Tear Soup, A Recipe for Healing After Loss
by Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen, and illustrated by Taylor Bills.

This book uses the metaphor of making soup to explore grief and healing after loss. It’s often recommended for people of all ages coping with bereavement, offering comfort through its warm, storybook approach and beautiful illustrations.

Pat Schwiebert, a registered nurse, has been working in the area of bereavement for over 30 years. Her teachers have been ordinary persons who were grieving the loss of special people in their lives and who taught her as she walked along side them in their sorrow. Pat shares a hospice ministry with her husband John and others in a large household in Portland, Oregon. In Pat’s words, “This is a place where dying teaches us how to live, while we teach them how to die.” Over the past 15 years the household has welcomed over 30 such friends and “loved them to death.” Pat has authored six other books including, When Hello Means Goodbye, a guide for parents whose babies have died. Her latest book is We were gonna have a baby, but We had an angel instead.

Chuck DeKeyser, Pat’s son, grew up in a large household in Portland, Oregon. At a young age Chuck was introduced to the theatre and later went on to receive a BA in Drama at the University of Portland. He shares the chaos and daily joys of parenthood with his wife Annie and their two children, Morgan & Connor. Tear Soup is his first book. Taylor Bills, Pat’s nephew, is a freelance commercial illustrator working in both advertising and multi-media production. Tear Soup is his first published book. Taylor lives in Murfreesboro, Tennessee with his wife, Lisa, and their children, Madison and Cadence. Noelle Tam, and their menagerie of dogs and cats.