Grief Books by Type of Loss | Angela Schellenberg

When you have just lost someone

The books I would put in your hands first.

Foundational reads for the early days, when nothing makes sense and the language has not arrived yet.

Francis Weller

The Wild Edge of Sorrow

A psychotherapist on the five gates of grief. The book I most often press into someone's hands when they feel guilty for grieving as deeply as they do.

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Megan Devine

It's OK That You're Not OK

Megan wrote this after her partner drowned. If you have been told to find the silver lining and you cannot, this is the book to keep on your nightstand.

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Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

A grief researcher and bereaved mother on what it actually takes to carry traumatic loss. Honest, deep, no easy answers.

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David Kessler

Finding Meaning

Kessler co-wrote the original five stages with Kübler-Ross. After losing his son, he added the sixth: meaning. This is that book.

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Mary-Frances O'Connor

The Grieving Brain

If you keep asking what is wrong with me, this neuroscientist's answer is: nothing. Your brain is doing exactly what grief asks of it.

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Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler

On Grief and Grieving

The foundational text on the stages of grief. Read it knowing the stages were never meant as a linear ladder, just a way to name what is moving through.

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C.S. Lewis

A Grief Observed

Lewis wrote this in journal entries in the weeks after his wife died. Short, honest, and the original of its kind.

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George Bonanno

The Other Side of Sadness

A research-grounded counterweight to the “stages” story. If grief has not looked like you thought it would, this normalizes that.

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Mother loss

Books for the daughters who lost her too soon, or never quite had her.

For the mother who died, the mother who left, the mother who was here but not here. Each one names a different shape of mother grief.

Mother Hunger® is a registered trademark and framework of Kelly McDaniel. Angela teaches this material as a certified Mother Hunger® Facilitator. Copyright Kelly McDaniel, Mother Hunger® and kellymcdanieltherapy.com, All rights reserved.

Kelly McDaniel

Mother Hunger®

The book that named what so many of us had been carrying since childhood. Kelly's framework of nurturance, protection, and guidance changed how I work. Read it first.

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Hope Edelman

Motherless Daughters

The first book to name what happens to a girl who loses her mother — and how the loss travels with her into adulthood. A cornerstone.

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Claire Bidwell Smith

The Rules of Inheritance

Claire's memoir of losing both parents to cancer in her teens and twenties. Honest about the long arc of carrying it and the woman she became on the other side.

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Claire Bidwell Smith

Conscious Grieving

Claire's framework for grieving on purpose — a transformative approach that meets grief as something to move through with intention, not around.

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Father loss

For the daughters carrying the grief of his empty chair.

Whether he died, left, or was never quite there — this section names a particular grief that often goes unspoken.

Alexander Levy, PhD

The Orphaned Adult

A psychologist on the particular shock of losing a parent as a grown adult — the part nobody warns you about, no matter your age.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Notes on Grief

A short, searing memoir written in the weeks after her father died. Reads in one sitting and stays with you.

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Darin Strauss

Half a Life

On living with a loss that does not fit the standard scripts — useful for grief that has not been allowed to be grief.

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Allison Gilbert

Parentless Parents

For women raising children without their own parents to lean on. Practical, honest, and one of the only books on this layered grief.

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Loss of a spouse or partner

For the grief that changed who you are, all the way through.

Books for the partner left behind, and the long work of being known in a different way going forward.

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

Didion's account of the year after her husband's sudden death. The book most people who have lost a spouse end up reading at some point.

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Genevieve Davis Ginsburg

Widow to Widow

Written by a therapist who lost her own husband. Short chapters, practical, the book to read in the first months.

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Kristin Meekhof & James Windell

A Widow's Guide to Healing

Practical and tender. Meekhof was widowed in her thirties and the book carries that lived weight.

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Sheryl Sandberg & Adam Grant

Option B

After Sandberg's husband died suddenly, she co-wrote this with a psychologist on resilience. Imperfect, useful in the right moment.

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Nora McInerny

The Hot Young Widows Club

For the widows who were not supposed to be widows yet. Funny, blunt, holds nothing back.

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Melissa Gould

Widowish

A memoir of being widowed in midlife and the in-between of who you were and who you become.

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Loss of a child

For the grief that breaks the natural order.

Pregnancy loss, stillbirth, infant loss, the loss of a child of any age. We hold this with the weight it deserves.

Joanne Cacciatore

Bearing the Unbearable

Joanne founded the MISS Foundation after losing her own child. There is no one better to write this book.

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Deborah Davis, PhD

Empty Cradle, Broken Heart

The classic on perinatal loss. Comprehensive, compassionate, used by hospitals and grief therapists everywhere.

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Angie Smith

I Will Carry You

Angie's memoir of carrying a baby who would not live. For women facing a terminal prenatal diagnosis or grieving stillbirth.

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Alan Wolfelt, PhD

Healing Your Grieving Heart After Miscarriage

A short, gentle companion for women whose pregnancy did not come home. Read in pieces, when you can.

