Grief Go-To’s

What’s Your Grief  put together an outline of “My Grief Favorites.” It is an excellent exercise for looking at the different resources that I’ve found helpful. Reading about or hearing people share about grief makes me feel normal. Here is a list of the resources that have helped me since 2012.

My Grief Favorites:

📚 Grief book self-help or workbook:

• Grief is Love: Living with Loss by Marisa Renee Lee
• Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief by Claire Bidwell Smith
• Before and After Loss by Lisa M. Shulman, MD
• It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine
• What’s Your Grief? by Eleanor Haley, MS, and Litsa Williams, MA, LCSW-C
• Where the Hell is God? by Richard Leonard, SJ
• Moving on Doesn’t Mean Letting Go by Gina Moffa, LCSW

📘 Grief book novel or memoir:

• Signs of Life: A Memoir by Natalie Taylor. I read this book the year before Mike
  died and then reread it after Mike died because I could relate to the grief
  that she was going through, although our circumstances were different.
• The Phone Booth at the Edge of the
  World by Laura Imai Messina. “Inspired  by a real phone booth in Japan with its
  disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011
  tsunami.” It’s one of the best books that captures grief over several years of
  the two main characters’ lives. There are a lot of quotable passages in this
  book.
• Katherine Center has written many novels that deal with grief, not necessarily with death. I’ve read How to Walk Away and Things You Save in the Fire.

🎬 Depiction of grief in a movie:

• “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”

• "Philadelphia"

📺 Depiction of grief in a television show:

• “After Life” Netflix
• “Shrinking” Apple TV+
• “The Bear” Hulu

🎤 Podcasts about grief:

• What’s Your Grief Podcast
• All There Is with Anderson Cooper
• Good Mourning Grief Podcast
• Here After with Megan Devine
• Grief Club: The Podcast with Addison Brasil
• Grief Out Loud-The episode “Normalizing Grief” with Grant Garry talking about his documentary “Meet Me Where I Am”

✍️ Lyric or verse about grief:

• “I’m flooded by a flashback, your face
  in a photograph. I just want to stay here with you looking like that.” Bre Kennedy’s “Keep Going Back”
• “But you’ll never really know what
  it’s like
  ‘Til you wake up to some real bad news
  You’ll never really know how it feels
  ‘Til it happens to you” “Until it Happens to You” Sasha Alex Sloan

💬 Quote about grief:

• “Because that’s all we can do: carry the sorrow when we have to and absolutely savor the joy when we can. Life is always, always both.” How to Walk Away by Katherine Center
• “…(Yui) concluded that memories were like objects, like the soccer ball that was found on the coast of Alaska a year after the tsunami, 3000 miles away, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Sooner or later, they always floated back to the surface.” The Phone Book at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina

🎵 Songs about or inspired by grief: Some of these songs I included because of where I was in my grief.

• “Keep Going Back” Bre Kennedy
• “Two Ghosts” Morning Crush
• “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” “Paradise” by Bruce Springsteen
• “Until It Happens to You” Sasha Alex Sloan
• “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” Green  Day
• “Brothers in Arms” Dire Straits
• “Nobody Knows” The Lumineers
• “These Are the Days of Our Lives” Queen
• “Sky Blue and Black” by Jackson Browne
• “No One is Alone” From “Into The Woods
• “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” Death Cab for Cutie
• “Home” Bear’s Den
• “Under You” Foo Fighters

🎨 Go-to coping tool:

My number one tool is going out in nature. That is where I find the most peace. Focused breathing, meditation, photography, and crying are also helpful.

🆘 Grief resource or organization:

When Mike died in 2012, I went to two closed groups at Hospice for spouses/partners who had died, even though Mike hadn’t been in Hospice. They were lifesavers, helping me walk through grief with other people who were widows/widowers. There are still things that were said in those sessions that I carry with me today as I walk through the grief of my mom and dad’s death.

Free virtual grief workshops have been helpful this year. I’ve attended a monthly one by Wendy Kessler, held the first Wednesday of the month through the end of this year. I have gained so much insight from these workshops.