The Hole in Your Life is a compassionate and practical guide to navigating grief and bereavement, shared from a place of not just professional expertise, but lived personal experiences, making it relatable in a way other books are not. Why was this an important book for you to write?

I get a great deal of satisfaction, even joy, when I can relieve suffering. If you like, you can think of this as selfish: I’ve been cursed with way too much empathy, so, for example, the daily news is a horror show. I cannot avoid it because being informed is necessary for my job as a Professional Grandfather (striving for a tomorrow for today’s youngsters, and a tomorrow worth living in), so if I don’t take precautions, I shed sympathetic tears of blood in response to war, environmental disasters, inhumane treatment of people and the like.

This book sets out how I deal with deep distress of any kind including this second-hand grief, but also the death of my daughter, and what I have taught to lovely people during decades of my counseling psychology practice. And the good thing is that these tools are all science-validated.

All sentient beings are apprentice Buddhas, apprentice Jesuses. So, when I remember (but never when I don’t), I act as if I were already enlightened. The Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is kindness,” and “The aim of enlightenment is to be of service,” so this book is an important step on my chosen journey.

What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

First, life is too short for the seriousness it deserves. There is no point in being gloomy when writing about sad topics. In fact, fun is one of the “seven magic bullets” that shoot down monsters like depression, chronic anxiety, irrational anger. When you put a good dose of the seven magic bullets into your life, you are a pogo stick: the harder life bounces on you, the higher you rise. You’ll find them described at http://bobswriting.com/psych/firstaid.html

Second, whatever is, is. Acceptance, what in Buddhism is called equanimity, is the most powerful way to deal with any problem. This doesn’t mean condoning evil, but is part of being an effective change agent.

Third, forgiveness (including self-forgiveness), gratitude, and generosity are the most important tools of positive psychology, which is the scientific basis of my work.

Oh… about generosity. I have a long-standing policy: anyone sending me proof of purchase of one of my books, and anyone subscribing to my blog, Bobbing Around, has earned a free (electronic) book.

What was the most challenging part of writing your book, and what was the most rewarding?

I love all my children. That includes the real physical two-legged beings who call me Dad, and also the children of my imagination. On three occasions, these two groups have overlapped, giving me the opportunity to give double love.

My fictionalized autobiography, Ascending Spiral, has my children in it with their genuine personalities, and the events in their lives, but fictionalized names. (How surprising is that?)

Anikó: The stranger who loved me is my biography of a remarkable woman who achieved the impossible and survived the unsurvivable more than once. She is my mother. I visited her in Hungary during her dying days and returned with a huge amount of material. I couldn’t even look at it for two years, then wrote the book, which has won four awards.

The third book is of course The Hole in Your Life: Grief and Bereavement. It uses the story of how I dealt with the death of my daughter, Natalie, so there she is, loved twice over. Is that challenging enough?

And this is also the most rewarding part. Unlike my mother’s biography, this book was almost completed weeks after Natalie’s death, thanks to all I have learned in the past twenty-four years.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from The Hole in Your Life?

Your wonderful reviewer has pinpointed it. The best way to deal with suffering is through it rather than avoidance. This gives us the opportunity for growing from the experience. Hmm… I should be about 50 ft tall by now. Hold it, that’s not the kind of growth I mean.

Thanks to the handicap of a scientific training, I don’t believe anything but go with the evidence. So far, I’ve spent a brief 82.75 years collecting that evidence, so I won’t list it all here. There is a part-completed draft of a book hiding in my computer about that. But the conclusion is that the purpose of life is spiritual growth. There is no point in change when everything is perfect. Suffering is the spur to growth. It doesn’t feel nice—but ask a teenager about growing pains.

A major loss is awful, but it is also the opportunity for a new start.

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