Like the Shells Upon Shore

Like the Shells Upon the Shore: a gentle guide to helping children understand the life stages, the dying process and death of all living things. The author, Louise Aucoin Mansolf, recognized the need for a soothing explanation to help children through the process of the loss of a pet, a person or other living thing. Using the analogy of a seashell and the temporary life that lives within it (opposed to her own first, frightening experience of the death of an uncle and the typical childhood understanding of death depicted by horrific movie images) Louise sought to lovingly counsel and protect her own five-year-old child from potential trauma she might endure due to Louise's own impending demise from an unsettling health diagnosis at 37 (which, most thankfully, she did survive).