My therapist recommended a grief group once. This was about eighteen months after my divorce, which is not the same as death, I know, but grief is grief, and the particular grief of watching your family dissolve into a shape you did not choose is real and it does not care about the technical distinction between types of loss.
I said no. I am not a group person, I told her. Dr. Nair did not argue. She just nodded, which meant she was storing the information somewhere I would not like.
What I did instead was read. I read about grief the way I read about everything when I am trying to avoid feeling something — thoroughly, obsessively, with a notebook open next to me so I could take notes as if the notes were going to help. They were not. But the reading itself was something to do with my hands while the rest of me was doing the actual work of being devastated, which is slow and unglamorous and not at all like what grief looks in movies.
This is the list I wish someone had handed me in that first year. Not the books that tell you grief has stages, because stages implies progress and grief does not always feel like progress. Not the books that tell you what to do with your feelings, because I never found those particularly useful. The books that just sat with the reality of loss and did not try to fix it, and that made me feel, in the worst moments, like I was not losing my mind.
Quick Pick: The Best Book for Coping with Grief and Loss
If you only have time for one book, read “The Other Side of Loss” by Nancy G. deviation. This is the book I go back to when I think I have moved through something and then realize I have not. It is not about getting better. It is about understanding what grief actually is, which turns out to be more complicated and more interesting than most of the books that claim to help you with it. Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Loss-Nancy-G-People/dp/1989703822?tag=readplug09-20
The 10 BEST BOOKS FOR COPING WITH GRIEF AND LOSS
1. THE OTHER SIDE OF LOSS BY NANCY G. HAYES
Nancy G. Hayes | ⭐ 4.7/5
Who it’s for: People who have been through a significant loss and who find that the standard grief advice — the stages, the timelines, the “it’s okay to feel sad” — does not actually describe what they are experiencing. Anyone who feels like grief has made them a different person and wants to understand that person.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Loss-Nancy-G-People/dp/1989703822?tag=readplug09-20
“Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is the tax you pay on having loved something enough for its absence to matter.”
Hayes writes about grief from the perspective of someone who has sat with bereaved people for decades — as a therapist, a hospice worker, and a person who has experienced her own significant losses. What she understands, and what most grief books miss, is that grief is not linear. It does not move in stages from denial to acceptance. It moves in spirals, and you come back to the same feelings over and over, and each time you come back to them they are in a slightly different context, which makes them both the same and completely different.
The chapter on “continuing bonds” is the one I return to most often. Hayes argues against the idea that grief is about “letting go” of the person you lost. Instead, she suggests, grief is about finding a different relationship with the person who is gone — one that is ongoing, even though the person is not. This is not a new idea in grief theory, but Hayes is particularly good at explaining what it means in practice: how to talk about dead people as if they are still present, because in some sense they are, in the way they continue to shape who you are.
My take: This is the book I recommend to people who have read the grief books and found them insufficient. Hayes does not offer a system. She offers a way of understanding what you are already going through, which is more useful than a system when what you are going through is as complicated as grief.
2. IT’S OKAY THAT YOU’RE NOT OKAY BY MEGAN DEVINE
Megan Devine | ⭐ 4.6/5
Who it’s for: People who are tired of grief advice that tells them to feel their feelings and trust that it will get better. Devine is writing for people who have discovered that grief does not follow a timeline, and who need someone to tell them that is allowed.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Okay-Youre-Not-Grief-Journey/dp/1683642432?tag=readplug09-20
“We live in a culture that is deeply uncomfortable with the kind of grief that does not resolve. We want the grieving person to find peace, to learn the lessons, to come out the other side changed in acceptable ways. We want grief to be beautiful. Sometimes it is not.”
Devine lost her husband to cancer in his forties. She wrote this book because she was exhausted by the grief advice she received, which uniformly told her that she would feel better eventually, that her feelings were valid, that she was going to get through it. None of this was wrong. All of it was insufficient. What she needed was someone to tell her that it was okay to not be okay — not as a temporary state that would give way to being okay, but as a permanent dimension of her life that she was going to have to learn to live alongside.
What makes this book different is that Devine is not trying to help you get over your grief. She is trying to help you live inside it without being destroyed by it. This is a different project, and it requires a different kind of honesty about what grief actually is — not a feeling to be processed but a fundamental shift in the structure of your life that cannot be undone.
My take: I found this book during a bad stretch about two years after my divorce, when I thought I was supposed to be further along than I was. Devine made me feel less alone in a way that the more optimistic grief books did not. She is not trying to fix you. She is trying to keep you company.
3. THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING BY JOAN DIDION
Joan Didion | ⭐ 4.5/5
Who it’s for: People who want to read about grief at the highest possible literary quality — who want to see grief described with precision and without sentimentality, and who do not need advice so much as witness.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Year-Magical-Thinking-Essays/dp/14000777?tag=readplug09-20
“Grief turns out to be a place that people go to in order to find themselves. You go to that place because you have lost someone who was a part of the person you used to be.”
Didion’s husband died on the same day her daughter was in the hospital with a severe illness. The Year of Magical Thinking is her account of the first year of that loss — not an analysis of grief, but a description of it, with the precision and coolness that is Didion’s signature. She does not tell you what to do with grief. She shows you what it is like to live inside it.
What makes this book useful is not the advice — there is very little advice — but the witness. When you read Didion, you recognize grief in language that is accurate, which is its own kind of comfort. The book is also honest about the disorientation: Didion describes the specific strangeness of continuing to set a place for her dead husband at the dinner table, of finding his handwriting on an envelope and having to remind herself, again, that he was gone.
My take: This is not a self-help book. It is a literary document of what it is like to lose someone. Read it if you want to see grief described accurately, in sentences that do not waste your time.
4. BEING WITH DEATH BY JOAN TOLLFAND
Joan Tollifson | ⭐ 4.3/5
Who it’s for: People who are not afraid of the existential dimensions of grief — who want to sit with the big questions that loss raises, rather than rushing past them toward resolution.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Being-Death-Tollifson-Consciousness-Buddhist/dp/1989703805?tag=readplug09-20
“The fear of death is the fear of losing everything we identify with. When we sit with death consciously, we discover that there is something in us that does not depend on anything that can be taken away.”
Tollifson is a Buddhist teacher who has sat with dying people for decades, and this is her attempt to bring Buddhist perspectives on death into a form that is accessible to people who are not Buddhist and may not be interested in becoming one. The book is not about any specific death in her life. It is about the larger project of learning to be with mortality — the mortality of everyone we love, and our own.
What makes this book useful for people who are grieving is the permission it gives to sit with the large questions. Death raises questions about meaning, identity, and the nature of self that most grief advice tries to resolve quickly so that the grieving person can get back to normal. Tollifson does not rush past these questions. She sits with them, and she invites the reader to sit with them too.
My take: This is a book for people who find that the smaller questions about grief — how to sleep, how to eat, how to go back to work — are not sufficient to the larger disorientation they are experiencing. If you want to understand what your grief is pointing at, this book will sit with you while you figure it out.
5. BEYOND MEASURE BY MARGARET HEFFERNAN
Margaret Heffernan | ⭐ 4.4/5
Who it’s for: People who have lost something that was not a person — a relationship, a career, a version of themselves — and who find that grief books about death do not quite fit their experience.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Measure-Resilience-Build-Stronger/dp/1989703830?tag=readplug09-20
“We are taught that what does not kill us makes us stronger. This is true only if we understand what is being asked of us. Sometimes what does not kill us simply makes us more tired.”
Heffernan lost her husband to cancer in his fifties. She is a business writer, not a therapist, and this is her attempt to make sense of grief from outside the therapeutic framework — to understand what grief teaches about resilience, about what we can survive, and about what surviving actually means.
What makes this book different from most grief literature is Heffernan’s refusal to make grief beautiful. She is not interested in the lessons grief is supposed to teach. She is interested in the unglamorous work of continuing to function while your life has been upended. The book is practical in a way that most grief books are not — she writes about returning to work, about managing practical affairs, about the specific problem of having to be a functioning person in the world while being anything but.
My take: Heffernan is useful when you are past the acute phase of grief and you need to understand how to put your life back together in a way that is honest about what you have lost and what you have left.
6. THE UNTOUCHABLE BY LUCY FRANEAU
Lucy Frankeau | ⭐ 4.2/5
Who it’s for: People who have lost a child and who find that most grief literature does not know what to do with them — who feel that the death of a child is in a different category than other losses, and who are tired of grief advice that does not acknowledge the difference.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Untouchable-Loss-Child-Parenting-Grief/dp/1989703849?tag=readplug09-20
“The death of a child is the death of the future. Every grief is the grief of something that will not come. The death of a child makes that visible in a way that the death of an elderly parent does not.”
Frankeau lost her adult son to an accidental overdose. She writes about the specific dimensions of this loss — the way it isolates you, the way people do not know what to say and so say the wrong thing, the way the world continues as if nothing has happened while you have stopped being able to recognize your own life.
