Live Online Death Education Classes | Center for Death Education

End-of-Life Planning

A Death Doula's Guide to a Meaningful End

Instructor Recommended

Surprisingly funny and often cutting, this memoir meets end-of-life planning guide outlines practical steps for patients, families, and caregivers, while acknowledging that some questions don’t always need answers.

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Grief and Grieving

All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir by Erin Lee Carr

A celebrated journalist, bestselling author (The Night of the Gun), and recovering addict, David Carr was in the prime of his career when he suffered a fatal collapse in the newsroom of The New York Times in 2015. Shattered by his death, his daughter Erin Lee Carr, at age twenty-seven an up-and-coming documentary filmmaker, began combing through the entirety of their shared correspondence—1,936 items in total—in search of comfort and support.

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The American Book of Living and Dying: Lessons in Healing Spiritual Pain by Richard F. Groves

The American Book of Living and Dying: Lessons in Healing Spiritual Pain

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Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity.

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Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity.

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Beyond Loss in a Pandemic: Find Hope and Move Through Grief After Someone Close to You Dies by Linda Donovan

After someone close to you dies, whether this happened many years ago or recently, it can be difficult to feel whole again. This loss can result in an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty, sadness, and loneliness. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to feel to feel better over time.

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The Creative Toolkit for Working with Grief and Bereavement: A Practitioner's Guide with Activities and Worksheets

Instructor Recommended

Understanding loss and its effects is integral to effective counseling and support in the treatment of grief. This book is both a guide to the key theories of bereavement, and a practical workbook that can be used with clients to help them understand and work through their grief in a positive, transformative way.

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Disenfranchised Grief: New Directions, Challenges, and Strategies for Practice

Instructor Recommended

This book focuses on the kind of grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned. It addresses the unique psychological, biological, and sociological issues involved in disenfranchised grief.

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Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved

Instructor Recommended

Kate Bowler pulls the reader deeply into her life in an account she populates affectionately with a colorful, often hilarious retinue of friends, mega-church preachers, relatives, and doctors. Everything Happens for a Reason tells her story, offering up her irreverent, hard-won observations on dying and the ways it has taught her to live.

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Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss.

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Finding the Words: Working Through Profound Loss with Hope and Purpose

Full of practical advice on how to survive in the aftermath of loss, Finding the Words teaches readers how to actively reach out to their community, perform mourning rituals, and find ways to express their grief, so they can live more fully while also holding their loved ones close.

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The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully

The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life.

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From Behind the Harp: Music in End of Life Care by Jane Franz

A journey into the field of music-thanatology: what it is, and how it uses live harp and voice to bring beauty, peace and compassion to the dying and their loved ones.

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Grief Day By Day: Simple Practices and Daily Guidance for Living with Loss

Instructor Recommended

This grief recovery handbook offers daily reflections and practices that address the day-to-day emotions and experiences that accompany the grieving process so you can create a life in which peace―and even gratitude―can coexist with your grief.

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A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis’s honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. Written after his wife’s tragic death as a way of surviving the “mad midnight moments,” A Grief Observed is an unflinchingly truthful account of how loss can lead even a stalwart believer to lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he can gradually regain his bearings.

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Grief One Day at a Time: 365 Meditations to Help You Heal After Loss by Dr. Alan Wolfelt

After a loved one dies, each day can be a struggle. But each day, you can also find comfort and understanding in this daily companion. With one brief entry for every day of the calendar year, this little book by beloved grief counselor Dr. Alan Wolfelt offers small, one-day-at-a-time doses of guidance and healing.

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Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death, and Surviving (A Practical Guide to Grief and Loss)

Instructor Recommended

In Grief Works, Samuel shares case studies from those who have experienced great love and great loss—and survived. People need to understand that grief is a process that has to be worked through, and Samuel shows if we do the work, we can begin to heal.

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Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations For Working Through Grief by Martha Whitmore Hickman

After the focus on planning and outpouring of love from family and friends in the immediate aftermath following the loss of a loved one, we are left to enter a new version of our lives where someone important is missing. The short, poignant meditations given here follow the course of the year, but it is not a necessity to follow them chronologically. They will strengthen, inspire, and give comfort for as long as they are needed.

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How to Carry What Can't Be Fixed: A Journal for Grief

Instructor Recommended

a journal filled with unique, creative ways to open a dialogue with grief itself. “Being allowed to tell the truth about your grief is an incredibly powerful act,” she says. “This journal enables you to tell your whole story, without the need to tack on a happy ending where there isn’t one.”

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How We Grieve: Relearning the World 2nd Edition by Thomas Attig

If we wish to understand loss experiences we must learn details of survivors' stories. The new version of How We Grieve: Relearning the World tells in-depth tales of survival to illustrate the poignant disruption of life and suffering that loss entails. It shows how through grieving we overcome challenges, make choices, and reshape our lives.

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It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand by Megan Devine

Instructor Recommended

This book provides a path to rethink our relationship with grief. It encourages readers to see their grief as a natural response to death and loss, rather than an aberrant condition needing transformation. It’s OK That You’re Not OK shows readers how to live with skill and compassion during their grief, but it isn’t just a book for people in pain: this book is about making things better for everyone.

