Our own experience of grief is as unique as a fingerprint. Most of us have lost or will lose a loved one, and we struggle to understand how to get through it, or how to support someone who is grieving. To those of you who are going through grief right now, I hope you will find some comfort in the resources below. Many thanks to Kathy Love, our Board President, and longtime Hospice volunteer, who shared her recommendations.
-Annie
Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss
Everyone experiences grief differently after the loss of a loved one. Some people find solace in comforting quotes and warm words, while others feel a need to take action–to do something to memorialize their loss. And some benefit from both approaches. Here’s a path forward for you, no matter how you process your grief.
Whether you’re looking for inspiration, a practical way to honor your loved one, or both, Your Grief, Your Way helps you navigate life after loss.
It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand
When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form, says Megan Devine. It is a natural and sane response to loss.
So, why does our culture treat grief like a disease to be cured as quickly as possible?
Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides–as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner–Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, happy life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it.
Grief Day By Day: Simple Practices and Daily Guidance for Living with Loss
Supportive readings and exercises to help you move through life after loss, one day at a time
Grief is complex; it may present itself differently on any given day. This grief recovery handbook offers daily reflections and practices that address the day-to-day emotions and experiences that accompany the grieving process so you can create a life in which peace–and even gratitude–can coexist with your grief.
Explore the stages of grief with a collection of quotes, musings, meditations, and more that are tied together by a weekly theme, allowing you to reflect on each concept in depth. Work through topics like loneliness, grief attacks, exhaustion, hope, love, and creating meaning. You’ll find opportunities to write, draw, meditate, do breathing exercises, and more as you learn to live fully with your grief.
We don’t only experience grief after a loss—we often experience it before. If someone we love is seriously ill, or if we’re concerned about upcoming hardships of any kind, we naturally begin to grieve right now. This process of anticipatory grief is normal, but it can also be confusing and painful. Life is change, and change is hard. This book will help see you through.
The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience
Modern Loss is all about eradicating the stigma and awkwardness around grief while also focusing on our capacity for resilience and finding meaning. In this interactive guide, Modern Loss cofounder Rebecca Soffer offers candid, practical, and witty advice for confronting a future without your person, honoring their memory, dealing with trigger days, managing your professional life, and navigating new and existing relationships. You’ll find no worn-out platitudes or empty assurances here. With prompts, creative projects, innovative rituals, therapeutic-based exercises, and more, this is the place to explore the messy, long arc of loss on your own timeline—and without judgment.
Resilient Grieving: How to Find Your Way Through a Devastating Loss
Resilient Grieving offers an empowering alternative to the five stages of grief–and makes clear our capacity for growth following the trauma of a loss that changes everything
The death of someone we hold dear may be inevitable; being paralyzed by our grief is not. Recent research has revealed our capacity for resilient grieving, our innate ability to respond to traumatic loss by finding ways to grow–by becoming more engaged with our lives, and discovering new, profound meaning.
Author and resilience/well-being expert Lucy Hone, a pioneer in positive psychology and bereavement research, was faced with her own inescapable sorrow when, in 2014, her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. By following the strategies of resilient grieving, she found a proactive way to move through her grief, and, over time, embrace life again.