Layers of Loss Workshop

Join Dr. Andrea Gould, long time psychologist and relationship coach for her upcoming workshop based on her new book, The Virgin Widow.

Andrea will be speaking about how you can re-invent, re-constitute, and re-construct yourself after experiencing a loss (of a loved one, divorce, relationship change, etc.).

During this workshop you will:

• Receive practical tools and strategies to manage the myriad moods that accompany profound losses.
• Experience the power of "mindset" as you master the paradox of identity shifts involved in adjusting to changes in your status.
• Understand the sources of despair with respect to loss of partner, or loss of a dream.
• Benefit from the feeling of connectedness with others who have shared similar experiences.

The cost of the workshop is $25, and can be paid on the day of the event.

About Dr. Andrea Gould:

Andrea S. Gould, Ph.D. is a psychologist and a social artist with a private and independent consulting practice in Tucson, Arizona. She received her training in clinical and community psychology at Hofstra University where she graduated in 1975. Her career includes consulting work for media, staff development in business, private and not for profit as well as public education, and university mentoring.

Dr. Gould founded Lucid Learning Systems in 1983; a consultative and educational organization that teaches people how to optimize their learning process, and to purposefully change their lives for the better. This passionate mission connects seekers with her creative compendium of multi-disciplinary guidance entitled, "Enlightened Information for Transformation™."

A diligent collector of theory and research on learning and brain/mind processes, all products developed out of her institute have the distinctive ability to help make any learning process, including psychological adjustment, more transparent. Dr. Gould's ingenuity is in crafting "animated" (multi-media) curricula for the management of change and makes her a popular workshop leader and keynote speaker. Her organization designs programs and provides timely and meaningful leadership for people and projects in the process of change.

About The Virgin Widow:

The Virgin Widow is a self-help/personal growth book for individuals who have recently lost a partner — and for those who are aware that lifelong partnership is never guaranteed. When the reality of partner loss is thrust upon us, we are most often unprepared. The grief that accompanies the loss is typically overwhelming, as painful as picking one's way through rubble after an earthquake. Not only do we acutely mourn the specific comforts and familiarity of the beloved, but we are forced into a new, unwelcome, and radically shifted world-picture that eerily enough contains many of the same objects, people and places, in a different light.

"Virgin Widows" are innocent, first-time widows who have an inadequate base of experience upon which to draw the wisdom, philosophy and behavior necessary to find a way through the myriad, intricate and immobilizing situations demanding their attention. The book provides guidance on how to navigate this kaleidoscopic and confusing time, by opening up a variety of 'windows' on the process of moving through this altered life landscape, and consciously working with change and transition.

The Virgin Widow traces the compelling and universal journey of the author, Dr. Andrea Gould, a successful psychologist, through the spectral phases of her own widowhood. Following Andrea's personal journals, the reader will study the healing journey — replete with all of its uncertainties, challenges and triumphs — of a trustworthy and sensitive sister. Like millions of women, Andrea became a "virgin widow" overnight, and willed herself to survive challenge with grace. As a psychologist she is almost by definition, sensitive to the nuanced shades of psychic change, and so as she mourned, her journal entries became a repository of conscious reflection on the process of adjusting to change and transition itself. These notes from the 'front' are meant to guide others on their own healing path, just as a field guide's penciled drawings of blue jay sighting and deer tracks assist fellow voyagers in the natural world.

Intended as an interactive tool, experiencing The Virgin Widow will help the readers learn about what quotidian pitfalls lay ahead, receive solace, and encourage thinking and reflection about how to cope with change and sudden loss. In fact, The Virgin Widow presents a larger philosophy about change and transformation through the structures of its format, and the presentation of its distilled wisdom.

The Virgin Widow is conceptually and programmatically distinct from many other books on bereavement because it models a process of conscious choice within the upheaval, rather than offering didactic, clinical models and prescriptive schemas. The book embraces the vicissitudes of interior monologues and frankly acknowledges just how difficult it is to manage these voices, shifting from one world-outlook to another. As Andrea found her way through the grieving process, she relied heavily on her lifelong practices of meditation, internal self-talk and journal-keeping in an attempt to make sense of her new and tenuous life as a widow. The journals illustrate the variety and rhythm of her internal voices. What emerges is a pattern of evolution, and a distillation of how coping tools can work for the average person. Making transparent the experience of loss and transformation helps readers know that they are not alone-- that the healing cycle has a dynamic rather than a static, stepped rhythm helps mourners as well as caretakers relate to the unfolding of healing from personal crisis.

The Virgin Widow is a special book because it addresses difficult matters with a light and humble touch. Existential problems around the "ordinary" arise, and these issues are treated with humor and anecdote throughout. Moreover, The Virgin Widow provides a high degree of wisdom and objectivity about these matters through its psychological commentary. The memoir is thereby lifted into another realm of educating readers about how to develop creative competence for adjusting to change.