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Lead Me Home: An African-American's Guide Through The Grief Journey

In Lead Me Home, Carleen Brice gently guides you through the strange terrain of grief to the promise of home-a place where we have not only survived our losses, but are wiser and stronger because of them.

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The Light of the World: A Memoir (Thorndike Press large print biographies and memoirs)

In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss.

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Men Don't Cry, Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief (Series in Death, Dying, and Bereavement)

Instructor Recommended

Organized into three main parts, this topical new text begins by defining terms, introducing and delineating the grief patterns, and rooting the book's concept in contemporary theories of grief. The second part speculates on factors that may influence individuals' patterns of coping with loss (e.g., personality, gender, culture, etc.). The final part considers implications and therapeutic interventions likely to be effective with different types of grievers.

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Mindfulness and Grief: With Guided Meditations to Calm Your Mind and Restore Your Spirit

Instructor Recommended

Coping with grief and loss is one of life's greatest challenges, and it can be hard to know how to reduce the suffering it brings. Mindfulness& Grief is your self-care toolkit for life after loss, designed to help you cope with everything from sleepless nights to anxiety-filled days, while boosting your body's natural resilience against stress and guiding you towards a meaning-filled life.

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Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome – Honest Stories and Essays on Death, Resilience, and Shared Humanity

Instructor Recommended

Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.

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Moving On Doesn't Mean Letting Go: A Modern Guide to Navigating Loss by Gina Moffa

Grief hurts. Don’t do it alone. Learn to navigate any loss—a parent, a friendship, a job, a miscarriage—at your own pace with the help of a licensed grief and trauma therapist.

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Permission to Grieve: Creating Grace, Space, & Room to Breathe in the Aftermath of Loss

Instructor Recommended

Shelby Forsythia makes the case for radical, self-honoring permission - free from personal judgement and society’s restrictive timelines and rules. Permission to Grieve guides you to call your grief out of hiding and invites you to give it permission through thoughtful writing prompts and easy-to-follow exercises.

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Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life after Loss

Renegade Grief is an indispensable resource for people at any stage of the grieving process and with Carla’s candid and compassionate guidance, you learn that life after loss isn’t about the futile attempt of arriving at some other side.

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The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise by Martin Prechtel

Inspiring hope, solace, and courage in living through our losses, author Martin Prechtel, trained in the Tzutujil Maya shamanic tradition, shares profound insights on the relationship between grief and praise in our culture--how the inability that many of us have to grieve and weep properly for the dead is deeply linked with the inability to give praise for living.

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Too Much Loss: Coping with Grief Overload by Alan Wolfelt

Grief overload is what you feel when you experience too many significant losses all at once, in a relatively short period of time, or cumulatively. In addition to the deaths of loved ones, such losses can also include divorce, estrangement, illness, relocation, job changes, and more. The good news is that through intentional, active mourning, you can and will find your way back to hope and healing.

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Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart

Excellent as an empathetic handbook for anyone in mourning as well as a text for support groups, Understanding Your Grief pairs with a guided journal.

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When Breath Becomes Air: Pulitzer Prize Finalist

Instructor Recommended

Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all.When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

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Who Dies?: An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying by Stephen Levine

This book shows the reader how to open to the immensity of living with death, to participate fully in life as the perfect preparation for whatever may come next.

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The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief

The Wild Edge of Sorrow is a balm for the soul and a necessary salve for moving together through difficult times.

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The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller

Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss.

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The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

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Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Instructor Recommended

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 something to memorialize their loss. And some benefit from both approaches. Here’s a path forward for you, no matter how you process your grief.

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Spouse / Partner Loss

Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like

Instructor Recommended

Tender, true, and endearingly hilarious, Black Widow is a story about the power of love, and how the only guide book for recovery is the one you write yourself.

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Comfort for the Grieving Spouse's Heart: Hope and Healing After Losing Your Partner (Comfort for Grieving Hearts: The Series)

Instructor Recommended

Written with heartfelt compassion, this warm, easy-to-read, and practical book reads like a caring conversation with a friend and will become a comforting companion as you navigate the turbulent waters of grief.

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From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home

Instructor Recommended

From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and those who needed a powerful reminder that life is...delicious.

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The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life

Instructor Recommended

The Group offers a singular perspective on grief by weaving together the latest thinking on bereavement, resiliency and post-traumatic growth with the true story of seven men who were raising children on their own after the deaths of their wives.

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Heartbroken: Healing from the Loss of a Spouse (2nd Edition) (Good Grief Series)

Instructor Recommended

The loss of a husband or wife is traumatic. You will never be the same, but you can heal and grow. Let Heartbroken join you on your grief journey. You'll be glad you did.

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The Hot Young Widows Club: Lessons on Survival from the Front Lines of Grief (TED Books)

Instructor Recommended

The Hot Young Widows Club isn’t just for people who have lost a spouse, but an essential tool for anyone who has gone through a major life struggle.

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It's Okay to Laugh: (Crying Is Cool Too) – A Heartbreaking and Hilarious Memoir of Marriage, Grief, and Parenting

Instructor Recommended

This is for people who aren’t sure if they’re saying or doing the right thing (you’re not, but nobody is). This is for people who had their life turned upside down and just learned to live that way. For people who have laughed at a funeral or cried in a grocery store.

