My wife died when I was twenty-six. Stage IV breast cancer. A violent end to a violent war.

With her death came the simultaneous forfeiture of my present and my future. My world was in chaotic disarray, ground into irredeemable ashes. It was as though I had fallen asleep and awoken in an alien existence I no longer recognized and that no longer recognized me.

I was a stranger in a strange land, a broken and unwanted thing.

Maybe you've felt that way. Maybe you still do.

And if so, this book is for you.

Because there is hope for you and me. Though our lives will never be the same, they are not over. And therein lies the transformative secret - your life is still yours. You are not bad just because something bad happened to you. And though you may be broken, you are not unwanted.

The Lazarus Within is a book about the resurrecting power of hope. By choosing hope in the face of hopelessness, life in the face of death, we summon a great strength from deep within ourselves, a mysterious power we didn't even know we had. Our pain becomes the crucible within which we are forged and made new; our ashes become the soil for fresh roots.

Grief is an arduous journey. There are no easy-fixes, no shortcuts, no workarounds. The only way to "get through it" is to "go through it."

But if you take only one thing away from this book, let it be this:

You never have to go through it alone.