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Barbara Rosof

The Worst Loss

A guide for parents who have lost a child, written by a clinical psychologist. Direct, kind, no platitudes.

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Gary Roe

Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child

Short chapters that meet you where you are. Many parents tell me this is the one they could read when nothing else fit.

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Emily Rapp Black

The Still Point of the Turning World

A memoir written while loving a toddler with a terminal diagnosis. Beautiful, devastating, true.

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Nicola Gaskin

Life After Baby Loss

Written by a mother whose son died at six weeks old. Practical guidance for moving through the early months, in her own voice.

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Sibling loss

For the keeper of half your stories.

A grief that is often under-witnessed. These two books take it seriously.

T.J. Wray

Surviving the Death of a Sibling

The book most often recommended on adult sibling loss. Built from interviews with hundreds of bereaved siblings.

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Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn

The Empty Room

On growing up alongside a sibling's illness and death. Names the grief that does not end when you reach adulthood.

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Pet loss

For the animals who knew us. Yes, this is grief too.

A small, hand-picked list. Some for adults, some to read with a grieving child.

Jon Katz

Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die

A short, honest book for the early days. He does not tell you it will be okay. He sits beside you while it is not.

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Wallace Sife, PhD

The Loss of a Pet

The book I send people to when the grief feels too big to name. A psychologist who lost his dog, writing with structure and care.

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Gary Kowalski

Goodbye, Friend

Spiritual without being saccharine. Company for the questions about what comes next.

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Dolan-Del Vecchio & Saxton-Lopez

The Pet Loss Companion

A slim workbook from two therapists. If your grief wants somewhere to go besides your phone screen, the prompts here are a place to put it.

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Cynthia Rylant

Dog Heaven

For a child who is asking where their dog went. Tender and beautiful.

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Judith Viorst

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney

A picture book about a boy whose cat dies and what he decides to remember. Read it to a child, then read it again for yourself.

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Loss to suicide

For the grief that comes with questions that may never be answered.

Books that meet suicide loss with honesty and without judgment.

Carla Fine

No Time to Say Goodbye

The book most often recommended after a suicide loss. Carla lost her own husband and wrote what she most needed to read.

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Jill Bialosky

History of a Suicide

A memoir investigating her sister's suicide twenty years later. Honest about how the questions stay.

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Kay Redfield Jamison

Night Falls Fast

A clinical psychologist's account of suicide. Read this when you want to understand what was happening for the person you lost.

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Jennifer Ashton, MD

Life After Suicide

A physician's account of losing her husband and the long work of after. Accessible and tender.

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Christopher Lukas

Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide

Builds from interviews with suicide-loss survivors. Particularly good on the long arc.

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Sudden, violent, or traumatic loss

When the grief began mid-sentence.

Books for losses that arrived without warning — accidents, gun violence, homicide, sudden medical events.

Lucy Hone, PhD

Resilient Grieving

Lucy is a resilience researcher whose daughter was killed in a car crash. The book she needed to read but could not find.

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Claire Bidwell Smith

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief

If grief has shown up as panic, racing thoughts, or insomnia, this names exactly why.

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Sonali Deraniyagala

Wave

Sonali lost her parents, husband, and two sons in the 2004 tsunami. Her memoir is what surviving the unsurvivable looks like in writing.

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Nisha Zenoff, PhD

The Unspeakable Loss

A grief therapist and bereaved mother on the death of a child — written with particular attention to sudden and violent loss.

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Anticipatory grief, caregiving & long illness

For the grief that begins before they go.

If you are caring for someone you are also losing, this is its own particular kind of carrying.

Atul Gawande, MD

Being Mortal

A surgeon's honest reckoning with how we die in modern medicine. Read it before a loved one is dying, if you can.

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Maggie Callanan & Patricia Kelley

Final Gifts

Two hospice nurses on what the dying often try to communicate at the end — and how to listen for it.

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Meghan O'Rourke

The Long Goodbye

A memoir of caregiving for and losing her mother to cancer. Particularly good on grief in cultures that look away from it.

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BJ Miller, MD & Shoshana Berger

A Beginner's Guide to the End

The practical book. What to do, what to ask, what to plan — while there is still time.

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Paul Kalanithi

When Breath Becomes Air

A neurosurgeon writes about facing his own death. A book to read alongside someone you are losing.

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For grieving children & teens

To read to a child, or to hand to a teen.

Books that help young people make sense of death and find language for grief.

Andrea Dorn

When Someone Dies

A mindful, illustrated guide for young children — gentle on the body, honest about death.

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Joanna Rowland

The Memory Box: A Book About Grief

For young children. Names the fear of forgetting, and gives them a way to hold on to memory.

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Patrice Karst

The Invisible String

A child-friendly image for love that does not end at death. Used by many bereaved family therapists.

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Pat Schwiebert & Chuck DeKlyen

Tear Soup

An illustrated story about a grandmother “making soup” from her grief. For older children and the grown-ups reading with them.

