A memory journal for coping with losing a loved one. A beautiful gift to comfort the grieving heart. A keepsake filled with memories created by you dedicated to your loved […]
Peer Recommendations
Our peer recommendation category offers a space within our library for community members to recommend books related to grief and widowhood that they've found valuable. These books are not individually vetted, but have helped a widowed person who took the time to recommend the book to others.
A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss
Loss came suddenly for Jerry Sittser. In an instant, a tragic car accident claimed three generations of his family: his mother, his wife, and his young daughter. While most of […]
A Grief Like No Other
O’Hara is a therapist and her son was murdered in 1999. She offers concrete,practical, and compassionate steps for those who are grieving following a violent death such as suicide, drug […]
A Grief Observed
Written by a widower after his wife’s death as a way of surviving the “mad midnight moments”.
A Grief Workbook for Skeptics: Surviving Loss without Religion
Designed specifically for the nonbeliever, the author addresses the power of nature, the healing role of pets, setting up memorials, doing volunteer work, re-creating yourself without your loved one, and […]
A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor
A Journal for Jordan is a tender introduction, a loving good-bye, a reporter’s inquiry into her soldier’s life, and a heartrending reminder of the human cost of war.
A Life Continued
Donna Easter’s reminiscence of her husband’s death to prostate cancer cuts deep. Even if you’ve never lost a partner, grief comes in all shapes, she explains in her memoir, A […]
A Right Brain Awakening: What Grief Taught a Heartbroken Engineer
You’ve heard that behavior is dictated by your brain orientation. Either you’re right brained or left brained. If you’re right brained, you’re creative; if you’re left brained, you’re technical. Or […]
A Widow’s Guide to Healing
A Widow’s Guide to Healing: Gentle Support and Advice for the First 5 Years An inspiring, accessible, and empowering grief book for widows on how to navigate the unique challenges […]
A Widow’s Journey
Reflections on Walking Alone
A compassionate devotional written by a widow to encourage you through your darkest days.
A Widow’s Story: A Memoir
Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widow’s Story is the universally acclaimed author’s poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and […]
A Widow’s Walk: A Memoir of 9/11
On September 11, 2001, Marian Fontana lost her husband, Dave, a firefighter from the elite Squad 1 in Brooklyn, in the World Trade Center attack. A Widow’s Walk begins that […]
After Suicide Loss
Coping with your Grief
A practical guide for coping with suicide, from the first few days through the first year and beyond.
After This: When Life Is Over, Where Do We Go?
When Life is Over Where do we Go?
Discusses the important questions about life, love, death and what it means to be human with equal measures of skepticism and a broken-open heart. Drawing on her personal losses and […]
At Death Do Us Part: A Grieving Widower Heals After Losing his Wife to Breast Cancer
Following a long fight with breast cancer, Tracy’s death ended their 13-year marriage. In the months after his loss, Frederick Marx wrote about their time together (falling in love, their […]
At the Helm: The Young Widow’s Journey from Struggle to Strength
Audra O’Neil’s husband, Chad, passed away from cancer in 2015, at the age of thirty-nine. At the Helm: The Young Widow’s Journey from Struggle to Strength is a balance between […]
August Farewell: The Last Sixteen Days of a Thirty-Three-Year Romance
It was August 7, 2009 ,when the doctor stood at the foot of the hospital bed and with a deliberation that was both efficient and compassionate, looked directly at David […]
Available As Is: A Midlife Widow’s Search for Love
After losing her husband, George—her one and only since high school prom—to cancer, fifty-year-old Debbie Weiss found herself opening a new chapter of life that she didn’t know how to […]
Boldly into the Darkness: Living with Loss, Growing with Grief & Holding on to Happiness
Love. Loss. Hope. Repeat. Life for Autumn Toelle-Jackson started out on a happy and ordinary timeline. When she entered her thirties, however, tragedy made up for lost time. Over the […]
Change your Thoughts, Change your Life
Living the Wisdom of Your Tao
The interpretation of the Tao Te Ching.
