GRIEF
General Grief:
1. Good Grief: Experiencing Loss by Carol Lee, Fourth Estate Limited, London, 1994. Superstitions, fears, and cliches make health grieving difficult in Western European cultures. Equally damaging is the way grief is so often denied. An excellent overview book.
2. The Courage to Grieve by Judy Tatelbaum, Harper and Row, New York, 1980. A gestalt therapist specializing in grief provides a roadmap to creative living, recovery, and growth following sorrow.
3. In The Midst of Winter edited by Mary Jane Moffat, Vintage Books, New York, 1982. A creative writer compiles helpful poetry and prose passages from Catallus to Camus, Shakespeare to Virgina Wolf, Lady Ise to Adrienne Rich.
Parental Bereavement:
1. A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies by Anne McCracken and Mary Semel, Hazelden, Minnesota, 1998. A collection of poetry, fiction, and essays compiled by a social worker and journalist, both of whom have lost a child.
2. Only Spring: On Mourning the Death of My Son by Gordon Livingston, Harper, San Francisco, 1995. Dr. Livingston, a psychiatrist, has lost 2 sons, one through suicide and the other through leukemia.
3. Give Sorrow Words: A Father's Passage Through Grief by Tom Crider, Algonquin Books, Chapel Hill, 1996. Death of an only daughter in college through the eyes of her father, who did not have the support of firm religious beliefs.
4. Creative Acts of Healing After a Baby Dies by Judith van Praag, Paseo Press, Seattle, 1999. A Dutch-American jill of all trades uses creativity to combat her grief following the death of her baby girl.
5. Paula by Isabel Allende. Harper Collins, New York, 1995. This expressive, well known Chilean novelist tells the heartbreaking story of her adult daughter's death from porphyria.
6. The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood. WW Norton & Co., New York, 2007. A beautiful, emotionally gripping novel about a mother who turns to a knitting group to help her cope with the loss of her 5 year old daughter and only child.
7. A Map of the World by Jane Hamilton. Anchor, 1999. A haunting novel about two couples in the Mid West who are neighbors following the calamitous, accidental death of one of their toddlers.
8. Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire. Theatre Communications Group, 2006. An amazingly synchronous play with many of the same themes as Aria.
8. The Compassionate Friends is non-profit, non-denominational support group that offers friendship, understanding, and hope to bereaved parents and their families. Other excellent websites with grief resources: Centering Corporation and Coping with Loss site of a personal injury laywer.
Spousal Grief:
1. A Steady Longing for Flight. A book of poems by Joannie Kervran. Floating Bridge Press, Seattle, 1995. Exquisite poetry by a Seattle native.
2. Without. A book of poems by Donald Hall about the loss of his wife, the great poet, Jane Kenyon. Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1998. Another remarkable book of poetry by one of America's great poets.
3. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. Knopf, 2005. A startling honest though restrained memoir by this well known fiction writer of losing her beloved husband of many years while their only daughter was in a coma and eventually died.
Cancer Grief:
1. The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde, Aunt Lute Books, June 1980. A classic brief text on this warrior lesbian poet's battle with breast cancer and her own mortality.
2. Wet Earth and Dreams by Jane Lazarre, Duke University Press, Durham, 1998. Prolific writer from the New School of Social Research writes about her experiences with breast cancer.
3. Seeing the Crab: A Memoir of Dying by Christina Middlebrook, Basic Books, New York, 1996. Another memorable account of breast cancer from a Bay Area Jungian analyst.
4. I Want To Live! A story in The Pugilist at Rest by Thom Jones, Back Bay Books, Boston, 1994. An amazing story from the perspective of a woman dying of ovarian cancer.
Death of a Friend:
1. Olive's Ocean by Kevin Henkes, Harper Trophy, New York, 2003. An amazing young adult novel about how the loss of a young girl impacts her community, especially the life of her classmate and almost friend.
2. Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett. Harper Perennial, New York, April 2005. A moving memoir of the devoted, and at times tortured friendship of two great women writers: Ann Patchett (Bel Canto, Magician's Assistant, among others) and Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face, whose death by catalyzed the book).
Do you have any recommendations to add to these lists? If so, please drop me a note.