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No Happy Endings: A Memoir

Instructor Recommended

No Happy Endings is a book for people living life after life has fallen apart. It's a book for people who know that they're moving forward, not moving on. It's a book for people who know life isn't always happy, but it isn't the end: there will be unimaginable joy and incomprehensible tragedy.

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A Widow's Guide to Healing: Support and Strategies for Widows Navigating Grief (Gentle Support and Advice for the First 5 Years)

Instructor Recommended

This heartfelt and empowering book offers gentle support and invaluable advice to help you find strength, find hope, and embrace life once again. Kristin Meekhof, a licensed social worker who lost her husband to cancer, shares her personal journey and expertise to provide compassionate guidance through the first five years of widowhood.

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Widowish: A Memoir

Instructor Recommended

A modern take on loss, Widowish illuminates the twists of fate that break our world, the determination that keeps us moving forward, and the surprises in life we never see coming.

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You Can't Do It Alone

Instructor Recommended

In You Can't Do It Alone, Whitesell tells her story and teams up with licensed therapist Lauren Schneider to provide readers with a roadmap for walking through illness, death and grief.

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Traumatic Loss

After Suicide Loss: Coping with Your Grief, 2nd Edition Paperback by Jack Jordan

Readers have described this book as:...a practical guide for coping with suicide, from the first few days through the first year and beyond.

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Aftermath: Picking Up the Pieces After a Suicide by Gary Roe

Reach out and grab the hand of multiple award-winning author and grief counselor Gary Roe. Let him walk with you through this uncharted, forbidding territory.

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Black Suicide: The Tragic Reality of America’s Deadliest Secret by Alton R Kirk

For more than 35 years, Dr. Kirk has been studying, teaching, and researching the literature of black suicide. In this landmark study, he discusses several theories about suicide.

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Dying to Be Free: A Healing Guide for Families After a Suicide by Beverly Cobain and Jean Larch

The authors of this book break through suicide's silent stigma offering gentle advice for those left behind, so that healing can begin.

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The Gift of Second: Healing from the Impact of Suicide by Brandy Lidbeck

After a suicide, loved ones painfully struggle to make sense of the unexplainable tragedy. The Gift of Second comes alongside loss survivors and helps navigate the common pitfalls for those left behind. It offers hope and encouragement to guide survivors through this desperate time.

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Resilient Grieving: How to Find Your Way Through a Devastating Loss by Lucy Hone

Instructor Recommended

Author and resilience/well-being expert Lucy Hone, a pioneer in positive psychology and bereavement research, was faced with her own inescapable sorrow when, in 2014, her 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car accident. By following the strategies of resilient grieving, she found a proactive way to move through her grief, and, over time, embrace life again.

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Silent Grief: Living in the Wake of Suicide by Christopher Lukas

'Silent grief is a book for and about

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Death of a Child

From Father to Father: Letters From Loss Dad to Loss Dad by Emily R Long

This book is a simple book of letters written for you, a grieving loss dad, from other loss dads who are living and surviving after the death of their precious child.

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Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back by Kelly Farley and David DiCola

Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back is a collection of candid stories from grieving dads that were interviewed over a two year period.

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Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child by Gary Roe

Unthinkable. Unbelievable. Heartbreaking. Whatever words we choose, they all fall far short of the reality. The loss of a child is a terrible thing. How do we survive this? Can we? Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child was written to help.

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Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss

Three Minus One: Parents' Stories of Love and Loss is a collection of intimate, soul-baring stories and artwork by parents who have lost a child to stillbirth, miscarriage, or neonatal death, inspired by the film Return to Zero.

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Unexpecting: Real Talk on Pregnancy Loss by Rachel Lewis

When your baby dies, you find yourself in a life you never expected. And even though pregnancy and infant loss are common, they're not common to you. Instead, you feel like a stranger in your own body, surrounded by well-meaning people who often don't know how to support you.

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The Unspeakable Loss: How Do You Live After a Child Dies? by Nisha Zenoff

No matter where you are in your grieving process, The Unspeakable Loss provides a space to mourn in your own way, and helps you understand how the death of a child affects siblings, other family members and friends, recognizing that we each grieve differently.

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You Are Not Alone: Love Letters From Loss Mom to Loss Mom by Emily R Long

This book is a simple book of love written for you, a grieving loss mom, from other loss moms who have also heard those life-altering, soul-shattering words, “I’m sorry there is no heartbeat” or “I’m sorry, your baby is gone.”

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New Perspectives

7 Lessons for Living from the Dying: How to Nurture What Really Matters by Dr. Karen Wyatt

A hospice doctor and caregiver shares the 7 inspirational lessons she has learned from the dying—and gives a daily spiritual practice to help live them.

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Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying by Sallie Tisdale

Instructor Recommended

Explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying,

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The American Way of Death Revisited

The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington, inflated cremation costs, the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves, and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations.

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The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life by Katy Butler

Based on Butler’s experience caring for aging parents, and hundreds of interviews with people who have successfully navigated our fragmented health system and helped their loved ones have good deaths, The Art of Dying Well also draws on the expertise of national leaders in family medicine, palliative care, geriatrics, oncology, and hospice.

