When someone close to us dies, it can be devastating, turning our entire world inside out. Grief can invade every aspect of our person, making it impossible to return to our previous self or life. Our surreal experiences can also leave us thoroughly exhausted and feeling mentally unstable. What is the process of grieving? Why do we experience what we do? Do we play an active role in grieving and healing? Do we ever “get over it” and move on, like the world often says we should?

Combining insights from neuropsychology along with deeply personal narratives based on grieving the death of his precious daughter Naomi, McClendon explores these questions and provides a framework for us to interpret our new reality. Grieving involves our mental, emotional, and physical capacities, so our brains are central in navigating the experience. This book considers how the mind of the griever operates, processes, and evolves over time.

This fresh approach to grief illuminates how our complicated feelings after the loss of a child—sorrow, pain, anger, guilt, confusion, gratitude, and even joy—are reframed along with our behaviors, attitudes, and actions, to reveal a pattern through which we all move. Informed that we have different belief systems, cultures, and personalities that shape our journey with grief, this book focuses on our common denominator, our minds, allowing us to place ourselves within the presented phases of grief regardless of those differences.

Ultimately, grieving belongs to the griever, impacting how a person decides or is able to go about living. The Emerging You offers hope for us to redefine both ourselves and our world. No one is the same after the death of a loved one. A “new you” emerges.