Books I'm Reading Right Now

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; Writing to Heal the Soul; The Long Goodbye; Art and Healing

I've always been the kind of person who looks for answers in a book. That said, I don't necessarily think that books always have the answer but they usually push me in the right direction that I need at the moment. Right now I don't exactly know what the hell I'm looking for. 

I'm going to start A Tree Grows in Brooklyn this week. I've never read it nor have I seen the film. My Dad often said that it was "his story." I never asked what he meant and now it's time to see if I can figure out what he was talking about.

I'm more than halfway through The Long Goodbye. It didn't help me until I got to the part after her Mother dies and she starts talking about what she's going through. She uses the word yearning to describe her loss. That's exactly what I feel right now. I want to reach out to family and friends and talk about the past. I want the damn phone to ring and for it to be my Dad asking me for the umpteenth time, "What are you doing?" with the TV blaring in the background. I want another road trip to Colorado with my Dad. I don't want to say that I'm enjoying the book as they would totally be the wrong words in describing a book of this nature but that it is helping me to process certain things.

What's making me nuts is that with the abundance of journaling books out there, that the books on actually journaling grief are far and few between. I haven't read either of the above books but have flipped through them and have had them long enough in my library to hope that they will lead to something beneficial. I'm not religious. I don't want to hear about death in the light of "you'll see him again" or anything like that. I want to process what's going on in my life NOW to help me to heal. Dad's death was very sudden and unexpected. My whole family is feeling such a deep loss right now. I need to be able to process things the way that I do best by using my art journal. 

Wish me luck on my journey.