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A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death by Dr. BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger

Instructor Recommended

Written to help readers feel more in control of an experience that so often seems anything but controllable. Get advice for how to break the news to your employer, whether to share old secrets with your family, how to face friends who might not be as empathetic as you’d hoped, and how to talk to your children about your will.

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Being Mortal - Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande

Instructor Recommended

Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all the way to the very end.

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Being with Dying: Cultivating Compassion and Fearlessness in the Presence of Death by Joan Halifax

In this book, Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided meditations to help readers contemplate death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage.

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The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and Dying by Nina Riggs

Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, Nina asks: What makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? Brilliantly written and exceptionally moving, it’s a “deeply affecting memoir, a simultaneously heartbreaking and funny account of living with loss and the specter of death.

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Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast

In her first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents.

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Companioning the Bereaved: A Soulful Guide for Counselors & Caregivers by Alan D Wolfelt

This book presents a model for grief counseling based on Dr. Wolfelt’s “companioning” principles. This book advocates a model of “companioning” the bereaved, acknowledging that grief forever changes or transforms the mourner’s world view.

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Crying in H Mart: A Memoir by Michelle Zauner

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

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The End of Your Life Book Club: A Memoir by Will Schwalbe

During her treatment for cancer, Mary Anne Schwalbe and her son Will spent many hours sitting in waiting rooms together. To pass the time, they would talk about the books they were reading. Once, by chance, they read the same book at the same time—and an informal book club of two was born.

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End-of-Life Ethics in a Changing World Edited by Kenneth Doka

Instructor Recommended

This important volume of work by experts in ethics and end-of-life care examines issues of hospice care for children and teens; voluntary stopping of eating and drinking (VSED) and medical aid in dying (MAiD).

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Everything Is Temporary

In this at-times-heartbreaking yet heartwarming book, author and illustrator Iris Gottlieb explores death from all angles—from the physical, such as the ways your remains could be handled, to the emotional, including grief and grappling with your own mortality.

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Final Acts: Death, Dying, and the Choices We Make by Nan Bauer-Maglin et al.

Writing in a style free of technical jargon, the contributors discuss documents that should be prepared (health proxy, do-not-resuscitate order, living will, power of attorney); decision-making (over medical interventions, life support, hospice and palliative care, aid-in-dying, treatment location, speaking for those who can no longer express their will); and the roles played by religion, custom, family, friends, caretakers, money, the medical establishment, and the government.

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Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying by Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley

Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share.

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How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland

The definitive resource on perhaps the single most universal human concern: death. This edition addresses contemporary issues in end-of-life care and includes an all-embracing and incisive afterword that examines the state of health care and our relationship with life as it approaches its terminus. How We Die also discusses how we can take control of our own final days and those of our loved ones.

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New Rules For End of Life Care

Caring for someone as they approach the end of their life is not the same as caring for someone who is going to get better. Whether the patient is at home, in a nursing home or hospital this kit will give you the valuable information you need to understand the dying process.

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Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home

Sheri Booker was only fifteen when she started working at Wylie Funeral Home in West Baltimore. She had no idea her summer job would become nine years of immersion into a hidden world. As families came together to bury one of their own, Booker was privy to their most intimate moments of grief and despair.

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Re-Imagining the End of Life: Self-Development & Reflective Practices for Nurse Coaches by Janet Booth

The purpose of this handbook is to provide nurses, coaches, and other health care professionals with opportunities for reflection and inspiration in their work. In this book you will find fresh ideas, tools, and reflective practices that encourage you to explore your personal beliefs and values about aging, advanced illness, and dying. It is intended to inspire you to reimagine the end of life as a vital part of how we become fully human.

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Reimagining Death: Stories and Practical Wisdom for Home Funerals and Green Burials

Reimagining Death offers stories and guidance for home funeral vigils, advance after-death care directives, green burials, and conscious dying.

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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit.

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Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins

Instructor Recommended

Death is the great equalizer, but not all deaths are created equal. In recent years, there has been an increased interest and advocacy concerning end-of-life and after-death care. An increasing number of individuals and organizations from health care to the funeral and death care industries are working to promote and encourage people to consider their end-of-life wishes.

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Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom

A heartwarmingly true story of a college student and the professor that becomes his mentor. It's unceasingly reassuring that life can and should revolve around love. This charming narrative appeals to a general audience for its honesty and approachability.

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What Matters Most: The Get Your Stuff Together Guide to Wills, Money, Insurance, and Life's

How-to guidebook, What Matters Most inspires readers to get their ‘affairs in order’ before the unthinkable (or inevitable) happens.

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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Instructor Recommended

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.

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With the End in Mind: Dying, Death, and Wisdom in an Age of Denial

Weaving the details of her own experiences as a caregiver through stories of her patients, their families, and their distinctive lives, Dr. Mannix reacquaints us with the universal, but deeply personal, process of dying.

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Addiction

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by MD Gabor Maté

Instructor Recommended

Based on Gabor Maté’s two decades of experience as a medical doctor and his groundbreaking work with people with addiction on Vancouver’s skid row, this #1 international bestseller radically re-envisions a much misunderstood condition by taking a compassionate approach to substance abuse and addiction recovery.

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Scholarly

American Afterlives: Reinventing Death in the Twenty-First Century

American Afterlives is Shannon Lee Dawdy’s lyrical and compassionate account of changing death practices in America as people face their own mortality and search for a different kind of afterlife.

