What People Are Saying About "Between Loss and Forever"



At the book launch, 22 October 2011.  Photo by Bedette Villanueva

 To write about a traumatic experience in an easy flowing manner is no mean feat. In this book, Cathy achieves this naturally and effortlessly. As a journalist, grief coach and mother who has lost a child, she accompanies the mothers (in the book) with deep compassion. She journeys with them not only with feeling, but also with a clear understanding of the grieving process. Cathy gives the reader the affective and cognitive handles that can make grieving transformative and even joyful. This book can serve as a good guide for grieving monthers and their families, and all those who want to help them.

-- Dr. Ma. Lourdes "Honey" Carandang, clinical psychologist and national social scientist

There can be no better guide to coping with the death of one's child than someone who can speak from all levels -- personal experience, serious study, empathy and compassion -- from heart, mind and soul all at once. Cathy Babao Guballa is all that. She has gone through a long period of unspeakable grief over the loss of a young son and still grapples with it every day. With God's grace, though, she has been able to write this landmark book to help parents like herself. A heart wrenching but ultimately inspiring testament to the transformative power of grief and of God's abiding love.

-- Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, book editor and author of Above the Crowd

The narratives in this book are not only attempts to plumb the depths of a mother's pain as she loses her child. The individual stories of shattered lives are themselves eloquent testimonies to the will to transcend this almost unknowable, chaotic world, albeit with immense difficulty, into a genuinely affirmative view of life.

A very engaging collection of narratives which help the readers make sense of their lives.

--  Dr. Soledad Reyes, professor emeritus and art critic, Ateneo de Manila University

In the literature of mourning, Cathy Babao Guballa, is both frontline reporter and seasoned storyteller; over the years, her columns and stories have allowed many readers to understand, with ever greater depth of insight, the life-altering experience of the bereaved -- beginning with her own. In Between Loss and Forever, her unforgettable account of the grief journey of mothers who had lost their children to accident or violence or illness, she has written a deeply moving work that is both an intricate, courageous study and a compelling story. Essential (and cathartic) reading. 

-- John Nery, senior editor and columnist, Philippine Daily Inquirer