As a licensed therapist with a master’s degree in clinical psychology, I’ve helped individuals traverse grief and loss for over thirty years. But when my father passed away last year, I found myself feeling untethered, adrift in a barrage of emotions. In grief, I became more affected by even the smallest glimpse of beauty. The poem that perfectly voiced my heart. The spotted fawn appearing on the edge of the lawn. The purple of the eggplant flowering. Grief slowed me down, opening my eyes to the wonder of this achingly beautiful world we live in. It has become part of my story to endeavor to help others do the same.
I found this book of poems on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. The author wrote this collection following the deaths of her son and her father. She writes with such aching precision of the pain of losing someone you love.
I read many of these poems through tears, but they were cleansing tears—sorrow accompanied by a feeling of being seen, of not being alone. It is a gorgeous collection.
In All the Honey, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer holds both fine, honest sensuality and slow explorations of soul. What is shared here is a way forward in life, a fierce openness that refuses nothing—that knows damage and healing, darkness and radiance, sorrow and winged resurgence, reflection and laughter and learning.
I carried this book with me everywhere in the months following my father’s death. It is filled with wisdom and tenderness. This book gave me new language to help explain some of what I was going through, as well as introduce me to some actions/rituals I could try to help heal my hurting heart as I missed my dad. It is a beautiful book.
"It blew me away. I underlined things on nearly every page." —Anderson Cooper, All There Is
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 and loss in a culture so fundamentally detached from the needs of the soul.
• The first gate recognizes—and invites us to accept—the painful truth that everything we love, we will lose. With this acceptance comes beauty and responsibility—and an…
This book gave me a new framework from which to view my grief—one that encouraged me to embrace all the new places inside of me the sorrow seemed to create.
Cain’s research reveals how people who fully allow themselves to experience sorrow often unlock a door to increased creativity, wisdom, and inner peace. Truly a paradigm shifter.
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER -- FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN'T STOP TALKING
In her inspiring new masterpiece, the author of the bestselling phenomenon Quiet describes her powerful quest to understand how love, loss and sorrow make us whole - revealing the power of a bittersweet outlook on life.
Bittersweetness is a tendency towards states of longing, poignancy and sorrow; an acute awareness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and…
This collection of essays took me outside of my grief and reminded me that we live in a world filled with wonder.
Brain Doyle is a masterful storyteller, and the way he sees the world, with such curiosity and attention to detail, prompted me to walk outside, to study the smallest of wildflowers, to listen to the song of the wood thrush, to let my sadness and loss be part of something so much bigger than myself.
When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty- first century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.
At a moment when the world can sometimes feel darker than ever, Doyle's writing, which constantly evokes the humor and even bliss that…
For a book with no words, this gorgeous picture book tells its story better than a 50,000-word novel.
Beautifully illustrated, we watch a little girl collect flowers growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk as she walks through the city streets with her father. When they come upon a dead sparrow and she gently places a bouquet on his breast, I cry every time.
Grief speaks a simple language and this children’s book reminded me how powerful one act of kindness can be.
Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Illustrated Book
A New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book of the Year
In this wordless picture book, a little girl collects wildflowers while her distracted father pays her little attention. Each flower becomes a gift, and whether the gift is noticed or ignored, both giver and recipient are transformed by their encounter.
“Written” by award-winning poet JonArno Lawson and brought to life by illustrator Sydney Smith, Sidewalk Flowers is an ode to the importance of small things, small people and small gestures.
When spring comes, the bees need tending, but their keeper is gone, mercilessly taken away by illness last year. Left behind to grieve in the bittersweet is the one who loved the keeper most, and she knows nothing about caring for honeybees. When an unexpected friendship walks through her door, she slowly begins to remember what it is to experience joy. Between the making of peach tarts and days when she simply can’t get out of bed, love comes quietly to heal. But not in the way you might expect.
This is a story of how friendship, poetry, and connecting with nature help a broken heart keep beating and find the courage to love a world that is fraught with loss and beauty.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
