GRIEF: Climb Toward Understanding is a compelling
and healing story of turning grief into growth as the author
learned to live again after the death of two sons.
When Someone Dies: What You Can Do and
When
Someone Is Seriously Ill: What You Can Do are also
titles from her pen.
Davies' books have been the top-selling titles at many psychology
and counseling conferences. They are recommended by Hospice and
hospital chaplains and by the Centre for Living with Dying, and are used at
the National Death and Bereavement Library and by Critical Incident
Stress Debriefing team members in the U.S., Canada and many other countries. These self-help
books are beautiful, appropriate gifts of compassion at the time of
illness, loss of a loved one, or during other difficult life
challenges.
Her writing career began after her thirteen-year-old son Derek was
killed in a fiery commercial mid-air collision. Dylan, their first son, died
shortly after birth, fourteen years before Derek's death. Due to her learning
disabilities, her writings were intended only for her private — and
possibly her family's — use and not originally for publication. Yet,
as she slowly came to grips with these tragedies, Phyllis resolved to
somehow share what had helped her family, in an effort to help others
struggling with the death of loved ones or other life crisis. She
shared her private journal with an ill and depressed stranger. That
woman's physician encouraged the publication of GRIEF: Climb
Toward Understanding. In addition to the healing story, the
book has a personal survival guide with tools to help individuals,
strengthen a family, and bring order into a very stress-filled
time.
This crisp, insightful and powerful story portrays a
journey toward peace and new meaning. Her comforting and
encouraging writing allows readers to gently move with and through
their own struggle toward healing. It also provides a resource guide she developed for her own extended
family as they subsequently worked their way through a wide range of
illness and death experiences. Included is a practical day-by-day
checklist and hundreds of pro-active
choices of what can be — or may need to be — done upon or prior to a
death.
Much of Phyllis's life is devoted to leading discussions and workshops for
health care professionals, The Compassionate Friends, Bereaved Parents
of America, Hospice and other support organizations, or meeting with
families and individuals as she travels. She frequently assists
bereaved family, community and school staff members as they begin to
cope with a traumatic event, as she did, after TWA flight 800 and
other tragedies.
Phyllis is a 1966 California Polytechnic State University graduate in agriculture. She has been the university's Honored Alumnus. She is a frequent speaker on her lifetime interest in ways of solving hunger, energy, environmental and health problems with sustainable methods. This fascination was galvanized by the death of her own sons. She has led international study tours into remote areas of many two-thirds world countries. She uses and also teaches classes in how cook for a family by using only the sun as the energy source. Phyllis has worked in over 57 countries. She attended the United Nations Summit Forum in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 where she participated on the negotiating teams for the Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture Treaties.
Her daughter Dawna says, "My mother has her ear to the heartbeat of the world."
A broad range of experience contributes to her perspective, which includes 40
years as a property management specialist as well as a teacher. She taught in
the Watts area of Los Angeles shortly after the 1965 Watts Riots. Her deep
interest in agriculture led her to produce and direct a televised movie on the
industry. She and her husband Bill Davies currently live near the California
coast in the Los Osos Valley, where she enjoys being a grandmother, and solar cooking,
motorcycling, working cattle and horses as well as gardening when she is not on tour. Their
daughter Dawna and grandson recently purchased the family farm and Bill and Phyllis have downsized into a cottage on the farm.

This photo of Bill, Phyllis and Dawna was taken shortly after Derek's death when Dawna returned home from college.
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Read what critics and readers have to
say about her books.
Interview questions
frequently asked of Phyllis.
Learn about her international
involvement.
See the "Happiest Town in America" it's where the author lives.
Check out the Davies Company web site and see what Dawna and Bill are doing. |