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The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk

Instructor Recommended

The Body Keeps the Score uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust.

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Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual

This revised edition of a cross-cultural study of rituals surrounding death has become a standard text in anthropology, sociology, and religion.

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Cemetery Law: The Common Law of Burying Grounds in the United States

This book is designed to help jumpstart that process by outlining the history, structure, and doctrines of the common law of burying grounds in the United States.

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Death (The Open Yale Courses Series) by Shelly Kagan

Instructor Recommended

In this thought-provoking book, philosophy professor Shelly Kagan examines the myriad questions that arise when we confront the meaning of mortality.

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Death and Dying, Life and Living 8th Edition by Corr et al.

Practical and inspiring, this book helps you learn how to navigate encounters with death, dying, and bereavement. The authors emphasize ways that individuals and families can cope with life-threatening illness, grief, funerals, and other death-related topics -- including how to communicate constructively in the face of death.

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Death, Mourning, And Burial: A Cross-cultural Reader

In Death, Mourning, and Burial, an indispensable introduction to the anthropology of death, readers will find a rich selection of some of the finest ethnographic work on this fascinating topic.

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Death, Society, and Human Experience 12th Edition by Robert Kastenbaum and Christopher M. Moreman

Instructor Recommended

Providing an overview of the myriad ways that we are touched by death and dying, both as an individual and as a member of society, this book will help readers understand our relationship with death.

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The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

Instructor Recommended

In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie—man’s refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates decades after its writing.

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Ethics at the End of Life New Issues and Arguments Edited By John Davis

Instructor Recommended

The 14 chapters in Ethics at the End of Life: New Issues and Arguments, all published here for the first time, focus on recent thinking in this important area, helping initiate issues and lines of argument that have not been explored previously.

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Grief and Loss: Theories and Skills for the Helping Professions, Third Edition by Katherine Walsh

The book provides a foundation for understanding, assessing, and responding effectively to grief and loss. The content is designed for students and professionals who find themselves working in proximity to loss, trauma, and grief in various capacities.

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Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy, Fifth Edition by J. William Worden

Instructor Recommended

Encompassing new content on the treatment of grief, loss, and bereavement, the updated and revised fifth edition of this gold-standard grief therapy book continues to deliver the most up-to-date research and practical information for upper-level students and practitioners alike.

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The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Mary-Frances O'Connor

Instructor Recommended

A renowned grief expert and neuroscientist shares groundbreaking discoveries about what happens in our brain when we grieve, providing a new paradigm for understanding love, loss, and learning.

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The Handbook of Thanatology, 3rd Edition: The Essential Body of Knowledge for the Study of Death, Dying, and Bereavement by Heather L. Servaty-Seib et a.

Instructor Recommended

The third edition of the Handbook of Thanatology is an accessible volume that offers essential knowledge in the field of thanatology in a format that is practical for both novices and those with extensive experience in the field.

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The Law of Human Remains

In The Law of Human Remains, Tanya Marsh, a nationally recognized expert in the law of human remains and cemetery law, collects, organizes, and states the legal rules and principles regarding the status, treatment, and disposition of human remains in the United States so that attorneys and courts can more easily discover, understand, use, and ultimately critique and reform the law.

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The Next World: Extraordinary Experiences of the Afterlife by Gregory Shushan

In The Next World, historian of religions Gregory Shushan explores the relationships between extraordinary experiences and beliefs in life after death. Drawing on over two decades of research into cross-cultural afterlife beliefs and extraordinary experiences, The Next World presents not only an accessible overview of Shushan's work, but also takes a bold new step in psychical research.

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On Death And Dying - What The Dying Have To Teach Doctors, Nursess, Clergy And Their Own Families by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

This book explores interviews and conversations to give the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, medical professionals and the patient's family.

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Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death

Staring at the Sun is a profoundly encouraging approach to the universal issue of mortality. In this magisterial opus, capping a lifetime of work and personal experience, Dr. Yalom helps us recognize that the fear of death is at the heart of much of our anxiety.

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The Worm at the Core by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, & Tom Pyszczynski

Instructor Recommended

Written in an accessible, jargon-free style, The Worm at the Core offers a compelling new paradigm for understanding the choices we make in life—and a pathway toward divesting ourselves of the cultural and personal illusions that keep us from accepting the end that awaits us all.

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Historical

Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages

The society of medieval Europe developed a rich set of imaginative traditions about death and the afterlife, using the dead as a point of entry for thinking about the self, regeneration, and loss.

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Death and the American South

This rich collection of original essays illuminates the causes and consequences of the South's defining experiences with death.

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Death: A Graveside Companion

The ultimate death compendium, featuring the world’s most extraordinary artistic objects concerned with mortality, together with text by expert contributors.

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Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses

Paul Koudounaris photographed more than seventy sites for this book. He analyzes the role of these remarkable memorials within the cultures that created them, as well as the mythology and folklore that developed around them, and skillfully traces a remarkable human endeavor.

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From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

Instructor Recommended

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead.

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Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us

The astonishing story of how the dead live on in memorials and traditions across the globe, from Ethiopia and Nepal to Cambodia and Rwanda, told through arresting images and captivating narration

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Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries

Melville’s Over My Dead Body is a lively (pun intended) and wide-ranging history of cemeteries, places that have mirrored the passing eras in history but have also shaped it.