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Bryan Mellonie

Lifetimes

A gentle book that names death as part of every living thing's story. For when you need a beginning point with a young child.

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Alan Wolfelt, PhD

Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens

100 short, practical ideas. Useful for teens who will not read a chapter book but will read a list.

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Helen Fitzgerald

A Grieving Teen

Direct and helpful for teens and their friends. Reads like an honest older relative.

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For parents helping grieving children

How to be there for a child after a loss.

For parents, caregivers, and anyone in the room with a grieving young person.

Phyllis Silverman & Madelyn Kelly

A Parent's Guide to Raising Grieving Children

From decades of research at the Center for Loss and Bereavement. The textbook for parents, in the best sense.

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Helen Fitzgerald

The Grieving Child

Age-by-age guidance on how children grieve and what helps. Easy to reference in a hurry.

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The Dougy Center

35 Ways to Help a Grieving Child

From the leading children's grief center in the U.S. A short, practical book to read in one sitting.

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Katie Lear, LCMHC

A Parent's Guide to Managing Childhood Grief

A child therapist's handbook for the long arc — from telling them, through the years that follow.

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Journals, workbooks & daily companions

When your grief wants somewhere to go.

Structured pages for the days that need a smaller container.

Martha Whitmore Hickman

Healing After Loss

A daily meditation book that has lived on grieving people's nightstands for thirty years. One page, every morning.

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Megan Devine

How to Carry What Can't Be Fixed

A journal, not a workbook. Open it when you need to put something on paper. No prompts that ask you to find the bright side.

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Jan Warner

Grief Day by Day

Short daily readings with small actions you can take. Especially good for the very early months.

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Morgan Cheek

Even in Darkness: A Guided Grief Journal

Prompts that go deeper than the usual. Built for people who want their grief work to ask something of them.

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Memoirs to keep you company

The grief writing I find most alive.

When you do not want self-help, you want someone to walk beside you. These walk well.

Cheryl Strayed

Wild

After her mother died, Cheryl walked the Pacific Crest Trail. A memoir about how grief moves a body.

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Helen Macdonald

H is for Hawk

After her father died, Helen trained a goshawk. A gorgeous, strange, unforgettable book about grief and wildness.

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Tembi Locke

From Scratch

On losing her husband to cancer and what it took to find herself afterward. Warm, particular, full of Sicily.

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Michelle Zauner

Crying in H Mart

A memoir about losing her mother in young adulthood. Food, identity, and a grief that does not resolve.

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Sonali Deraniyagala

Wave

Sonali lost her parents, husband, and two sons in the 2004 tsunami. Spare, devastating, and one of the truest grief memoirs ever written.

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Meghan O'Rourke

The Long Goodbye

On her mother's death and the long after. Particularly good on grief in a culture that wants you to move on.

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Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

The book that named the magical thinking after a sudden death. Spare, observed, foundational.

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Books I send people to, organized by the loss you are carrying.

Grief Is a Sneaky Bitch — Lisa Keefauver

The books I would put in your hands first.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow

It's OK That You're Not OK

Bearing the Unbearable

Finding Meaning

The Grieving Brain

On Grief and Grieving

A Grief Observed

The Other Side of Sadness

Books for the daughters who lost her too soon, or never quite had her.

Mother Hunger®

Motherless Daughters

The Rules of Inheritance

Conscious Grieving

For the daughters carrying the grief of his empty chair.

The Orphaned Adult

Notes on Grief

Half a Life

Parentless Parents

For the grief that changed who you are, all the way through.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Widow to Widow

A Widow's Guide to Healing

Option B

The Hot Young Widows Club

Widowish

For the grief that breaks the natural order.

Bearing the Unbearable

Empty Cradle, Broken Heart

I Will Carry You

Healing Your Grieving Heart After Miscarriage

The Worst Loss

Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child

The Still Point of the Turning World

Life After Baby Loss

For the keeper of half your stories.

Surviving the Death of a Sibling

The Empty Room

For the animals who knew us. Yes, this is grief too.

Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die

The Loss of a Pet

Goodbye, Friend

The Pet Loss Companion

Dog Heaven

The Tenth Good Thing About Barney

For the grief that comes with questions that may never be answered.

No Time to Say Goodbye

History of a Suicide

Night Falls Fast

Life After Suicide

Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide

When the grief began mid-sentence.

Resilient Grieving

Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief

Wave

The Unspeakable Loss

For the grief that begins before they go.

Being Mortal

Final Gifts

The Long Goodbye

A Beginner's Guide to the End

When Breath Becomes Air

To read to a child, or to hand to a teen.

When Someone Dies

The Memory Box: A Book About Grief

The Invisible String

Tear Soup

Lifetimes

Healing Your Grieving Heart for Teens

A Grieving Teen

How to be there for a child after a loss.

A Parent's Guide to Raising Grieving Children

The Grieving Child

35 Ways to Help a Grieving Child

A Parent's Guide to Managing Childhood Grief

When your grief wants somewhere to go.

Healing After Loss

How to Carry What Can't Be Fixed