4 Books to Help You Process Grief
4 Books to Help You Process Grief
No human process is linear. Your feelings of grief will come and go in waves, which may feel frustrating. And every emotion you experience is unique to you. Of course, we all share similarities in our lives, but none of us feel the exact same emotions. Even if we feel the same emotions, we all process it differently.
It's normal to feel like some people, even the ones closest to you, won’t completely understand your pain. It can also be hard to pinpoint what you are feeling. For that reason, reading other people’s experiences can be a healthy outlet. You can find solace and comfort knowing that you are not the only person going through this emotional journey.
If that’s the case for you, you can check out these four books that portray different responses to loss.
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) by Joan Didion
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. [...] We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes.”
Written by one of the most renowned American authors, this powerful memoir recalls Didion’s experience after the loss of her husband. She replays many events and focuses on expressing her raw, unfiltered emotions. The title “magical thinking” reveals a key aspect of her experience: the belief that thoughts can alter reality. In times of grief, some people use this concept to believe that their loved ones can return, expecting that an unavoidable event can be averted. Didion delves deep into this part of her experience as she grapples with ideas of life and sanity. Her writing stood out to the point that the memoir received the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand (2017) by Megan Devine
“When you try to take someone's pain away from them, you don't make it better. You just tell them it's not OK to talk about their pain.”
This book features narratives, research, and life tips from a psychotherapist who has experienced a devastating loss herself. Devine draws from her hardships after witnessing the accidental drowning of her partner. In her writing, Devine seeks to challenge how we are taught to think about grief. Instead of expecting those who mourn to “bounce back” and “return to normal”, Devine encourages her readers to validate their emotions and not push them to the side. After all, she believes that “making the world a better place starts with acknowledging grief, rather than seeking to overcome it.” Her words have inspired and made many suffering feel seen. For more advice from Devine, you can check out her website here.
Notes on Grief (2021) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“A friend sends me a line from my novel: 'Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.' How odd to find it so exquisitely painful to read my own words.”
Notes on Grief is a memoir honoring the author’s father who passed due to kidney failure during the COVID-19 pandemic. presented in 30 short sections, almost shaped like vignettes. Her book expands upon an essay for the New Yorker that memorializes her father and expresses her grief. Adichie’s book is structured in 30 short sections, almost shaped like vignettes. In some sections, she paints scenes following her father’s death, vividly detailing her physical and mental pain. In others, she talks about her difficulties in adhering to the Igbo culture’s way of grieving, candidly saying that she “wants to sit alone with her grief” instead of “expressively and outwardly” mourning. She also includes memories from her childhood, remembering her father’s passion for sudoku and how often he looked stiff in photos. Her poetic, lyrical way of writing has made her work garner critical acclaim, leading her to be featured in The New York Times and NPR.
Crying in H Mart (2021) by Michelle Zauner
“Now that she was gone, I began to study her like a stranger, rooting around her belongings in an attempt to rediscover her, trying to bring her back to life in any way that I could. In my grief I was desperate to construe the slightest thing as a sign.”
Similar to Notes on Grief, Zauner also based her memoir on an essay she wrote in 2018. The essay and book center on the author’s complex relationship with her mother, who passed away in 2014. H Mart in the title refers to an Asian grocery store chain that Zauner frequently visited after her mother’s death. She found comfort in Korean cuisine, leading her to buy ingredients for these meals at H-Mart. Food was also how her mother showed affection, displaying how Korean meals tied Zauner both to her family and heritage. The book portrays the author’s hardships growing up as a Korean American, caring for her mother during her cancer journey, and her musical career. Crying in H Mart is known for its “raw emotion” and “sheer wisdom”, which Zauner expresses in an enlightening interview that you can find over here.
Your grieving journey might not be the same to the stories told in these 4 books, but might find some similarities. We hope that you enjoy reading these books and find worthwhile lessons in them.
Article by Sena Oguzman