The Healing Journey

The loss of a loved one will have a profound effect on your life. And after you set out on your healing journey, you’ll realize grief never entirely goes away. We will feel the loss in varying degrees for as long as we live. Some people, however, are permanently debilitated while others travel the path of grieving to a new frontier they never realized existed before.

In his book “Three Roads Back,” the late historian and biographer Robert D. Richardson chronicled how the death of a close family member influenced the lives of philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau, and psychologist and philosopher William James. Early in their careers, all three of these great American thinkers suffered the tragic loss of loved ones and their lives were forever changed.

All of them were young men when they came face to face with death. Emerson’s young wife died and later his 5-year-old son. Thoreau’s brother died. And William James’ close cousin.

Richardson says these deaths led them to look at the purpose of life differently and set them on a path toward their greatest work, which in the end influenced American philosophy and literature.

“All three emerged from their grief with a new way of seeing, one shaped by a belief in what Emerson called ‘the deep remedial force that underlies all facts,’” he said.

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