“I’d like to invite you to stop here, at the juncture of your disruption. You are already halted by what has happened, so just stop for a little while. Breathe. There will be a time for assessments and action, but not just yet.
Be with it. The break offers an opening.
Open your heart and enter.”
Everyone experiences transitions and major “life-quakes”. Those who are preparing for one such “life-quake” or seeking meaning and growth after the fact will discover inspiration, understanding and guidance here.
Grief counselor Claudia Coenen shares her life experience of resilience and growth after multiple losses and interweaves it with professional advice. Through a combination of theory, reflective prompts, anecdotes, and interviews with experts, she invites you to explore grief caused by different life events as an avenue towards building resilience and rediscovering one’s purpose.
Be with it. The break offers an opening.
Open your heart and enter.”
Everyone experiences transitions and major “life-quakes”. Those who are preparing for one such “life-quake” or seeking meaning and growth after the fact will discover inspiration, understanding and guidance here.
Grief counselor Claudia Coenen shares her life experience of resilience and growth after multiple losses and interweaves it with professional advice. Through a combination of theory, reflective prompts, anecdotes, and interviews with experts, she invites you to explore grief caused by different life events as an avenue towards building resilience and rediscovering one’s purpose.
Reviews
An Invitation to Thrive offers a compassionate path through grief and into a life that can hold possibility, joy, and meaning. Claudia Coenen helps readers slow down, listen inward, and make space for what is changing. Her reflections, visualizations, and practical exercises gently loosen the grip of rumination and help readers become more fully who they want to be, without leaving their love behind. This is not about moving on from grief. It is about learning to live fully alongside it. Warm, wise, and grounded in real human experience, professional insight, theory, and research, this is a book I will recommend to anyone who wants to do more than survive grief and answer the invitation to thrive.
Ms. Coenen's new book provides a thorough exploration of the terrain of grief and what a person must do to discover how to live fully again. Through her own stories of loss, those of clients and others, she takes the reader into the deeper waters of grief and the journey to a new life. In that process she discusses the nature of resilience and what it means to live the "in-between," the disorienting limbo when an old reality is gone and a new one hasn't fully arrived. The book is an invaluable resource for grief practitioners and anyone living through a "life explosion."
Some books teach you what you don't know; others teach you what you need to know. But very few teach you what you need to learn, but already know in your heart of hearts-the lessons whispered by life, but have only half heard. Claudia Coenen's An Invitation to Thrive is one of these few, offering the deep learning, memorably phrased and artfully narrated, that all of us require to respond to limitation, liminality and loss with integrity, insight and inspiration. As I took in the compelling stories distilled from Claudia's life and work, I became clearer about my own, and discovered veins of personal wisdom that I had incompletely mined, and had forgotten. I recommend this book as a guide to the resources hidden in the soil of your own life, ready to be brought to light by Coenen's compelling example.
This is a wise and beautifully crafted book-one to return to again and again. It offers solace without sentimentality, hope without denying heartbreak, and gentle guidance for anyone longing to discover that even after life's deepest losses, the human spirit can continue to unfold in surprising and beautiful ways.
We can not only cope with grief, we can change as we learn and grow from loss. Claudia Coenen's An Invitation to Thrive Cultivating Resilience and Purpose After Bereavement, Life Transitions and Multiple Loss offers tools and opportunities to emerge stronger, wiser, and more resilient as we journey with loss. Bereaved individuals will greatly benefit from the resources offered in this impressive work.
With a deep heart and a far-reaching mind, Claudia Coenen has created an expansive and compassionate guide for those of us coping with our own losses. Drawing on the deep lessons of her own grief and her work as a grief counselor, she offers steadfast insights and practices that will help you find your way.
With warmth and hard-won wisdom, Claudia Coenen companions us through the disorienting space between what was and what may become. Grounded in attachment, she shows how grief can ripen into a renewed identity - and with it, a deepened sense of calling. An invitation worth accepting.