The Gifts From Losing You: Finding Meaning In Life While Living With Tragedy

This is a beautiful story of love, loss and grief and finding a way to live with peace and purpose after an unbearable loss. It is a must read for anyone that has experienced loss or that loves someone that has and is a road map for finding light even in the darkest of tragedies.Sara’s perseverance and courage is so very inspirational and following her along her journey of daily survival and healing is an immeasurable gift to her readers. She tells her readers of the gift of giving your “power to your love, and not your grief” and how to experience your pain through focusing on this love. Her words are profound and beautifully describes that one’s love lasts beyond the physical world and that love is the anchor to our loved ones that can help us live with unbearable pain. I personally found her words so comforting focusing on the loss of those in my life that I profoundly love and I wish that I had her perspective and guidance many years ago not only to help myself through some difficult loss but to help those I love by better understanding their pain and helping them to find a path to peace after a tragic loss.I also loved learning more about Patrick, an incredible young man who was kind, inclusive, caring and charismatic and who fiercely loved his family and friends. He was surely alongside Sara as she wrote this book—you can feel him right there with her as she tells her story.Sara has shared a real and meaningful gift, a gift to her readers of hope, encouragement and guidance on how to find light even through the most devasting of losses. Sara provides a playbook on how to live with unimaginable grief through love – how she has done it herself through love for herself, her family, the “angels” who have helped her and her family and of course her love for her son Patrick- forever in her heart, walking alongside her everywhere she goes, each and every day.This book will truly help anyone on a journey of grief and loss and I am grateful, as I know so many are, for Sara’s heartfelt gift of The Gift From Losing You. - Wendy P

The Gifts from Losing You, written by Sara Green, tells her family’s story as they navigate the first year after losing their only son and brother at age 19. Sara’s words and those of her family, friends and community, allow the reader to feel the loving essence of her son, and his immeasurable impact on those who knew him. Additionally, Green, a professional health coach, provides hope and guidance for anyone suffering loss, by sharing practical self-care strategies she relied upon during this time. I highly recommend reading The Gifts from Losing You, for its artful combination of love, loss and hope.

Welcome to my heart. This is the first sentence in the introduction in this book and it is easy to see that it is Sara’s heart.Wherever you are on your grief journey and whatever that grief maybe, this book will help you. You will encounter a rollercoaster of emotions as you read about Sara’s loss of her beloved son Patrick. Reading each chapter you will see how Sara's strength shines through as she chronicles her story - with the sadness there is a lot of light, laughter and the loveliest of tributes from family and friends.You will read about Patrick’s family and their idyllic life in Australia and USA, and you will smile as you learn about a rare young man who was a once in a lifetime guy, how wonderful the planet would be with more people like Patrick in it – he made a lasting impression on everyone that he met and you will feel like you know him by the time you have finished the book. His accident is one of those unfathomable and incredily sad losses.Sara generously shares her experience, I turned down pages, highlighted paragraphs and attached one example that demonstrates Sara’s beautiful writing. Throughout the book Sara offers useful insights and thought-provoking questions to help anyone move forward suffering loss and grief. This book captures Patrick’s lifelong legacy and shows us all the true meaning of love.

Sara Green has written an extraordinary book that took me on a journey through her and her family’s loss and grief. Reading this book reminded me of the experience of losing my own father and my feelings and beliefs surrounding grief. This book is unlike anything I’d read when I lost my dad to cancer. The books I turned to dealt very clinically with the topic of grief and suggested that we move through phases in our grieving. Sarah’s book describes the waves of grief and what it was like for her. She writes of love, hope, tragedy and pain but ultimately finds purpose and gifts in the midst of her sorrow. I especially liked the way in which she honors her son with a garden in the backyard. Finding ways to keep his memory alive was a good reminder that our loved ones are never truly gone. We always carry a part of them with us and how we choose to remember and honor them is up to us as individuals. Through her writing, I felt like I knew her son when he was alive. Sara also does her readers a terrific service by not laying the book out in a linear fashion but rather has written what I would describe as essays on different topics that came out of her loss. I recommend this lovely book for anyone who has lost a family member or friend.

I couldn't stop reading Sara's book once I started. While the unfathomable loss The Greens suffer after the sudden accident that took Patrick away from them at just 19 is impossible for me comprehend I found Sara's words uplifting and hopeful, while devastating at the same time. Her raw honesty and the way she describes the different grief journeys that she, Chris Annabelle and Matilda are all on is tragically beautiful and empowering. I found her methods of learning to try and live with her grief to be helpful for people who have perhaps not suffered such an unbearable loss, but for those who suffer from anxiety, depression and other difficult times of life. This is a love letter to a wonderful young man, from his incredibly strong, brave mother and I urge anyone who is dealing with this kind of grief, or if you know of someone who may benefit from it, to definitely buy it, read it and learn from it.

