In my series of Christmas reads on death and bereavement I have also picked up a few books with real stories of bereavement. I think for the interested in the topic they are all really valuable, especially that despite all the bereavement counselling models, one often ends up feeling isolated and alone with grief. The only way to connect with others and feel that this experience is not ours alone – move beyond despair and permanence of death – is, possibly, to read about similar experiences of other people.

“Me after YOU” by Lucie Brownlee – I was really surprised by the honesty of Lucie’s journey after the loss of her husband. Initially, I found the language and her self-destructive behaviors a bit shocking, but only from my point of view. It was really helpful to reflect on that because Lucie could be my friend and I could easily understand her process of bereavement. I simply had to learn to look at it from her, not my point of view. It’s a brilliant story of the few months of bereavement – really feminine, honest, and helpful.

“All at Sea” by Decca Aitkenhead – Decca is a public figure and so her loss was heavily covered by the mainstream media which in a weird way makes it more “real” to me as a reader. I can Google her name, find the photos of her and her partner. I can imagine the man she lost and see him play with his children too. That is not to say that Decca’s loss is any more important than Lucie’s – actually reading this book as my second real was also a great exercise: everyone’s loss is different and it cannot even remotely be compared to ours or anybody else’s. That is why it is so painful – it’s extremely isolating. In this book too, the readers can follow Decca through the initial loss and all the year following it. I also found out online that even though she was left with two little boys, she has also battled cancer – what an extraordinary and challenging life! I think we can learn a lot about resilience from her and other authors in this post.

“My Mourning Year: A Memoir of Bereavement, Discovery and Hope” by Andrew Marshall – Andrew lost his partner, Thom, quite early on in their relationship and again my feeling was one of surprise – he is so very honest about his thoughts, actions and feelings. It really helps to understand the bereavement so much more if one reads memoirs written in such an open manner. I am ever so grateful for having the opportunity to share Andrew’s loss and learn from it too. Andrew is a relationship therapist so his insights are valuable to me on a different level too – it’s really useful to see how counselling can heal or might not be so helpful.

“On living” by Kerry Egan – Kerry’s book is a little bit different because it’s not her story, but a collection of stories from the hospice she was working at. It is written to encourage our love for life so each story contains a learning, a discovery made by people facing their death. Quite frankly most of those discoveries are things we battle every day but to hear it from those people means a lot and has more value – it’s not theoretical, nor is it something we know but avoid confronting. It’s the learnings and regrets from the point in life where we have nothing else to lose. So it is very real.

I loved all four books and I strongly recommend them to therapists but also to people who wish to understand the bereavement better. They are sad stories but they all contain a grain of truth and love for life, so they are very meaningful

As I am approaching the end of my bereavement support course and facing the beginning of the Introduction to Psychology (a refresher I aim to take up this spring), I am summing up everything I have learned so far. I appreciate that my blog might be a bit depressing nowadays as I am posting a lot about death but here, in this post, I would like to mention a few books that aim to demystify this and sibling themes of our lives: solitude and time.

1. “The worm at the core” by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski – sometimes I wonder why we don’t read books like this as mandatory in primary or at least secondary school. I so wish I was given this book much earlier! Three academics decided to look at the idea of death being the source of most of our daily problems in private life but also on a societal level. This book contains results of their own dedicated experiments, but also a really good write up of other research done all around the world. Five years after I was born Ernest Becker wrote a monumental book “The Denial of Death” which according to him is our defense mechanism, the ultimate form of our survival instinct. It is also the cause of many mental illnesses and the birth of our need to transcend death through heroic actions. (see for more here). “The worm at the core” is the terror of death and the authors of the book examine various consequences stretching to most areas of our lives. I particularly enjoyed the part about our need for religion and culture, but the areas dedicated to the birth of nationalism stroke particular cord with me due to the most recent events in the US and Europe. In a strange way, I found the terror of death theory comforting, maybe because sometimes it’s easier if the root of a problem becomes visible? I am not sure. I strongly recommend this book.
2. “A philosophy of Loneliness” by Lars Svendsen was useful to me as I have experienced many forms of loneliness and I do find solitude extremely rewarding. I picked up this book from the library shelf on bereavement but I had selfish motives: I really wanted to learn more about the way we define and relate to our loneliness because I myself know for a fact there are happy and unhappy types of it. I found it interesting to learn about types of loneliness. There is the distinction between the chronic, situational and transient loneliness, for example. Chronic loneliness is something we suffer from for a long time. Situational loneliness is usually triggered by an event in life or loss of a person. Transient loneliness is more sublime and happens occasionally – we feel lonely for just a bit. There is also the distinction between social and emotional loneliness (Robert S. Weiss) where socially lonely personal lacks integration and seeks to be part of a community and emotional one is a lack of a close relationship with someone specific. All of those types of loneliness can occur separately and actually many people who are socially active still report feeling lonely. I also like the idea of defining various words related to loneliness. First of all, loneliness implies that we long for something we want and we don’t seem to be getting it – it’s a feeling of longing and waiting. But there is also being alone, solitude – the feeling of not being connected to others, but with no negative sentiment. And there is also abandonment – the state where we lose someone and sometimes also due to their own choice so the hurt can be stronger. Svendsen also talks about the underlying idea of trust in human relationships – something I think about a lot these days – and its role in loneliness. I found this book really helpful for myself but also for my future work with bereavement.
3. “Ten thoughts about time” by Bodil Jonsson – I almost do not want to disclose what this book is all about as it’s so precious! I don’t think we talk or think about time enough and in the right way and Jonsson managed to convey it in a very academic, logical way. It’s a very small, light, fun read with great ideas, simple to implement too. But it’s worth stopping at every chapter and really getting it right. For example, time is your best asset – well, it took me almost 40 years to understand that it’s not money but time that’s my most precious but also most rewarding currency. I can stretch it, run through it, forget it and create more of it if I wish too – it’s possible because time is as subjective as anything else. So if there is anything I took out of this book (apart from a lot of good small tips, of course) is the author’s story of her older friend pointing out that if she feels she’s losing the grip on events now she should wait and see at older age – “just wait till your older!” To this author observed: “If my older friend’s observation was generally true, then the acceleration of time passing, which I had just begun to notice, would never decrease. This it followed that life would end much sooner than I wanted it to, because I enjoyed living very much” I will leave you with that and encourage to read the rest.

