She should know. It also supplied the catalyst for her remarkable book. When I was pregnant with my second child and lost the baby, I almost died. By honoring the dead, you can transform sorrow into sustenance, she maintains. Her book explores the findings of Dr. Marvin Eisenstadt, a psychologist at St. Mary's Children and Family Services in Syosset, N.Y., who believes the mourning process, from loss to coping, is essential training for greatness.
Grievers learn to be resourceful, adaptive and visionary.
It makes you extremely independent because you have no one to lean on. It was a desire to sustain her mother's quest for excellence that drove Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who keeps her mother's picture on her office wall. Eisenstadt also believes sadness can trigger creativity, a physical response to grief. She points to Virginia Woolf and Mark Twain, who lost parents in childhood and found literature their salvation. But I didn't fully absorb the impact until later.