impact of grief, Susan Berger goes beyond the commonly held theory of stages of grief with a new typology for self-awareness and self-transformation.

Susan Berger offers practical advice for healing from a major loss in this presentation of five basic styles of grieving. Going beyond Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s system describing the stages of grief, Berger presents a new model: types of grievers. These five types describe how people fall into behavior patterns in their response to a loss–and how by identifying their patterns, they can find their way to healing and self-transformation. The five types are the Nomad, the Memorialist, the Normalizer, the Activist, and the Seeker.

Using research from her work with the bereaved for the past twenty-five years, Berger examines how a person’s worldview is changed after a major loss: their sense of mortality, their values and priorities, and how they fit into society. She has found that adults who lost a family member in childhood often experience long-term obstacles as a result. By identifying their grieving type, readers whose lives are shaped by loss find ways of understanding the impact of the loss and living more fully. Also of interest to professionals working with bereaved clients, the five types provide a useful model for evalu­ating clients’ perspectives on their own experiences.