All three books really helped me gain perspective on death and bereavement counselling, but I think they are generally really useful reads.

Today I would like to recommend three books with practical tips on how to approach bereavement – our own or someone else’s.

1. “The essential guide to life after bereavement” by Judy Carole Kauffmann and Mary Jordan – possibly the most practical book I read so far with the actual tips on how to talk about the news of death, how to talk to kids, how to manage guilt, about the impact of death on the complex family systems but also about memorials, managing anniversaries and moving forward. It’s a very short and compact book – I think more suitable for people who need to do it now and want to find out the “how to” more than underlying processes of grief.
2. “Working with bereavement” by Janet Wilson – Wilson is a nurse and academic with practical counselling experience so her focus is also very practical, but it does contain a little bit more dept. This book contains the best write up of all leading bereavement theories that I have seen so far (a real treasure for a student), then moves on to explain the process of death and what happens next. Wilson collects the practical tips of how to support the bereaved but she is also looking at specific important areas: context (culture, faith, spirituality), traumatic death and other specific circumstances and difficult, tabu types of dying (suicide, miscarriage, termination, neonatal and other child death). I think I appreciate the last two chapters the most: the unrecognised grief (for example dementia) and self-care for people who work with the bereaved – an area increasingly more and more important for counselling professionals. I think this book should be in the library of any therapist, really.
3. “We need to talk about grief” by Annie Broadbe is what it states in the title: it’s a call to encourage us all to open up and speak up about our grief. The main problem with death is the fact we really don’t want to, nor know how to talk about it without upsetting ourselves and others. So when it comes to those moments when we need support after losing someone close, the society is everything but prepared to hold us. Broadbe collected stories of people’s bereavement and closed each chapter with a few practical tips and notes so when you read her stories think of them as specific experiences but also overall themes.

All fo the above books are now on my shelf and if you are looking for first aid help in bereavement for yourself or a someone else, do start with those.

I read a lot of books about bereavement recently, but this one stands out for the obvious reason: I work in social media so I remember Sheryl Sandberg posting the first post after her husband’s death. I remember the collective reaction to her grief going out in ripples across Facebook and other social media channels. I remember feeling a bit empowered that I could post a note and send her my condolences – even though we don’t know each other as such, I could still feel the pain of her loss. Obviously, I have no idea how it was for her and so I am really happy that she has published her story of bereavement in the book “Option B“. Not much is said about the role of social media in support for the bereaved and I am really interested in it. I have been through difficult times in life – none of which can remotely compare to her loss – but I still have received a lot of support and energy from my online networks. We are humans – regardless of the screen we are looking at.

I really like the honesty of Sheryl’s book and her focus on resilience, on the future of her kids, on treasuring the memory of her husband. But most of all I like the fact that she had the ability to ask for help and accept it. I am sure her days were so very hard and yet, surrounded by lovely people, we also can feel lonely and we can feel extremely isolated in grief. It seems to me from my studies so far that opening up to help, to support and learning to ask for help too, is crucial. There’s no “getting better” in grief. Thigs change, they never remain the same and the loss leaves a terrible emptiness which in time we might learn to live with. Build around it, possibly. That work – the PROCESS of grief – is much easier and less burdening, if we learn to do it with or next to others. That’s what I got out of the “Option B”. Would love to know what others think of it.

Additional reads:

• The Guardian
• Forbes
• Financial Times
• Wharton talk

My favourite quotes:

“I learned that friendship isn’t only what you can give, it’s what you’re able to receive.”

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.”

“Poetry, philosophy, and physics all teach us that we don’t experience time in equal increments.”

“Happiness is the frequency of positive experiences, not the intensity.”

“Psychologists have found that over time we usually regret the chances we missed, not the chances we took.”

“Self-compassion comes from recognizing that our imperfections are part of being human.”

“I am more vulnerable than I thought, but much stronger than I ever imagined.”

“A traumatic experience is a seismic event that shakes our belief in a just world, robbing us of the sense that life is controllable, predictable, and meaningful.”

(3P’s of pesimism): “(1) personalization—the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever.”

“Avoiding feelings isn’t the same as protecting feelings.”

“ When it’s safe to talk about mistakes, people are more likely to report errors and less likely to make them.”

“Blaming our actions rather than our character allows us to feel guilt instead of shame.”

“One of the most important things I’ve learned is how deeply you can keep loving someone after they die. You may not be able to hold them or talk to them, and you may even date or love someone else, but you can still love them every bit as much.”

“Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.” Slowly,”

“Even in the face of the most shocking tragedy of my life, I could exert some control over its impact.”

“These aren’t personal questions. They are human questions”

“Post-traumatic growth could take five different forms: finding personal strength, gaining appreciation, forming deeper relationships, discovering more meaning in life, and seeing new possibilities.”

“Option A is not available. so let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.” Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B.”