Claire Bidwell Smith follows The Rules of Inheritance with After This–an exploration of the afterlife that is part personal and part prescriptive, an invitation on a journey into the unknown.

In her therapy practice specializing in grief, Smith confronts the quandary of what happens next. In a dynamic five-part structure, she answers the unanswerable questions–Will I ever see my parents again? Can my parents see me now, even though they are gone? Will I remain connected to my own daughters when I die?–for herself and for all of us. Chronicling our steps along the path that bridges this world and the next, she undergoes past-life regressions, sessions with mediums and psychics, and immerses herself in the ceremonies of organized religion and the rigors of scientific experimentation.

After This is unique in the power of the personal that underlies the book’s message: what we believe about what happens next affects everything about how we live–and love–right now.

With this groundbreaking book, discover the critical connections between anxiety and grief–and learn practical strategies for healing, based on the Kubler-Ross stages model.

If you’re suffering from anxiety but not sure why, or if you’re struggling with loss and looking for solace, Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief offers help and answers. As grief expert Claire Bidwell Smith discovered in her own life–and in her practice with her therapy clients–significant loss and unresolved grief are primary underpinnings of anxiety.

Using research and real life stories, Smith breaks down the physiology of anxiety, providing a concrete explanation that will help you heal. Starting with the basics questions–“What is anxiety?” and “What is grief?” and moving to concrete approaches such as making amends, taking charge, and retraining your brain, Anxiety takes a big step beyond Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s widely accepted five stages to unpack everything from our age-old fears about mortality to the bare vulnerability a loss can make us feel.

With concrete tools and coping strategies for panic attacks, getting a handle on anxious thoughts, and more, Smith bridges these two emotions in a way that is deeply empathetic and profoundly practical.

A resonant memoir of the ways untimely good-byes echo through the years by a writer who has considered every nuance of grief.

At age fourteen, Claire Bidwell Smith-an only child- learned that both of her parents had cancer. The fear of becoming a family of one before she came of age compels Claire to make a series of fraught choices, set against the glittering backdrop of New York and Los Angeles – and the pall of regret. When the inevitable happens, and Claire is alone in the world, she is inconsolable at the revelation that suddenly she is no one’s special person. It is only when Claire eventually falls in love, marries, and becomes a mother that she emerges from the fog of grief.

Defying a conventional framework, this story is told using the five stages of grief as a window into Smith’s experience. As in the very best memoirs, the author’s powerful and exquisite writing renders personal events into universal experience.