As Long as You Need

Permission to Grieve

By: J. S. Park

Narrated by: J. S. Park

Read by the author.

"A heartfelt invitation for grieving readers...An excellent resource for those working their way through loss." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Veteran hospital chaplain to the sick, dying, and bereaved, J.S. Park offers you both the permission and the process for how to grieve and heal at your own pace.

In As Long As You Need, J.S. offers an honest and unrushed engagement with grief, decoding four types of grieving—spiritual, mental, physical, and relational—and offering compassionate self-care and soul-care along the way.

If you are struggling to process loss, pain, or grief from the last few years or the last few minutes, J.S. is an experienced and deeply empathetic listener and grief catcher who has held the pain and questions of thousands of patients. While social and cultural narratives about grief are dominated by "letting go, moving on, or turning the page" in his nearly decade of service as a chaplain at a major hospital with a designated level one trauma center J.S. understands firsthand how rushing or suppressing grief only adds a suffocating layer of pain on top of the original wound.

From his unique window into the stories of the ill, injured, dying, and their families, J.S. offers you:

• Permission to dismantle all too common myths about grief and replace them with a guilt-free and unrushed approach to navigating your losses.
• Encouragement for how entering grief, rather than avoiding it, leads to a hard but meaningful holding of your loss.
• Empathy and hope if you are struggling with a crisis of faith in the midst of grief.
• Recognition that grief spans a wide narrative of loss: loss of future, faith, mental health, worth, autonomy, connection, and loved ones.
• Affirmation that your grief is your own. While the DNA of grief might be universal to the human condition, how you experience and process grief is unique to you.

From the ER to deliveries to deathbeds across every sort of illness and injury imaginable, J.S. Park has provided meaningful counseling for people in all walks of life and death. Now, through his book he wants to assure you that, while everybody else might rush past your pain, grief is the voice that says, take as long as you need.

Critic reviews

'A heartfelt invitation for grieving readers...An excellent resource for those working their way through loss.'

More empathy

I’m grateful for this book. It’s helped me know how to enter in to people’s grief with them and not push past it or push them past it.

Best book on grief you may ever read

This book will have you crying, laughing, remembering, crying again. It will heal you and open wounds you have forgotten and pour a healing salve on them. It is poetry that tells the story of life and death in a way that will help you understand both better. It will help you love others and their way of grieving and show you ways to extend compassion and presence to them.
Every pastor, of which I am, should be required to read this.
Thank you JS Park for pouring your heart and life into this book and others

Grace

Such admiration for JS Park. His vulnerability and storytelling skills are so graceful. My experience as a trauma survivor, cptsd and a hospice nurse I was totally attracted to the material and it far exceeded my hopes.

A gift

These words and Park’s articulation are a gift the world very much needs right now. It is a bit painful to read through if you’ve experienced grief, but similar to after a therapy session or a good workout, you feel better after you’ve read this book.

Remarkable. Transparent. Hope giving.

Wow. I felt as though I was in this long conversation with Jun, where he told vulnerable and personal stories that helped give me perspective on how I handle or not handle my grief. I appreciate the title advisement. I was able to ask myself if I was ready for this "next chapter", pun intended. I felt Jun showed the utmost respect for our boundaries by adding this in the book. That being said, I had to skip the chapter-after starting it- that dove into racism. My body scan told me I wasn't ready yet. I hope to go back and listen over the summer. I felt as though the book ended so fast. I was definitely wanting to hear more. So let's get part two going Jun! There's one thing I have learned in experiencing trauma: we have to keep talking about it, keep telling others. I believe this is just one take away with this book, a loose paraphrasing here, "It's OK to take your loved one with you. You do this by talking about them, remembering them in real life, not just in your head. You do not get over them. Take your time. It's a process." Oh yeah, and part of the reality is, we are grieving "misopportunities" or "future opportunities with that loved one".
Jun, gomawoyo, hyeong. hananim-ui chugbog-i issgileul
God be Praised 🙌🏿