Companion Through the Darkness
Vivid description of loss that captures the contradictory, wrenching, and chaotic emotions of grief. Each chapter stands on its own in describing her husband’s sudden death.
Confessions of a Mediocre Widow: Or, How I Lost My Husband and My Sanity
Involuntarily single. That’s the true story of where Catherine Tidd found herself just three weeks after turning thirty-one. With three children under six years old, no fix-it skills, no clue […]
Creative Grieving: A Hip Chick’s Path from Loss to Hope
Grief is often perceived as a dark and lonely journey; as a result, it is a topic we avoid in today’s society.¬ Within a 20-month period, Elizabeth Berrien endured the […]
Demystifying Grief: What You Need to Know to Heal
There are an estimated 258 million widows worldwide. Demystifying Grief is a primer for women who’ve lost their partners, an accessible handbook on the physical, emotional, and behavioral effects of […]
Don’t Take My Grief Away From Me
Nobody addresses the needs of a grieving person like Doug. His warm, conversational style takes the reader through all the emotions and experiences that accompany the death of a loved […]
Emalia: A Mother-Daughter Journey from Here to Beyond
In this book of inspiration and hope, Brooke Brown, Ph.D., shares the courageous journey of Emalia, her 41-year-old daughter—a vibrant mother, wife, and friend—as they navigate through her cancer diagnosis […]
Essene Book of Days
A seasonal journal, calendar, and guide for personal and spiritual growth.
Everything Happens For a Reason…And Other Lies I’ve Loved
This memoir is a meditation on sense-making when there’s no sense to be made, on letting go when we can’t hold on, and on being unafraid even when we’re terrified. […]
Falling Upward
Father Richard Rohr – the founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation — offers a new paradigm for understanding one of the most profound of life’s mysteries: how our […]
Filled With Gold: A Widow’s Story
Melissa Grahek Pierce clearly remembers the morning everything changed for her and her family. It was a snowy Saturday when she discovered her husband dead in their mountainside home. As […]
From Granny Panties to Thongs.
It has been said that, over the course of a lifetime, a person will use only a fraction of the brain¹s capacity to learn. This would also be true of […]
Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner
A recent gay widower may find that once the shock and initial confusion of losing his partner is overcome, there are still many hard, lonely, and overwhelming stages of grief […]
Goodnight Mr. Vincent Van Gogh
Part children’s book, part community art project. Lindsey wrote this after her husband died from suicide. The goal of this book is to help adults talk with children about suicide […]
Grief and the Spirit World: A Search for Comfort
What if, as we navigate loss and grief, our loved ones are walking beside us on the other side of the veil? What if we could learn to not only […]
Healing After Loss
Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief
Daily meditations for people who grieve.
Healing the Soul in the Age of the Brain
Why Medication Isn't Enough
There is no quick fix for the soul, and anxiety and depression may be signals of the souls unmet needs. Dr. Frattaroli suggests treating these needs by seeking a deeper […]
Healing Your Traumatized Heart
100 Practical Ideas After Someone You Love Dies A Sudden, Violent Death
Guide offers compassionate tips for those affected by a traumatic death. Each of the 100 suggestions is aimed at reducing the confusion, anxiety, and huge personal void in order to […]
Healthy Healing: A Guide to Working Out Grief Using the Power of Exercise and Endorphins
Healthy Healing addresses the physical, mental, and emotional effects of grief in a way that no other book in the category has ever done, offering a 12-week plan that empowers you […]
Heaven is for Real for Kids
Colton Burpo came back from his trip to heaven with a very important message: Jesus really, really loves children. In an effort to reach even more families with this eternally […]
Here if You Need Me
The true story of a journey from grief to faith to happiness as the author holds her family together in the wake of her husband’s death and pursues his dream […]
How To Live Life After Death
So, there is saying that says, “Whatever flies shall land at some point.” What this means is that, for everything that rises, it eventually comes down. It could land on […]
How to Survive the Loss of a Love
Comforting and inspiring book encompasses not only the medical and psychological advances in the treatment of loss, but also the author’s’ own experiences.