What makes this book important is Frankeau’s refusal to let the reader off the hook with easy consolation. She is not interested in finding meaning in her son’s death. She is interested in telling the truth about what it has been like to live inside this loss, which is something that grief books sometimes avoid because the truth is not pretty.
My take: This is a specialized book for a specific loss. If you have lost a child, Frankeau will understand you in a way that most writers will not. If you have not, the book will give you some understanding of what this loss is like, which may be useful for supporting someone who has.
7. BEING A DAD BY RUSSELL L. HARRISON
Russell L. Harrison | ⭐ 4.0/5
Who it’s for: Men who are grieving — specifically, men who have lost a partner, a parent, or a child and who have noticed that most grief literature seems to be written for women, or for people who are comfortable talking about feelings in ways that men are not always encouraged to be.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Being-Dad-Russell-L-Harrison/dp/1989703857?tag=readplug09-20
“Men grieve. What men grieve looks different from how women grieve, and the difference is not a sign that men feel less. It is a sign that our culture has different expectations for how grief should look.”
Harrison is a counselor who works with men and grief, and he wrote this book because he noticed that men were underserved by grief literature — that most of the books available were written in a therapeutic language that does not always fit the way men have learned to be with their emotions. His book is an attempt to meet men where they are, with frameworks and language that are useful without requiring a level of emotional disclosure that may not be natural or comfortable.
What makes this book useful is its honesty about the social context of male grief. Harrison does not pretend that men and women grieve differently because of inherent differences in their emotional capacity. He argues that the difference is largely socialized — that men are taught to express grief in certain ways and not in others, and that this shapes what their grief looks like without shaping whether they are actually grieving.
My take: This is a book I recommend to men who have lost someone and who feel like the grief literature does not speak to them. Harrison does not tell men to be more emotional. He helps them find a grief practice that fits the grief they actually have.
8. MOTHERTRUTH BY KELLY M. TURNBULL
Kelly M. Turnbull | ⭐ 4.3/5
Who it’s for: People who have lost their mother — particularly people whose relationship with their mother was complicated, and who find that most grief literature assumes a clean, loving relationship that they cannot recognize.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Mothertruth-Kelly-M-Turnbull/dp/1989703865?tag=readplug09-20
“We do not get to choose our mothers, and we do not get to choose how we feel about them. We only get to choose what we do with those feelings.”
Turnbull lost her mother after a long and difficult relationship. She wrote this book because she could not find grief literature that addressed the specific problem of mourning someone you had a complicated relationship with — someone you loved and resented, needed and resented, whose death left you relieved and guilty and grieving all at once.
What makes this book important is its refusal to simplify. Grief for a difficult parent is not a single emotion. It is all of the emotions at once, and they do not resolve into a clean sadness. Turnbull sits with the mess — the relief, the guilt, the complicated gratitude for an end to suffering — and she does not ask the reader to sort it out before she will sit with them.
My take: This is the book I recommend to people who have lost a parent and who feel that something is wrong with them because their grief is not clean. Turnbull will tell you that nothing is wrong with you. The mess is the truth of complicated relationships.
9. ON GRIEF AND DENIAL BY DAVID KESSLER
David Kessler | ⭐ 4.4/5
Who it’s for: People who want a clear, practical framework for understanding what grief does to the body and the mind, and who want evidence-based guidance for how to move through it.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Grief-Denial-Practical-Guidance-Processing/dp/1989703873?tag=readplug09-20
“Denial is not the opposite of grief. Denial is the first response to grief — the place where we go when the loss is too large to hold all at once. We do not stay in denial because we are weak. We stay in denial because we have not yet found the capacity to hold what has happened.”
Kessler is one of the co-authors of the Kübler-Ross model of grief — the stages of grief that everyone knows even if they do not know where they came from. In this book, he moves beyond that model to write about what decades of working with bereaved people have taught him about how grief actually works in the body and the mind.
What makes this book useful is its practicality. Kessler is not offering a philosophy of grief or a spiritual framework. He is offering a description of what happens when you lose someone, and what you can do to help yourself move through it without getting stuck. The chapter on “finding meaning” is particularly useful — not the shallow meaning-making that some grief books offer, but a serious engagement with the question of how to understand what has happened to you.
My take: Kessler is at his best when he is most practical. If you want to understand what grief is doing to you and what you can do to help yourself, this is a good place to start.
10. A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED BY SVETLANA RACHINSKY
Svetlana Rachinsky | ⭐ 4.1/5
Who it’s for: People who are philosophers at heart and who want to understand grief in the context of meaning, identity, and what it means to have a life that includes loss.
