The ebook is released!
Four years in the making, Wendy Sarkissian’s ground-breaking story
about staying connected with a loved one who has died is now available as an ebook for USD$9.99.
Synopsis of the ebook
In February 2016, Wendy’s husband Karl lost control of their car on a slippery rural road in Australia. They plummeted 100 feet into a shallow river where he drowned in front of her. Unable to save Karl and running out of air herself, Wendy escaped by swimming out of their upside-down submerged car.
Wendy, now 77, pent the past four-plus years healing from her injuries and writing a book about how she learned to communicate with Karl and to be comforted, reassured, and guided by their daily communications. Current psychological research findings support her personal story.
This powerful ebook offers two amazing gifts. First, it’s a story of enduring love and commitment. And it’s a guide to making and sustaining a powerful connection with a loved one who has died. Dr. Sarkissian explains how to contact and communicate with your loved one, using her refinements of approaches developed over a century ago by Rudolf Steiner to open a channel between the living and the dead. This ebook offers specific methods for recording your communications with your loved one. You will also read about the remarkable content of the 600 messages Karl sent to Wendy. When Wendy analyzed Karl’s words (communicated over 20 months), she found that they were about four main topics: acceptance, gratitude, forgiveness, and service to others (engagement).
This book is different from books that purport to be channeled from beyond the grave. A community planner with a PhD in professional ethics, Wendy might seem like an odd candidate to receive such communications. But receive them she did, and the outcome is a remarkable story. It describes how the deep and compassionate love between Wendy and Karl bridged the gap between heaven and Earth and allowed their love story to continue and flourish. Karl also demonstrated his power to introduce miracles (he calls them “marigolds”) into Wendy’s life, helping her to rebuild it, to heal broken parts of their relationship, and ultimately to find peace and love in a very different new life in another country.
This book sparkles with love and compassion, bursting with stories about the redemptive power of love and the miracles that emerge from a deep connection founded on trust and nourished by love.
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The ebook: Detailed Table of Contents
Chapter 1
“Losing Karl” recounts the dramatic story of the car crash that claimed his life and nearly killed Wendy. She stayed with him after he drowned, acting on instinct to send healing Earth energy to him and opening up a communication channel between them. It describes her experiences as a shattered survivor and how Karl reached out via a clairvoyant healer, only four days after his death. Karl expressed his concerns about Wendy’s well-being, and his commitment to care for her, to “take care of the money”, and to find her another loving partner. A psychic channel, opened after his death, is now strengthened, allowing messages to pass between the two.
Chapter 2
“My Seasons of Loss” tells a chronological story of Wendy’s life from Karl’s death until she moved to live permanently to Canada sixteen months later. The reader learns what was happening to Wendy during different periods of her bereavement. She describes the infuriating saga of her compensation case against Karl’s car insurers. Her journey involved memorable setbacks, including a devastating flood in early January 2017, which left her homeless and resulted in the loss of many belongings and a longstanding and cherished friendship.
Chapter 3
“My Life with Karl” goes back 23 years, beginning with Wendy advertising for a partner in the “personals” column of a Perth (Western Australia) newspaper, her meeting Karl, the flowering of their mid-life romance, their wedding, and their life together. Challenges clouded the prospects of this beautiful love surviving, but they persisted and succeeded. Despite being very much a tough, working-class man, Karl had a sentimental, poetic, and intellectual side that balanced his courageous (and often impulsive or reckless) Romani aspects. He studied philosophy with distinction at university.
Together they worked and shared many struggles and adventures, eventually as owner builders in an eco-village in a rural hippie community. The Global Financial Crisis challenged their relationship but Karl rose above depression and disappointments to work tirelessly on their rural property, eventually basking in the love and praise of Wendy and their friends. Chapter 3 concludes with Wendy and Karl preparing for lunch with close friends.