For anyone grieving, supporting someone grieving, or wanting to understand grief, this book by Sara green is a must-read.Sara writes about her family’s experiences grieving the loss of their son and brother, Patrick, who suddenly died in a tragic accident in 2019. It’s an incredible tribute to him, a beautiful legacy, a love letter if you like from a mother to her son.As Sara says it is part memoir as she shares what happened the first weeks and months after Patrick passed. She also shares stories about him with contributions from his father and sisters, as well as over 100 friends and family who all reached out to share stories or memories about Patrick.It's not just a memoir, however. Sara also explores the grieving process and ways to navigate it as the days unfold. She discusses how people grieve in such different ways, what they experience as they grieve, how to look after one another and one’s self when grieving and how to see through the darkness of despair, into some light as there can be light in amongst the dark. That is a revelation for so many people who find themselves deep in the dark they wonder if they can ever see or feel beyond it.On a personal note, I’m no stranger to grief, as I’ve experienced a lot of loss, and I have read a lot on the subject. The Gifts from Losing You really spoke to me as it is very personal, and while utterly devastating and heartbreaking, it also gives you hope as The Greens have found a way to live with their grief and despair and make Patrick's passing mean something. Each day they wake up and find a way to honour their him, and they have done it so fiercely and beautifully.It may seem odd to use the word hope, however for anyone experiencing grief; it is reassuring to know there is hope. Hope that you can find a way to move forward with your loss and to mourn the person who has gone but not to feel you cannot go on. There are ways to live with loss and to see the ‘gifts’ that can come from it.This is a very special book.

If anyone is grieving and wants to know how to navigate this path, you definitely need to read this book. It’s an incredibly touching memoir that focuses on the author and her family’s first year grieving the loss of their only son and brother, aged 19, who died in a freak accident. While it is terribly sad and heartbreaking it is also uplifting and hopeful, which sounds impossible, but the family write about many ‘gifts’ that have come from his death. Somehow this family dug deep to find a way to keep on going each day, which is amazing as no parent or sibling should ever have to say goodbye to a 19 year old. It has really helped me and it will help others who are grieving.

The Gifts from Losing You is the moving story of a mother and her family and the tragic loss of their son and brother. It is a story of love, tragedy and inspiration.This heartfelt account tells of the day their lives changed forever, losing their dear Patrick at only 19 years of age, the grief they experienced and the love they were shown.The author, Sara Green, relates stories about her darling son so that the reader comes to know him and these stories are added to by his father and two sisters. Amazingly, there are some of Patrick’s own writings included. Extended family and his many friends have added anecdotes to paint a picture of a wonderful young man who achieved so much in such a short time. His life was truly inspirational.Sara is also a health coach, so her insights into dealing with grief would certainly help others in dealing with the death of a loved one. She knows that grieving is a very individual experience and doesn’t preach, but gently offers suggestions to others from her experience and from her wide reading about the topic.People often don’t know what to do or say when someone they love loses someone dear to them. This book also helps with that. The author’s friends rallied and they too inspire and exemplify how to show love and concern in a practical way when a loved one is in the depths of grief.The book is beautifully written and apart from being a wonderful tribute to their dearly beloved son, it superbly illustrates the journey of grief and how to handle it. Above all, it is inspiring in how family members have dealt with their grief in such a positive way, but also how a young person can touch so many lives in such a short lifetime - something others many years older could never do.I would recommend this book to people of all ages as a means of helping deal with the loss of a loved one. I would also recommend it to others who have not lost anyone themselves to help you know how to respond to someone who is grieving. It is also a book that makes you reflect on your own life – will I leave an imprint on the hearts of others as Patrick did when I am gone?Highly recommended

What can I say? This is the most beautiful story of incredible love for a child, brother, friend, nephew, grandson, cousin, Patrick Green. I felt connected to the family from the moment I opened the book. This tragic story, written so beautifully by Sara Green takes you on an inspirational journey through her son Patrick’s life and details how this courageous family navigate through life after Patrick’s tragic death. Having three sons of my own my heart felt like it was ripped out of my chest for the pain I felt for Sara and her husband Chris and Patrick’s sisters, trying to comprehend their loss. But I also found great comfort in Sara’s beautiful words as I too lost a family member in 2019, my eldest sister to breast cancer. I found this book made me feel like there is hope and there is a pathway out of your grief no matter how desperate or lost you feel. No matter how unfair it feels to have a young person taken from you far too soon. Congratulations to Sara Green on this most precious story of her beautiful son Patrick who through these pages inspires you yourself to check in on your own life and try to live a better life and be a better person like he did.