Anticipating endings may encourage us to grasp the present with greater vitality.

A daughter marvels as her mother goes from grief to an exuberant rebirth.

David Kessler has spent his career helping people all over the world deal with death. In the process, he’s learned that—as much as we may resist experiencing it—grief is a gift that helps us heal.

When something is coming at you that may cause pain or self-doubt, it’s natural to want to duck.

Our understanding of what happens when we weep hasn't progressed much beyond Freud's theory of catharsis. However, knowing how our nervous systems work can help guide what we do—and don’t do—when clients burst into tears.

Too many therapists today confuse the healing release of tears with the helpless despair triggered by reliving traumatizing memories in therapy.

- Mental health systems under stress - The timing of trauma treatment - The revolt against DSM-5

It’s not necessarily that sadness must always be avoided, but maybe we need to find a way to give it its place.

As the writers in this issue powerfully demonstrate, medical science has made extended dying and its impact on relatives and loved ones—what psychologist Joseph Nowinski, in the issue’s cover story, calls “the new grief. . . the gritty business of living with slow death”—increasingly common, even normal.

The increasing ability of modern medicine to arrest or slow terminal illness means that never before has death been such an extended process for so many. But as a culture, we're only just beginning to face the deep ambivalence this creates for both patient and family.