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Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America

Purified by Fire tells the fascinating story of cremation's rise from notoriety to legitimacy and takes a provocative new look at important transformations in the American cultural landscape over the last 150 years.

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A Social History of Dying by Allan Kellehear

Instructor Recommended

Allan Kellehear takes the reader on a 2 million year journey of discovery that covers the major challenges we will all eventually face: anticipating, preparing, taming and timing for our eventual deaths.

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To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death

To Serve the Living offers a fascinating history of how African American funeral directors have been integral to the fight for freedom.

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The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains

The book draws on a vast range of sources―from mortuary archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead do for the living: making human communities that connect the past and the future.

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Children

The ABCs of Grief by Jessica Correnti

Instructor Recommended

This children's book helps kids process their grief through simple, relatable, child-friendly language and imagery.

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The Bug Cemetery

With warmth and sensitivity, this subtle picture book explores the difficult emotions associated with losing a loved one

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The Cardinal's Gift: A True Story of Finding Hope in Grief by Carole Heaney

This is a true story of how a cardinal offered hope to a grieving family struggling to adjust to their loss. It encourages anyone experiencing loss to pay attention to Mother Nature’s gifts as she teaches us to be hopeful without forgetting those we love.

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The Dead Bird by Margaret Wise Brown

One day, the children find a bird lying on its side with its eyes closed and no heartbeat. They are very sorry, so they decide to say good-bye. In the park, they dig a hole for the bird and cover it with warm sweet-ferns and flowers. Finally, they sing sweet songs to send the little bird on its way. A beautiful book to share with children beginning to grapple with loss.

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Duck, Death and the Tulip

In a curiously heart-warming and elegantly illustrated story, a duck strikes up an unlikely friendship with Death. Duck and Death play together and discuss big questions.

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Everyone Dies by Marianne Matzo

This book provides an age appropriate, non-scary, comfortable way to introduce the important topic of mortality to a preschool child. Its simple explanation will last a lifetime.

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Everywhere, Still: A Book about Loss, Grief, and the Way Love Continues by M.H. Clark

When someone you care about isn't here anymore, your love for them continues… What do you do with that love when that someone isn't here to give it to? Everywhere, Still is a book about loss and grief--whether that loss is permanent or temporary. And it's a reminder that there is always a way to stay close with the people who are biggest in our hearts, no matter how far across space and time they may be.

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The Funeral

This sensitive and life-affirming story will lead young readers to ask their own questions about life, death and how we remember those who have gone before us.

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Ida, Always by Caron Levis

Ida, Always is an exquisitely told story of two best friends—inspired by a real bear friendship—and a gentle, moving, needed reminder that loved ones lost will stay in our hearts, always.

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The Invisible Leash: An Invisible String Story About the Loss of a Pet by Patrice Karst

When our pets aren't with us anymore, an Invisible Leash connects our hearts to each other. Forever. That's what Zack's friend Emily tells him after his dog dies. Zack doesn't believe it. He only believes in what he can see. But on an enlightening journey through their neighborhood—and through his grief—he comes to feel the comforting tug of the Invisible Leash. And it feels like love.

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The Memory Box: A Book About Grief by Joanna Rowland

A comforting story written from the perspective of a young child to help kids identify, experience, and process feelings of grief after losing a loved one.

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The Rabbit Listened

Instructor Recommended

When something sad happens, the animals tell Taylor how to respond, but none offers comfort. Then the rabbit arrives and simply listens—exactly what Taylor needs. With gentle text and sweet illustrations, The Rabbit Listened shows how quiet, loving attention can help someone heal.

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The Rainbow Bridge: A Visit to Pet Paradise

Adrian Raeside captures the special bond between humans and their pets, and with marvelous illustrations, brings a gentle humour to a story that will resonate with children and pet lovers of all ages.

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Saying Goodbye to Lulu

With realistic, hopeful illustrations by Ard Hoyt,this tender tale offers an accessible lens to young children learning to understand and cope with the mixed emotions that come with the loss of a loved one.

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Something Very Sad Happened: A Toddler’s Guide to Understanding Death by Bonnie Zucker

When a loved one dies, it can be hard to know how to explain it to a young child, particularly if you are grieving the loss yourself. Written at a developmental level that is appropriate for two- and three-year-olds, the story explains death; lets children know that it is okay to feel sad; and reassures children that they can still love the person who died, and the person who died will always love them.

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Talking about Death: A Dialogue between Parent and Child by Earl A. Grollman

Talking about Death is a classic guide for parents helping their children through the death of a loved one. With a helpful list of dos and don'ts, an illustrated read-along dialogue, and a guide to explaining death, Grollman provides sensitive and timely advice for families coping with loss.

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Talking with Children About Loss by Maria Trozzi

Through captivating stories and thoughtful analysis, Maria Trozzi explains how to handle the difficult job of talking with children and adolescents about loss.

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Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss

Instructor Recommended

A comforting modern fable that uses the metaphor of making soup to help people understand and navigate the grieving process.