I’m Grieving as Fast as I Can: How Young Widows and Widowers Can Cope and Heal
A guide for young widows and widowers through the normal grieving process that highlights the special circumstances of an untimely death. Young widows and widowers share thoughts and dilemmas about […]
Journeying Through Grief (4-Book Set)
Journeying through Grief is a set of four short books to send to people at four crucial times during the first year after the loss of a loved one.
Learning to Be Me Without You
Learning to Be Me Without You is a love story about a diagnosis, one last adventure, a crisis of faith that erupts on the threshold of death, and a transformed […]
Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief
The death of a life partner poses unique challenges for lesbians. Lesbian Widows: Invisible Grief reveals the touching and very personal stories of twenty-five women, including the author, who were […]
Life Lessons
Two Experts on Death and Dying Teaches Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living
A guide through practical and spiritual lessons written by two experts on death and dying.
Life Without Lisa
Life Without Lisa is a “must read” for anyone who has lost someone dear through death. Author Rich Ballo bares his soul in this brutally honest account of being cast adrift […]
Living When a Loved One Has Died
When someone you love dies, Earl Grollman writes, “there is no way to predict how you will feel. The reactions of grief are not like recipes, with given ingredients, and […]
Living with Loss
Meditations for Grieving Widows
Daily companion guide for the first year of widowhood
Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time
Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was […]
Love Is Greater Than Pain: Secrets From the Universe for Healing After Loss
An extraordinary new mindful approach to healing after loss that taps into everyone’s ability to continue their relationship with those who have passed.
Loving Grief
When grief is the form your love takes, where do you turn? Do you escape, or enter, the loneliness, the emptiness, the pain? How much, how slowly, how fast? It’s […]
Man’s Search for Meaning
A 1946 book chronicling the experiences of an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II, and describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel […]
Mourning Men: A Journey Through Grief
Men grieve differently than women. We tend to withdraw while women reach out to one another for help. But we can reach out, too. Here are words of encouragement, comfort, […]
My Father’s Kite
My Father’s Kite, connects two sibling’s experience of profound loss to nature and the logical sequence of the seasons as a way to bridge, explore, and validate their feelings and […]
My Steve
My Steve is a biographical account of Terri Irwin’s life with her late husband, the zoo owner and television personality Steve Irwin.
Natalia’s Endless Love…A Love to Live For: Nurturing a Princess Heart
Like the magnificent pink afterglow of a late summer sunset, our magnanimous, happy, healthy, life-loving little girl Natalia made our universe complete. Our Princess. Pure love mixed in with two […]
No Death No Fear
Through Zen parables, guided meditations, and personal stories, Hanh explodes traditional myths of how we live and die. He shows us a way to live a life unfettered by fear.
No Time to Say Goodbye
Surviving the Suicide of a Loved One
The author brings suicide survival from the darkness into light, speaking frankly about the feeling of confusion, guilt, shame, anger and loneliness that are shared by many survivors.
Not in My Family: AIDS in the African-American Community
At long last, the time has come: the time for African American people to face the scourge that has affected it disproportionately for years, and to break through the cultural […]
On Life After Death
A collection of four essays based on studies of more than 20,000 people who had near death experiences.