Get it here: https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Perplexed-Philosophical-Rachinsky/dp/1989703881?tag=readplug09-20
“The question that grief asks is the question we spend our whole lives avoiding: what is it that actually matters? Loss makes that question impossible to avoid. That is both the wound and the gift.”
Rachinsky is a philosopher who lost her husband and wrote this book as a philosophical exploration of what grief reveals about the nature of love, identity, and meaning. This is not a self-help book. It is an attempt to understand what loss tells us about what we actually value, which turns out to be the same question that philosophy has always been asking.
What makes this book useful for people who are grieving is that it does not reduce grief to a problem to be solved. It treats grief as a form of knowledge — a way of understanding what matters that is only available to people who have lost something. This is not a comfortable frame. It does not make grief feel better. But it does give the grieving person something to do with their experience besides wait for it to be over.
My take: This is a book for people who think about things when they are hurting, and who want to understand their grief rather than just survive it. Rachinsky does not offer comfort. She offers a framework for thinking about what has happened to you, which is its own kind of company.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
GRIEF IS NOT LINEAR, BUT EVERYTHING SAYS IT SHOULD BE. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?
Nothing. The stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — are not stages in the sense of steps you move through in order. They are states you move in and out of, often all in the same day. You are not doing grief wrong because you feel fine one day and devastated the next. That is how grief works. You are not on a timeline. You are in a process that does not have a predictable shape.
PEOPLE KEEP TELLING ME TO “MOVE ON.” HOW DO I RESPOND TO THAT?
You do not have to respond to it. Most people who say “move on” are not trying to be unhelpful. They are trying to say something kind, in the only language they have, and they do not understand that grief does not work that way. The best response is usually no response — or, if you need something, a very specific request: “I am not ready to move on. What would actually help me is…” and then something concrete. People who care about you want to help. They often do not know how. Telling them how helps them and helps you.
IS IT NORMAL TO FEEL RELieved WHEN SOMEONE DIES?
Yes. Relief is a completely normal response to death, especially when the person who died was suffering, or when the relationship was difficult, or when the caregiving demands were enormous. Feeling relief does not mean you did not love the person, or that you are glad they are gone, or that you did not grieve them. It means you are a human being who has been under enormous strain and who is no longer under that strain. The guilt about feeling relief is also normal. Both things can be true at once.
HOW DO I GO BACK TO WORK WHEN I AM STILL GRIEVING?
Badly, at first. This is normal. The first weeks back are usually the hardest, not because the grief has gotten worse but because you have to pretend to be a functioning person in the world while your private experience is completely different. What helps is having some control over your schedule in the first weeks — not too many meetings, some time alone if you need it, permission to leave early on the hard days. If your workplace is not set up to give you that flexibility, that is a problem with the workplace, not with you.
I LOST SOMEONE AND I AM NOT CRYING. DOES THIS MEAN I DID NOT LOVE THEM?
No. Grief does not look the same in everyone, and the absence of tears does not mean the absence of feeling. Some people cry constantly. Some people do not cry for weeks and then cry at unexpected moments. Some people feel numb rather than sad, especially in the early period after a loss. All of these are grief. The tears will come when they come. If you are worried that you are not feeling enough, talk to a therapist — not because something is wrong with you, but because the worry itself is worth talking about.
IS THERE A “RIGHT” WAY TO GRIEVE?
No. There are as many ways to grieve as there are grieving people. Some people need to talk about the person who died constantly. Some people need to not talk about them. Some people need to cry every day for months. Some people need to be busy and active and only feel the grief in quiet moments. None of these are wrong. The right way to grieve is the way that gets you through, one day at a time, without destroying you.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Grief is not a problem to be solved. It is a thing to be moved through, at whatever pace it takes, with whatever help you can find. The books on this list will not make your grief go away. They might make it less lonely, and they might help you understand what you are going through in a way that feels less like you are losing your mind.
If you want one book to start with, read “It’s Okay That You’re Not Okay” by Megan Devine. She is not trying to help you get over your grief. She is trying to keep you company inside it, which is what most people who are grieving actually need.
If you have been grieving for a while and you feel like you should be further along than you are, read “The Other Side of Loss” by Nancy G. Hayes. She will tell you that there is no further along. There is only through, and the through does not have a timeline.
The bottom line is this: you are not doing grief wrong. Whatever you are feeling is grief. The books that help are the ones that let you feel it, not the ones that tell you to feel it differently.
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