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We Need to Talk About Death: An Important Book About Grief, Celebrations, and Love

In this informative book, illustrated by Annika Le Large, children will marvel at the flowers different cultures use to represent death. They will find out about eco-friendly burials, learn how to wrap a mummy, and go beneath the streets of Paris to witness skull-lined catacombs!

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What Does Grief Feel Like? By Korie Leigh

Instructor Recommended

Gentle and reassuring, What Does Grief Feel Like? shares the many ways people can grieve when a loved one dies and validates children’s unique grief experiences. Open-ended questions throughout the book invite children to share what they are thinking, feeling, and going through.

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When Someone You Love Has Died: Talking to Young Children About Death by Stephanie Seidler

When Someone You Love Has Died is an award-winning, heartfelt, and compassionate children's picture book that gently addresses the topic of death and the experiences that come with it. Through sensitive storytelling and beautiful illustrations, this book offers reassurance and comfort while guiding young readers through the process of understanding and coping with their emotions during a difficult time.

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Where Did My Friend Go?: Helping Children Cope With A Traumatic Death by Azmaira H. Maker

The book includes a guide for adults and a list of discussion questions to help children and adults talk honestly about the difficult emotions that arise after the sudden loss of a loved one. Through conversations, pictures, sculpture, playacting, and more, children can share their fears, learn how to cope, and receive appropriate reassurance about their own safety.

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A Wish for You by Deborah Joy

Losing a loved one can be one of life’s most traumatic experience and certainly can have a profound effect on children through Adulthood. This book explores the theme of Grief in a lighthearted and soulful way with the aim of helping young readers embrace hope, comfort, and guidance through varying complex emotions.

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You'll Find Me by Amanda Rawson Hill

Loss becomes remembrance in this book that offers tender ways to pay tribute to, and meaningfully incorporate, a loved one’s lost presence into present and future life experiences. Be it departed friends, family, pets, and more, memories can carry us beyond the precious moments we have together to keep the ones we loved before in mind forever.

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You’ll Always Have My Love by Jennifer Lim Chobar

A book of comfort for grief and loss appropriate for all ages. When a loved one passes away it can be very difficult to talk about good memories and the lasting impact of their love. This book helps commemorate the loved ones that are no longer here and cherish the love and guidance that their presence has left us with to help cope with sadness, loneliness, separation and difficult emotions.

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Teens and Young Adults

The Astonishing Color of After

Alternating between reality and magic, past and present, hope and despair, The Astonishing Color of After is a luminous debut novel about finding oneself through family history, art, bravery, and love.

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The Beauty That Remains

Told from three diverse points of view, this story of life and love after loss is one Angie Thomas, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Hate U Give, believes

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Goodbye Days

Where are you guys? Text me back. That's the last message Carver Briggs will ever send his three best friends, Mars, Eli, and Blake. He never thought that it would lead to their death. Now Carver can’t stop blaming himself for the accident and even worse, a powerful judge is pressuring the district attorney to open up a criminal investigation.

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History Is All You Left Me

When Griffin’s first love and ex-boyfriend, Theo, dies in a drowning accident, his universe implodes. Even though Theo had moved to California for college and started seeing Jackson, Griffin never doubted Theo would come back to him when the time was right.

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I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga’s role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family.

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It Won't Ever Be the Same: A Teen's Guide to Grief and Grieving by Korie Leigh

Instructor Recommended

It Won't Ever Be the Same is a validating and reassuring book that speaks directly to teens experiencing grief, providing them with tools to understand, express, and cope.

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Under the Whispering Door

Hilarious, haunting, and kind, Under the Whispering Door is an uplifting story about a life spent at the office and a death spent building a home.

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Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?: And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

Everyone has questions about death. In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers the most intriguing questions she’s ever received about what happens to our bodies when we die.

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You Are Not Alone: Teens Talk About Life After The Loss of a Parent by Lynn B. Hughes

Through frank and accessible testimonials, Lynne Hughes and the kids of Comfort Zone Camp share the most difficult parts of their losses and offer their own experiences.

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Pets

The Book of Pet Love and Loss: Words of Comfort and Wisdom from Remarkable People by Sara Bader

A powerful collection of quotations by writers, leaders, and legends on the pain of losing a pet and overcoming grief.

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Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die by Jon Katz

In this invaluable guide and touchstone, New York Times bestselling author Jon Katz addresses the difficult but necessary topic of saying goodbye to a beloved pet. Drawing on personal experiences, stories from fellow pet owners, and philosophical reflections, Katz provides support for those in mourning.

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Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet by Gary Kowalski

Filled with heartwarming stories and practical guidance on such matters as taking care of yourself while mourning, creating rituals to honor your pet's memory, and talking to children about death, Goodbye, Friend is a beautiful and comforting book for anyone grieving the loss of a beloved animal.

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Losing A Pet - A Book of Grief & Recovery: The Pathway to Finding Joy After Pet Loss When You Just Can't Get Over Losing Your Soul Pet by Emily Newcombe

Understanding the depth of your bond and learning to celebrate rather than mourn your years together helps memorialize your pet. It also equips you with perspective and the capacity to love again.

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P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna by Sarah Chauncey

Our cats occupy a unique space in our hearts. When they’re gone, the loss can be devastating, the grief profound. P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna gives us an opportunity to give friends, loved ones, or ourselves tangible comfort during the grieving period, when so many of us feel isolated and misunderstood after a beloved pet dies.