Chapter 4
“The Secrets of Staying Connected” introduces the perspectives of Rudolf Steiner, who argued early in the last century that it was possible to reconnect with people who had died — and to continue to have meaningful relationships with them. Steiner’s writings in Staying Connected: How to Continue Your Relationships with Those Who Have Died (1999) explain Steiner’s ideas that influenced Wendy’s approach to “staying connected”, offering specific guidance for developing processes of reconnecting with someone who has died.
A section called “Is It Wise to Stay Connected to a Departed Loved One?” reviews research about the psychological concept of “Continuing Bonds” (CB), asking whether it is beneficial for a grieving person to maintain contact with a loved one who has died. That research convinced Wendy that the longstanding (and now widely discredited) “breaking bonds” bereavement model is no longer helpful or supported by research evidence. Bereavement could foster continuing bonds, potentially offering comfort, reassurance, and support to the grieving person. Wendy then felt confident that she was on the right track, psychologically speaking, in staying connected with Karl.
Chapter 5: Acceptance
The “Acceptance” chapter overflows with conversations between Wendy and Karl, inviting the reader to consider that true healing from grief can occur only when the grieving person accepts their harsh reality and the assistance of family, friends, and professionals. In the healing model, resting within the Stopping Place of Acceptance is seen as the necessary first step on the healing journey.
Chapter 6: Gratitude
The “Gratitude” chapter is the bedrock of the healing model. The findings of many contemporary theorists and researchers in the fields of resilience, flourishing, and bereavement echo words you hear from Karl. Gratitude is good for us. The key to a happy life is being thankful for what you have, however limited or limiting it may seem at the time. Concerning healing grief, gratitude is a well from which we can draw forth forgiveness. The healing model Wendy and Karl developed is based on the premise that learning to dwell in a state of gratitude can help us engage with the challenging but necessary work of reframing hurtful acts and deep losses as experiences to be grateful for.
This chapter also describes Wendy’s attempts (helped by Karl’s support and guidance) to reframe a painful email from an old friend and to be grateful for what seemed a devastating rejection at a time of acute crisis
Chapter 7: Forgiveness
The “Forgiveness” chapter frames forgiveness as a moral act, requiring a moral compass. It’s difficult to rest within and pass from the Stopping Place of Forgiveness until we’ve exercised both our acceptance and our gratitude muscles. Forgiveness is hard work for the grieving person, and many people sadly become stuck, unable to proceed. Part of the forgiveness process between Wendy and Karl involved Karl confronting Wendy with the pain he suffered because she had spoken to him in front of others in harsh, demeaning, bossy, and impatient tones. Wendy apologizes, Karl forgives her, and ultimately, Wendy forgives herself for those insults and cruelties, promising never to do that again to anyone.
Chapter 8: Engagement
In “Engagement: The Sacred Work of Sorrow” (Chapter 8), we hear less of Karl’s voice but we could easily speculate on Karl’s unique “Giveaway” (his exceptional contribution to this world) and how he would have wanted Wendy to take her sorrow into social and political activism. A grieving person can do this work to memorialize the one who has died – in their unique way, honoring their unique gifts. Wendy’s unique route turned out to be road safety activism, a completely unfamiliar realm. Her “survivor mission” involved tireless (and successful) lobbying for repairs to the road where Karl (and five other people) died. This chapter’s “Call to Action” argues that when a bereaved person reaches the limits of self-care they may need to re-enter their wider community and to take action in the name of the loved one who has died. Not everyone will embrace a survivor mission, but for those who do, it has powerful and redemptive healing benefits for self and others.
The chapter also describes the innovative event that Wendy co-designed, Bless this Road, held in Uki, NSW, In September 2018. A unique combination of a community education and capacity-strengthening workshop about road safety and a gratitude and healing ritual for 70 people who had lost loved ones on the Kyogle Road. Among those who attended the day-long event was the Mayor of Tweed Shire Council!
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Download Chapter 1 of the ebook
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[THERIVER]
