Loving and Losing: A Grief Primer provides essential information for individuals helping those who are grieving. Helpers may be professionals, students within human service/health educational programs, or lay persons within faith communities. As this book is a primer, it is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather, to highlight important information for helpers who do not have the time to wade through extensive information. 

A key focus in this book is the shift in grief work from resolving loss to making meaning in grief. Types of losses (e.g., loss of a job, divorce, death, ambiguous loss) and types of grief are explained. Interventions for helpers are presented as well as ways in which helpers can care for themselves. Dr. Annette Lane has worked in clinical settings where death was a constant presence, such as working as a nurse in a Cambodian refugee camp in the 1980s and on an oncology unit. Marlette Reed has worked in palliative care/bereavement for almost two decades. Thus, in this resource, theory is integrated with real life experience.