Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing to Every Part of Your Soul

by Audrey Davidheiser

Publisher:

IVP

, 2025

Overview

Understanding Grief: Navigating the Path to Healing

Discover the healing power of heartfelt grieving by reading Grieving Wholeheartedly. In life’s toughest moments, our emotions can feel like a storm at sea—conflicting waves of anger, sadness, and fear crashing together. But within these turbulent waters lies the potential for profound healing.

Audrey Davidheiser, a licensed psychologist with expertise in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, will guide you through a compassionate exploration of your pain and grief. Instead of suppressing emotions, Grieving Wholeheartedly helps you understand and nurture each part of your soul, revealing the unique needs and burdens behind them.

Filled with practical exercises and soul-soothing insights, you’ll learn aspects of the grieving and healing process including:

• Gaining a deeper understanding of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and how it applies to emotional healing.
• Learning techniques to acknowledge and honor every emotion during the grieving process.
• Developing skills to transform overwhelming feelings into sources of strength and wisdom.
• Discovering practical exercises designed to foster emotional resilience and growth.
• Embracing a holistic approach to healing that nurtures both mind and spirit.

Ideal for bereaved Christians, Grieving Wholeheartedly is a companion for anyone grappling with loss, offering a pathway to hope and renewal.

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Contents

Introduction: Grieving Affects Your Parts

Part 1: Fundamentals
1. Grieving: Unwanted, Yet Unavoidable
2. The ABCs of IFS
3. IFS and Christian Faith

Part 2: Protectors
4. Plenty of Permission
5. Two Common Managers: Thinkers and Critics
6. Your Most Religious Part
7. Firefighters: Your Own Painkillers

Part 3: Exiles
8. Shock: Oodles of Loose Ends
9. Sadness and Sorrow: Like a Mangosteen Stain
10. Anger and Rage: Including at God
11. Guilt and Regret: I Killed My Beloved
12. Fear: More Contagious than Covid-19
13. Loneliness and Isolation: Steps Away from Death

Part 4: The Future
14. Other Possible Parts
15. Grieving Wholeheartedly Over Time

Acknowledgments
Notes

Praise for Grieving Wholeheartedly

"Grieving Wholeheartedly offers compassionate and practical support for Christians navigating the complex landscape of grief. Drawing from the transformational Internal Family Systems model, Audrey Davidheiser invites readers to embrace their inner parts and find healing through God’s love. A beautiful read for anyone seeking to understand their grief in a deeper and more holistic way."

"With her wise, witty, and conversational style, Audrey Davidheiser shares her profound journey with grief to support readers in their own grief journeys. This is not a typical how-to book on navigating grief. Audrey’s extensive knowledge and experience with Internal Family Systems therapy, grounded in her strong foundation of Christian Scripture and faith, offer readers an opportunity for deep self-compassion, understanding, and healing. Thank you to Audrey for making this important contribution to our literature on grief and Internal Family Systems!"

"As the title suggests, this book truly walks you through how to grieve wholeheartedly by utilizing the teachings of IFS therapy and providing practical exercises to help the reader work with and address each of their own grieving parts. Audrey Davidheiser’s expertise in this therapy method, mingled with her incredible biblical knowledge, gives the reader the exact tools they need to face even the deepest forms of grief."

"Grief and loss are universal experiences that are often fraught with difficulty and struggle. Audrey Davidheiser’s ways of sharing her own journey with grief, while acknowledging and honoring the uniqueness of each individual’s experiences, creates a space that welcomes all the different parts of us that are activated in the grieving process. In that welcoming space, where we can befriend and witness these different parts, lies the potential for healing and peace."

"Having grown up in the church and being a firm believer in the resurrection of life through faith in Jesus Christ, I was shocked to learn how ill-equipped I was to grieve after I saw my mother draw her last breath. Through her compassionate book, Audrey Davidheiser poured a soothing balm on my soul as she walked me through the process of mourning this traumatic loss. I highly recommend Grieving Wholeheartedly as an essential part of your soul care as you navigate your own loss."

"Grief comes in waves that sometimes crash so hard it feels like they’ll swallow us whole. Audrey Davidheiser helps us catch our breath, regain our bearings, swim safely to shore, and find the healing and wholeness we so desperately need. This is a fresh, innovative approach to grieving that will stretch you and help you breathe deeply again."

"If you have parts that will not allow you to grieve, Grieving Wholeheartedly can help you. I started reading this book shortly after the death of my maternal grandmother. I found myself taken over by thoughts that said, ‘I didn’t need to nor have time to grieve,’ and other parts that numbed me at the smallest expression of grief. This book helped me to identify this behavior and understand the challenges of grieving. I resonated with the story of Jesse who also had parts that interfered with the grieving process. Audrey Davidheiser generously shares her experiences of loss to benefit our healing process. The exercises in the book compassionately guide the reader on a path of healing through connecting with their parts. This book offers comfort, hope, and a way through. My favorite quote from the book, ‘To skip mourning is to risk your future.’"

"Culture stifles grief, pushing us to dismiss another’s aches and neglect our own. Is it any wonder so many of us feel our days pass in bleakness? However, Audrey Davidheiser’s credentials, writing finesse, and experience offer a gracious, literary path of healing, encouraging us to accept grief’s unavoidable presence but to walk through the bleakness with bold fervor, trusting beams of hope and love to light the way home."

"Dr. Audrey Davidheiser provides a fresh perspective on the topic of grieving losses that will be helpful to a broad audience, especially to those who follow the Christian faith. The book is very practical and offers easy access to those who are grieving and involved in the integration of psychology and Christian faith. Dr. Davidheiser is very transparent in this book and directly addresses her own grief and loss. In this way she models for the reader how to grieve in a helpful manner that brings healing. She also gives several examples from her clinical practice which further strengthens the book and makes it readily applicable to many. By describing the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model, she breaks new ground in this important and universal experience of grief. Dr. Davidheiser’s book is very readable, and she makes complex concepts easy to understand. Her authenticity comes through in a style that will make many want to read more of her work."

"This book is an extremely valuable addition not only to the growing library on IFS and specific topics but also to the literature on how to work with grief. Audrey Davidheiser is a highly engaging writer who knows IFS well and includes clear examples (many from her personal experience) and ample experiential exercises. She is also well-versed in the research on grief and intersperses nuggets of wisdom from that literature throughout. Particularly impressive to me is how she squares Christian scriptural messages that ostensibly exile emotions like anger and fear, and also ban direct communication with ancestors, with her IFS-based embracing of those parts and inviting ancestors. I also liked her section on the problem of rigid religious parts in Christianity. This is a must-read for Christian IFS therapists, for those who work with grief, and for non-Christian IFS therapists who have been put off by the exiling commands in the Bible."

Product Details

• Title: Grieving Wholeheartedly: Bringing Healing to Every Part of Your Soul
• Author: Audrey Davidheiser
• Publisher: IVP
• Print Publication Date: 2025
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 208
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781514010846, 9781514010839, 1514010836, 1514010844
• Resource ID: LLS:9781514010846
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-05-20T06:54:00Z

About the Author

Dr. Audrey Davidheiser (PhD, Fuller) is a licensed psychologist in California, certified Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, and IFSI-approved clinical consultant. After founding a counseling center for the Los Angeles Dream Center, she now provides IFS therapy for trauma survivors, including those with religious trauma, and assists in IFS trainings. She has been a regular writer for Crosswalk.com and columnist for iBelieve.com.