Let’s face it: Grief is unpredictable. Whether it’s been a few weeks or several years since you lost a loved one, the shock of their passing can feel as poignant and all-consuming as if it happened just yesterday. More than that though, expressing our feelings about the loss can be just as difficult. We may avoid talking about our loved ones with others or even privately remembering them because it’s too painful. Sarah Cavanagh, PhD, a professor of psychology at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts, explains that this feeling of emptiness after death hits a little too close to home. “When people are faced with the threat of thinking about their own mortality, they reach for meaning,” she says. An eternally unanswered question we are faced with when a loved one passes is “Why did this happen?” While there is no right way to grieve, there are many ways you can begin to cope with that lingering “why.” And for some, reading about loss in a way that resonates with their personal experience can serve as a powerful source for hope and healing. “I think that we read to know we’re not alone,” says Dr. Cavanagh, “that other people have been through the same sorts of experiences and made it through. “Reading [books] after loss,” she continues, “would certainly be very consistent with this theory — one of the challenges of loss is making meaning of it, feeling like it isn’t all for nothing.” To help you remember you’re not alone in your grief, we rounded up the best books for dealing with all different kinds of loss. Read firsthand from a wife who lost the love of her life to cancer, a mother coping with the sudden death of her daughter, and a son making sense of his mother’s suicide, as these authors explore the vicissitudes of grieving and offer their advice on getting through it.
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
Inspiring words: “Option A is not available. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.”
Blue Nights, by Joan Didion
Inspiring words: “We all survive more than we think we can.”
Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide, Revised Edition, by Christopher Lukas and Henry M. Seiden
Inspiring words: “We continue to hope that this book will help survivors to go on with their lives and go on to find those other joys.” RELATED: Living in the Shadow of Suicide: Survivors Speak
The Dead Moms Club: A Memoir About Death, Grief, and Surviving the Mother of All Losses, by Kate Spencer
Inspiring words: “You have one long, messy, weird, beautiful life. People come in and out of it, live and die, and affect us in enormous and not-so-enormous ways. Your mom’s death is now a piece of you, a new dent on the side of the strange, misshapen thing that is your life.”
The Empty Room: Understanding Sibling Loss, by Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn
Inspiring words: “We look on siblings as signposts, of a sort, who help locate us in space and time, and in our own families. We know how old we are in reference to them. We know what goals we want to achieve by certain ages, if our siblings have set the standard. Our siblings prod us into moving forward and achieving milestones we might not otherwise consciously reach for.”
Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome, by Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner
Inspiring words: “We didn’t want to hear that ‘everything happens for a reason.’ … We were pissed and lost and wanted to know that someone else understood that when life decks you where it hurts the most, everything is a potential trigger. That it’s perfectly okay to ugly cry on the subway en route to work. Or hear crickets on a date once a dead parent is mentioned. Or avoid Halloween because people dress up like murder victims for fun.”
Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson, by Mitch Albom
Inspiring words: “Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on — in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.” — Morrie Schwartz
It’s Okay to Laugh (Crying Is Cool Too), by Nora McInerny Purmort
Inspiring words: “I’m not stronger than anybody. I mean, physically, I can do three pull-ups, so I’m stronger than some people, but emotionally, I’m the same as anyone else. This strength isn’t superhuman. It’s the most human thing of all, a muscle we’re all born with but need to exercise rarely at best. And lucky for us, it’s a tenacious little thing that bounces back from atrophy as soon as you need to flex it.”