On Your Own: A Widow’s Passage to Emotional and Financial Well-Being
In the completely updated and revised edition of this best-selling classic, the authors share the stories of four widows of different ages and circumstances whose road to recovery illustrates how […]
Open to Hope: Inspirational Stories for Handling the Holidays After Loss
Getting through the hectic holiday season can be especially tough when you’re grieving the loss of someone you love. There may even be more than one cherished person missing from […]
Option B
From Facebook’s COO and Wharton’s top-rated professor, the #1 New York Times best-selling authors of Lean In and Originals: a powerful, inspiring, and practical book about building resilience and moving […]
Perfection: A Memoir of Betrayal and Renewal
A breathtakingly honest, gloriously written memoir about the complexities of forgiveness when a young widow discovers her husband’s secret life after his death. Julie Metz seemed to have the perfect […]
Ramblings of a Forty-Something Widow
When a young woman is widowed, it is a sad time in her life. Rather than allowing this sad time in life to overpower her, the author has allowed it […]
Re-arranged, Never the Same: The Nature of Grief
Although we all live with the implicit knowledge that we will inevitably experience the loss of loved ones, when the time actually arrives the pain is no less excruciating. Re-arranged, […]
Rebuilding Your Life After Homicide
Rebuilding a new normal and a new way of living. Life as they knew it was different after the violent loss of their loved one. The most important message of […]
Remembering with Love
Messages of Hope for the First Year of Grieving and Beyond
Provides reassurance and compassion for those struggling with a loved one’s loss
Resilience
Hard-Won Wisdom for Living A Better Life
A book written by a former Navy SEAL and Naval Officer that consists of a series of letters written to a friend struggling with life after military service.
Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities
She’s one of the most beloved political figures in the country, and on the surface, seems to have led a charmed life. In many ways, she has. Beautiful family. Thriving […]
Sacred Shadow, Sacred Ground: A Vietnam War Widow’s Journey Through Unresolved Grief
Glenda shares her recovery as she candidly deals with three decades of unresolved grief. From her inner battlefield to the battlefield where her husband, Bruce, was killed in Quang Nam […]
Safe Passage
A book of meditations for people who grieve.
Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives
In this transcendent and infectiously wise memoir, Becky Aikman—a widow, too young, too modern to accept the role—forms an unlikely group with five other young widows, each seeking a way […]
Slipped Away
This is a memoir about a gentle soul who gave so much love and joy to others in spite of his own depression. Steve Tarpinian took his own life on […]
Smacked: A Story of White-Collar Ambition, Addiction, and Tragedy
Smacked, a brilliant and moving memoir of Eilene’s shocking discovery, one that sets her on a journey to find out how a man she knew for nearly thirty years became […]
Stay: A History of Suicide and the Arguments Against It
Both an academic and personal look at the “who, what, where, when, why” of suicide. For survivors who find themselves asking lots of questions about the subject or who want […]
Stepparenting the Grieving Child
To avoid landmines and to heal the family, stepparents need help navigating this complex and unfamiliar territory. Stepparenting the Grieving Child advises and encourages stepparents living with a child whose […]
Suicide Widow
Suicide Widow is about a young woman who has struggled her whole life with adversities and was forced into widowhood at 28 years old. This book touches on suicide, grief, […]
Supporting a Survivor of Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss: A Mindful Guide for Co-journeying through Grief
What can I do to help? When her life shifted from fairytale to nightmare due to her husband’s death by suicide, Michelle Ann Collins found herself in the darkest place […]
Surviving Spouse or Partner Suicide Loss: A Mindful Guide for Your Journey through Grief
How will I survive this loss? When her life shifted from fairytale to nightmare due to her husband’s death by suicide, Michelle Ann Collins found herself in the darkest place […]
Surviving: Finding Your Way from Grief to Healing
The death of a spouse or close loved one is one of the most devastating experiences an individual suffers. Whether it is sudden or after a prolonged illness, the death […]
The AfterGrief: Finding Your Way Along the Long Arc of Loss
A validating new approach to the long-term grieving process that explains why we feel “stuck,” why that’s normal, and how shifting our perception of grief can help us grow. Aren’t you […]
The Art of Being Yay!
In The Art of Being YAY! I tell juicy and scandalous anecdotes from my life that out drama a Lifetime TV movie. Through these stories I apply empowering thought tools […]
The Artists Way
A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
Nurtures your inner artist and shares hundred of exercises, activities and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter.
