After studying to become a therapist and crisis intervention counselor—even doing her master’s thesis on the stages of bereavement—Christina Rasmussen thought she knew grief. But it wasn’t until losing her husband to cancer in her early 30s that she truly understood the depths of sorrow and pain that come with it.Using the knowledge she gained while wading through her own grief and researching hundreds of neuroscience books, Rasmussen began to look at these experiences in a new way. She realized that grief plunges you into a gap between worlds—the world before trauma and the world after trauma. She also realized how easy it is to become lost in this gap.In Second Firsts, Rasmussen walks readers through a proven process that helps them break the spiral of pain and create a safe space for their post-grief life to enter. Her method, which she has used successfully online and offline with thousands of clients, is based on the science of neuroplasticity and focuses on consciously releasing pain in ways that both honor suffering and rewire the brain to experience the world in a new way.With understanding and empathy, Rasmussen uses practical exercises and stories drawn from her own life and the lives of her clients to guide readers through five stages of opening up to life: Stage 1: Get Real teaches readers about acknowledging where they stand at this moment. Stage 2: Plug In introduces readers to small steps they can take to get back in touch with life. Stage 3: Shift guides readers through the process of moving away from their grief identity toward their true identity. Stage 4: Discover helps readers start to identify who they truly are and what passions they have. Stage 5: Reenter Life teaches readers how to hold on to and celebrate the new self that is emerging while still honoring their old self. With this knowledge, readers can come out of grief as a new person and start to experience life again—essentially for the first time.