Thanatologist | Educator | Poet | Author | Speaker
DEBORAH GOLDEN ALECSON
Books by Deborah Golden Alecson
Complicated Grief: A Collection of Poems (2014)
ISBN: 978-1622297825
This book is recommended to survivors of suicide by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
Deborah Golden Alecson’s Complicated Grief is a brilliant work that alchemizes unspeakable pain and brings to light the ambivalent feelings and sneak attacks of memories we crave to bury. It is a relief from the plethora of self-help books that suggest ways to avoid what is real.
Sandra L. Bertman, Ph.D., author of Facing Death:
Images, Insights and Interventions and Grief And the Healing Arts: Creativity as Therapy
We Are So Lightly Here (2014, Second Edition)
ISBN-13: 9781623520724
IntoPrint Publishing, LLC
Foreword by Lucille Marchand, MD, BSN
It is possible to spend one's last months dying in a state of emancipation and acceptance. But it rarely happens, and certainly not overnight. Life-in part -is the preparation. Western culture perceives death as a defeat and cancer as an enemy that must be fought. The prolonging of life must be encouraged, no matter the futility and anguish. To stop debilitating and experimental treatments is to lose hope. We Are So Lightly Here is the true story of how one ordinary man found the courage to transition from life with terminal cancer to death as a result of, paradoxically, his affirmation of life. Deborah Golden Alecson poses new ways to understand hope.
Alternative Treatments for Children Within the Autistic Spectrum (1999)
ISBN: 0-87983-965-1
Keats Publishing
Children with learning difficulties, attention deficits, and autistic behaviors have been found to have similar biochemical imbalances and medical histories, and they respond well to the same alternative treatments. This guide explains these treatments which include effective, natural solutions.
Lost Lullaby (2014, Second Edition)
ISBN-13: 978162352070
IntoPrint Publishing, LLC
Foreword by Bruce Jennings, Center for Humans & Nature
Andrea Alecson was resuscitated into life having been oxygen deprived in the womb for a length of time no one seems able to determine. She was full-term, weighing 7 pounds 11 ounces: a perfectly formed and exquisitely featured infant with massive irreversible brain damage. With the birth of Andrea, Deborah Alecson experienced two strong emotions: the desire and need to nurture her baby, and the hope that she would die. This was Deborah's initiation into motherhood: a time of intense vulnerability. She had just survived the emergency Caesarean section that pulled her daughter blue from her body, too late, too deprived of oxygen for too long. Lost Lullaby told in a mother's voice, is the story of Andrea's two months in a neonatal intensive care unit and of the greater issues that her fragile life exposed: dilemmas of medical technology, family rights, and the ambiguity of the law. While experiencing anguish over their child's condition and the uncertainty of her future, the Alecsons were further traumatized by the fight to obtain power over that child's destiny. It was their wish that nature, not technology, be Andrea's guide. They viewed her as already dying and wanted that process to be respected. This fight was one of many waged throughout this country that have pitted family members of injured loved ones against legally restrained hospital personnel. Lost Lullaby also describes the securing of a lawyer to sue the hospital, midwife, and obstetrician for alleged malpractice. Ms. Alecson was to learn that a lawsuit posed yet another moral dilemma: Andrea being kept alive meant a potentially huge monetary award, while Andrea's death would mean a negligible one. During those two months, Ms. Alecson spoke with lawyers, doctors, and ethicists to understand the legal, medical, ethical implications of her plight. In telling Andrea's story, she recounts those discussions and describes some legal cases that had a direct bearing on the Alecsons' situation.