Below are seven of the top grief books from recent years.
I. Allison Holker,
The newest of these grief books is a a memoir by the widow of Stephen “tWitch” Boss, whose suicide was shocking. Holker Boss has special insight into loving someone who hid his pain and addictions so well. “I wish he would’ve felt comfortable asking for help…”
II. Dina Gachman,
As noted by Will Schwalbe (The End of Your Life Book Club) and others, journalist Gachman was able to find the humor in a normally serious subject. Schwalbe adds, “The world is full of books that tell you what not to say to someone grieving; I love that Gachman stresses that (with only a few exceptions) anything is better than silence.”
III. Fred Guttenberg, Find the Helpers: What 9/11 and Parkland Taught Me About Recovery, Purpose, and Hope (2020)
Guttenberg’s daughter was killed in the Parkland school shooting. “I never thought of the people who surround me as helpers until after Jaime died. Now that I understand that we all have our helpers; we only need to be willing to look for them and accept the help” (The Columbus Dispatch).
IV. Shelby Forsythia, Your Grief, Your Way (2020)
Forsythia has two grief books, Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss (2019), and this one. “Grief looks, feels, and shows up differently to each person. Just like no two losses are alike, no two griefs are alike, either. You cannot know the full depth of another person’s experience and they cannot know the full depth of yours.”
V. Maggie Smith, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (2020)
Well-regarded poet Smith, after going through a painful divorce, turned her focus toward assisting others. From an interview with Mary Louise Kelly, NPR: “The idea of finding optimism in your darkest moment seems very counterintuitive, and it felt really strange, even though I knew it was probably what was best for me. But something really strange happened, which is that the more I tried it on for size, the better it fit, and also the more that I told myself it’s going to be OK, and told myself that publicly — being vulnerable in front of thousands of people — the response I got from people who were going through their own struggles, whether it was divorce or a diagnosis, the comfort that other people were receiving from what I was writing actually gave me a sense of purpose and made me feel better in that moment, which was completely unexpected.”
VI. Hope Edelman, The AfterGrief: Finding Your Way Along the Long Arc of Loss (2020)
Edelman is also the author of the highly popular 1994 Motherless Daughters. Regarding The AfterGrief, Kirkus Reviews: “‘I wish there were a foolproof method for ‘getting over’ the death of someone we love,’ she writes in the lucid preamble. However, ‘everything I’ve experienced, learned, and observed over the past thirty-eight years has taught me otherwise’….(V)aried perspectives coalesce to show how grief endures longer than most people ever realize. Edelman emphasizes that while we may never truly outlive the fallout from loss, it becomes an element of life that can be integrated into our own unique versions of felicity.”
VII. David Kessler, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief (2019)
As Kessler’s Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief has already been covered in a broader post, I’ll simply provide a few pithy quotes:
Your loss is not a test, a lesson, something to handle, a gift, or a blessing. Loss is simply what happens to you in life. Meaning is what you make happen.
Healing doesn’t mean the loss didn’t happen. It means that it no longer controls us.
When someone dies, the relationship doesn’t die with them.