The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon
A candid memoir of love, art, and grief from a celebrated man of letters, United States poet laureate Donald Hall
The Book of Joy
Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
This book offers us a rare opportunity to experience the astonishing and unprecedented week together of Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from the first embrace to the final good-bye. […]
The Boxer’s Corner: A Cancer Caregiver’s Story of Love, Loss, and Isolation
Miguel Barron was living what he thought was the perfect life–married to the love of his life, with two healthy young boys, until his life took an unexpected turn.The Boxer’s […]
The Colors of Love and Loss
This story tells the tale of Carter and his Chameleon Family and how they process the colors of their loss and love in the unexpected death of their family member. […]
The Cool Part of His Pillow
The mid forties are that time in a gay man’s life when his major paradigm shifts from sexy to sensible. But when Barry Grooms’s partner of twenty years is killed […]
The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars
A Neuropsyhologist's Odyssey Through Consciousness
The author’s wife died of cancer. This book weaves a scientist’s understanding of the mind — its logic, its nuance, how we think about what makes a person — with […]
The End Is Just the Beginning: Lessons in Grieving for African Americans
A nationally revered minister and certified grief specialist shares words of comfort for Africans Americans in mourning.
The Forgiving Self
The Road from Resentment to Connection
About our struggle to forgive, Karen uses movies, people in the news, and sessions from his practice to illuminate the conflict between our wish to repair our relationships on one […]
The Hospice Doctor’s Widow: A Journal
Everyone facing death–their own or a loved one’s–benefits from this love story and practical guide in one.
The Language of Loss: Poetry and Prose for Grieving and Celebrating the Love of Your Life
When Barbara Abercrombie’s husband died, she found the language of condolence irritating, no matter how well intended. “My husband had not gone to a better place as if he were […]
The Little Book of Trauma Healing
Presents a trauma-healing model that is the foundation for initiatives around the globe.
The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care
“For most of us,” writes Anna Borges, “self-care is a wide spectrum of decisions and actions that soothe and fortify us against all the shit we deal with.” You may […]
The Other Side of Sadness
Emotions expert Bonanno argues that our inborn emotions–anger and denial, but also relief and joy–help us deal effectively with loss. To expect or require only grief-stricken behavior from the bereaved […]
The Promise: The Stories of Four Burn Pit Survivor Families Who Found Friendship in Their Fight to Win the Largest Veteran Medical Bill in American History
For decades, American Warfighters have come home from overseas only to find that they weren’t done fighting. They knew from what they had seen, smelled, photographed, and recorded that toxic […]
The Smallest Lights in the Universe: A Memoir
Sara Seager has always been in love with the stars: so many lights in the sky, so much possibility. Now a pioneering planetary scientist, she searches for exoplanets—especially that distant, […]
The Sudden Loss Survival Guide: Seven Essential Practices for Healing Grief
The Sudden Loss Survival Guide is a distinctive grief recovery handbook. In this book, discover, Seven practices for healing, including creative memorialization and maintaining an ongoing spiritual connection Skimmable, stand-alone […]
The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order
As the aftermath of her father’s suicide unfolds, the author struggles to accept her father’s suicide- trying to find a reason or explanation- and comes to realize that there will […]
The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart
Takes the reader on a path of emotional and spiritual healing, with particular attention to the complex and frequently overwhelming circumstances of our lives right now.
The Widowed Dancer: Growing Through Grief With Gratitude
In 2018 I lost my partner Clayton to a terminal illness just 10 months after my father passed away. The storm of the first 2 years led into a pandemic […]
The Widower’s Journey: Helping Men Rebuild After Their Loss
As a bank executive, Herb Knoll was known as a man who could get the job done. But when Knoll lost his wife to cancer he found few resources that […]
The Wisdom of Forgiveness
Intimate Conversations and Journeys
An intimate insight into the Dalai Lama’s practice and mastery of forgiveness through Victor Chan’s down-to-earth discussions with and observations of Tibet’s spiritual leader.
The Year of Magical Thinking
Didion attempts to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea she had about death, illness, and marriage following the sudden death of her […]
There is No Good Card for This
What to Say and Do When Life is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love
Illustrated guide to help you increase your emotional intelligence and learn how to offer comfort and support when someone you know is in pain.
