At least one person from our team reads each book before we add it to our list. We want to find books that can help you love yourself or love other people better through life and grief. There are a variety of books listed written from different perspectives and beliefs. Please read the summaries below along with the Amazon ratings and reviews to determine what would be best for you at this time. If you buy any of the books with the links below, we will receive a percentage of your purchase through the Amazon Affiliate Program to support our mission.
The Grieving Brain
Neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD, shares fascinating new research into grief and the human brain. O’Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of loss and makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm to better understand love and grief.
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The Grieving Body
As she did in The Grieving Brain, Dr. O’Connor combines illuminating studies and personal stories to explore the toll loss takes on our body's systems and the larger implications for our long-term well-being in her book, The Grieving Body, revealing imperative new insights on its profound physiological impact.
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Finding The Words
Colin Campbell was driving his family when a drunk driver killed his teenage kids in the backseat. In this book, he teaches readers how to actively reach out to their community, perform mourning rituals, and find ways to express their grief, so they can live more fully while also holding their loved ones close.
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The Wild Edge of Sorrow
The Wild Edge of Sorrow offers hope and healing for a profoundly fractured world—and a pathway home to the brightness, pains, and gifts of being alive. Introducing the 5 gates of grief, psychotherapist Francis Weller explores how we move through the waters of grief in a culture detached from the needs of the soul.
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It's OK That You're Not OK
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.
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Permission to Mourn
Tom knows a thing or two or three about grief. After losing his daughter, his wife, and then his son, he is committed to helping people discover a new way to do grief. Tom believes the death of someone we love cracks us open inviting us to become the person we were born to be and he will help you see pain in a new way.
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Confessions of a Funeral Director
Caleb Wilde’s shares his wisdom, thoughts, and insights from working at a funeral home and inheriting the family business that goes back more than 6 decades! He writes full of wonder, compassion, and empathy for those looking to gently explore more about death, life, spirituality, and beyond.
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The Grief Recovery Handbook
The expanded edition of The Grief Recovery Handbook is an incredible tool to help you navigate through a lifetime of grief no matter where you are in your journey—even decades later. You will learn tangible exercises & activities to process your loss, grief, and incomplete emotions that may have you feeling stuck.
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A Grief Observed
You may know C.S. Lewis as the author of the popular kids series, Chronicles of Narnia. But what you may not know is that he wrote this book after his wife's tragic death. A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis's honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss.
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Learning To Walk In The Dark
The New York Times bestselling author, Barbara Brown Taylor, provides a way to find spirituality in those times when we don’t have all the answers. Learning to Walk in the Dark asks us to put aside our fears and anxieties and to explore all that God has to teach us “in the dark.” In the darkness is where we find courage.
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Man's Search For Meaning
Viktor Frankl shares a deeply powerful account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps, and his insightful exploration of the human will to find meaning in spite of the worst adversity, has offered solace and guidance to generations of readers since it was first published in 1946.
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The Light Between Us
Laura Lynne Jackson is a wife, a mother, a high school English teacher—and a proven psychic medium. She has dedicated her life to exploring our connection to the Other Side, conversing with departed loved ones, and helping people come to terms with loss through spiritual connection, love, and light.
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Notes On Grief
This is a really raw take on grief, getting a personal look into the shock, loneliness, and struggle Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie faced (as well what her family faced) after the death of her father in 2020. It’s a short book, but impactful, as her award-winning storytelling transports us into her loss and grief, grappling with how to feel and heal.
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Bearing The Unbearable
A companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Cacciatore—bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and counselor in grief—accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love and loss.
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Option B
After the sudden death of her husband, Sheryl Sandberg felt certain that she and her children would never feel pure joy again. Adam Grant, a psychologist at Wharton, told her there are concrete steps people can take to recover and rebound from life-shattering experiences. They share this and more in Option B.
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A to Z Healing Toolbox
Written by social worker Susan Hannifin-MacNab after her husband was killed suddenly, she eventually realized that grief and trauma healing do not occur by waiting for time to pass. Action and intention are the pillars needed to lay a foundation for rebirth and build a powerful roadmap for healing.
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Maybe You Should Talk To Someone
With wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world of therapy (as a therapist and a patient) examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaning and mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, & hope and change.
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The Year Of Magical Thinking
New York Times Best Seller and National Book Award Winner, Joan Didion attempts to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness... about marriage and children and memory... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself in this book.
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Grieve Like A Mother, Survive Like A Warrior
Fourteen bereaved mothers from the Warrior Moms of North Atlanta support group share their stories of the messiness of grief—the good days and bad, the unexpected triggers, the guilt and anger, and eventually, how to simultaneously hold space for both sorrow and joy.
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After
Dr. Greyson shares scientific revelations about the dying process to support the idea that death could be the threshold between one form of consciousness and another—not an ending but a transition. He reveals his journey as a specialist toward rethinking the nature of death, life, and the continuity of consciousness.
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Finding Meaning Workbook
International grief specialist and author David Kessler has spent decades working with thousands of people experiencing the depths of their grief. He knows the pain deeply, personally. And he also knows the path to begin to find hope, and healing, again. This workbook is a companion, and is for those looking for additional support.
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The Good Goodbye
Whether you’re facing the end of a relationship or a job, the death of a loved one, or the loss of a long held dream, the way you say goodbye can mean the difference between stagnating in grief and thriving. Dr. Gladys Ato helps you release old pain and discover new experiences to create the life you want.
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In My Own Skin
Kirsten Schowalter's memoir is an incredible invitation to join her on her journey through grief after losing her dad to a tragic car accident. Navigating grief with her mother and younger sisters proves to be challenging, but Kirsten brings such honesty and vulnerability as she shared their story in finding life again.
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Guide For Grief
Rev. Dr. Rodger Murchison brings decades of pastoral experience (conducting more than 500 funerals), grief counseling, and his doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary to help guide people with a Christian perspective through grief and healing. This book includes questions and prayers to sit with.
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