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Griefprints: A Practical Guide for Supporting a Grieving Person

Griefprints - A Practical Guide for Supporting a Grieving Person by Rahda Stern
Griefprints – A Practical Guide for Supporting a Grieving Person by Rahda Stern

Why I chose to forgive my son’s murderer
On March 21, 1996 Radha Stern received the call every mother fears the most. Her 21-year-old son, Christopher, had been murdered. In a senseless fight that quickly escalated out of control, Christopher was shot four times by his roommate.
He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. “You feel like you’ve been run over by a tractor trailer, but there’s no visible bruises or scars. You are just completely devastated,” she says. Within weeks Stern joined Compassionate Friends, an organization that offers help and support to families who have lost a child.
In 2003 she began working with the Insight Prison Project, and organization that runs a number of prison programs and espouses a restorative justice model, which stresses healing over condemnation and brings together victims and perpetrators to heal both. Stern confronted Mark James Taylor, the man who had murdered her son and who is now serving a nineteen and a half-year prison sentence. It was a turning point for her that has had a profound effect on her ability to heal and, ultimately, to forgive her son’s killer.
Stern is the author of a new book,’Griefprints: A Practical Guide for Supporting a Grieving Person (June 2013, paperback, distributed by Partners West), in which she offers compassionate and sound advice for supporting and helping a grieving loved one. She is also featured in the documentary Unlikely Friends, which shares the extraordinary stories of victims and perpetrators who have come together to heal.