Through Death to Life
Ron Gries chronicles his journey through the suffering and death of his wife, and his healing, sharing the test of faith, the sadness of loss, and the triumph of spirit. […]
Truth Be Told: A Memoir of Success, Suicide, and Survival
A Memoir of Success, Suicide, and Survival
Two Kisses for Maddy: A Memoir of Loss & Love
Matt and Liz Logelin were high-school sweethearts. The pair settled together in Los Angeles and they had it all: the perfect marriage, a beautiful new home, and a baby girl […]
Two Moms: One in Heaven-One on Earth
Two children feeling sad and alone from the loss of their mom who went to heaven find themselves on a journey with their new mom on earth. This is a […]
Understanding Your Grief
Describes touchstones that are essential: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual actions for you to help yourself heal.
Unshattered Grief: helping others through loss without breaking them…again
When grieving the loss of someone deeply loved, it’s like you’re a vase that has been thrown to the ground, shattered into 1000 pieces and put back together again, only […]
Until It Wasn’t
Until It Wasn’t is a memoir of great love, loss, and strength. Sharon Neff documents the journey through her husband’s cancer battle while demonstrating the emotional fortitude that carries us […]
When Bad Things Happen to Good People
When Harold Kushner’s three-year-old son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease that meant the boy would only live until his early teens, he was faced with one of life’s most […]
When Breath Becomes Air
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he […]
When My Daddy Died, I…
K.J.’s best friend, his father Nicholas Reider, died when K.J. was only seven years old. K.J. captures the memories he cherished with his dad and hopes that other children will […]
When Things Fall Apart
Heart Advice for Difficult Times
A treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties, for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.
When You Lose Someone You Love: A Journey Through The Heart of Grief
There are no words deep enough to describe the time of sadness we go through when we lose someone we love. It is difficult to find words of comfort to […]
When Your Spouse Dies
A concise and practical source of help and advice
Deals with a variety of topics including stages of grief for adults and children, the expressions of mourning, loneliness and sexuality, networks of support people, and financial priorities and planning.
Why God Won’t Go Away
The authors are both neurologists, who focus on the inherent need for rituals by many species (for community), and the fact that humans have a unique added element – brains […]
Widow To Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas For Rebuilding Your Life
In this remarkably useful guide, widow, author, and therapist Genevieve Davis Ginsburg offers fellow widows — as well as their family and friends — sage advice for coping with the […]
Widower to Widower: Surviving the End of Your Most Important Relationship
It is important to note that each widower’s experience is unique. There will be common threads and shared experiences, but each must find their own path. We must learn from […]
Widowish: A Memoir
Available 2/1/2021
Melissa Gould’s hopeful memoir of grieving outside the box and the surprising nature of love. When Melissa Gould’s husband, Joel, was unexpectedly hospitalized, she could not imagine how her life […]
Wife, Widow, Now What?: How I Navigated the Cancer World and How You Can, Too
“Some days I think that if I didn’t have “Grayson” tattooed on my wrist, I’d never believe that it happened. When I think back on the girl who went through […]
Yes, and.: A Journey of Hope through Tragedy
Two months pregnant with their third child, Matt’s wife, Lisa, discovers her cancer had returned. A few months later, Lisa’s mother finds out her cancer resurfaced as well. Wife, mother-in-law, […]
You Can’t Do It Alone
When FOX11’s weather anchor Maria Quiban Whitesell’s husband Sean was diagnosed with Glioblastoma (GBM), a deadly form of brain cancer, she was completely unprepared. How would she possibly explain what […]
Your Grief, Your Way
Everyone experiences grief differently after the loss of a loved one. Some people find solace in comforting quotes and warm words, while others feel a need to take action–to do […]
Your Own Path Through Grief: A workbook for your journey to recovery
This workbook is designed to help you through the process of grief through recovery. The workbook consists of sixty pages of education about the impact of grief, coping skills, self-care […]