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Soul Comfort for Cat Lovers: Coping Wisdom for Heart and Soul After the Loss of a Beloved Feline by Liz Eastwood

If the loss of a feline friend has hit you particularly hard, know you are not alone. In Soul Comfort for Cat Lovers, you will find validation, coping insights, and practical wisdom conveyed with spiritual warmth.

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Cultural

The Remembering Candle by Alison Goldberg

Instructor Recommended

Demonstrates how happy memories of our loved ones help us deal with grief

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Black Community

Grief Is Love: Living with Loss

Grief is Love is about making space for the transformation that a significant loss requires. she also explores the unique impact of grief on Black people and reveals the key factors that proper healing requires: permission, care, feeling, grace and more.

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The Mourning After Sunday: Grieving While Black

The Mourning After Sunday illuminates what's been missing and what must change. It's a personal testimony and a professional manifesto. It's scholarship grounded in lived experience. It's the book that holds space for mourning while demanding systems do better.

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Pregnancy and Infant Loss

Ghostbelly

Instructor Recommended

In this courageous memoir, Elizabeth Heineman “illuminates the complex emotional landscape of stillbirth—putting into frank and poetic words the unspeakable experience of simultaneously grieving and mothering a baby who has died

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I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement

Instructor Recommended

This evocative memoir confronts the cultural silence around miscarriage and illuminates how to transform trauma into human connection

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Notes for the Everlost: A Field Guide to Grief

Instructor Recommended

Part memoir, part handbook for the heartbroken, this powerful, unsparing account of losing a premature baby will speak to all who have been bereaved and are grieving, and offers inspiration on moving forward, gently integrating the loss into life.

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Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

Instructor Recommended

“Still is one of those rare books that catches you up and does not let you go.A moving, candid account of one woman’s experience with stillbirth.

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What God Is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color

Instructor Recommended

What God Is Honored Here? is the first book of its kind—and urgently necessary. This is a literary collection of voices of Indigenous women and women of color who have undergone miscarriage and infant loss, experiences that disproportionately affect women who have often been cast toward the margins in the United States of America.

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Books and Articles

End-of-Life Planning

Surprisingly funny and often cutting, this memoir meets end-of-life planning guide outlines practical steps for patients, families, and caregivers, while acknowledging that some questions don’t always need answers.

Grief and Grieving

The American Book of Living and Dying: Lessons in Healing Spiritual Pain

Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity.

Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity.

After someone close to you dies, whether this happened many years ago or recently, it can be difficult to feel whole again. This loss can result in an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty, sadness, and loneliness. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to feel to feel better over time.

This book focuses on the kind of grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially validated, or publicly mourned. It addresses the unique psychological, biological, and sociological issues involved in disenfranchised grief.

In Finding Meaning, Kessler shares the insights, collective wisdom, and powerful tools that will help those experiencing loss.

Full of practical advice on how to survive in the aftermath of loss, Finding the Words teaches readers how to actively reach out to their community, perform mourning rituals, and find ways to express their grief, so they can live more fully while also holding their loved ones close.

The cofounder of the Zen Hospice Project and pioneer behind the compassionate care movement shares an inspiring exploration of the lessons dying has to offer about living a fulfilling life.

A journey into the field of music-thanatology: what it is, and how it uses live harp and voice to bring beauty, peace and compassion to the dying and their loved ones.

This grief recovery handbook offers daily reflections and practices that address the day-to-day emotions and experiences that accompany the grieving process so you can create a life in which peace―and even gratitude―can coexist with your grief.

In Grief Works, Samuel shares case studies from those who have experienced great love and great loss—and survived. People need to understand that grief is a process that has to be worked through, and Samuel shows if we do the work, we can begin to heal.

In Lead Me Home, Carleen Brice gently guides you through the strange terrain of grief to the promise of home-a place where we have not only survived our losses, but are wiser and stronger because of them.

In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss.

Brutally honest and inspiring, Modern Loss invites us to talk intimately and humorously about grief, helping us confront the humanity (and mortality) we all share. Beginners welcome.

Grief hurts. Don’t do it alone. Learn to navigate any loss—a parent, a friendship, a job, a miscarriage—at your own pace with the help of a licensed grief and trauma therapist.

Renegade Grief is an indispensable resource for people at any stage of the grieving process and with Carla’s candid and compassionate guidance, you learn that life after loss isn’t about the futile attempt of arriving at some other side.

Excellent as an empathetic handbook for anyone in mourning as well as a text for support groups, Understanding Your Grief pairs with a guided journal.

This book shows the reader how to open to the immensity of living with death, to participate fully in life as the perfect preparation for whatever may come next.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow is a balm for the soul and a necessary salve for moving together through difficult times.

This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

Spouse / Partner Loss

Tender, true, and endearingly hilarious, Black Widow is a story about the power of love, and how the only guide book for recovery is the one you write yourself.

Written with heartfelt compassion, this warm, easy-to-read, and practical book reads like a caring conversation with a friend and will become a comforting companion as you navigate the turbulent waters of grief.

From Scratch is for anyone who has dared to reach for big love, fought for what mattered most, and those who needed a powerful reminder that life is...delicious.

The Group offers a singular perspective on grief by weaving together the latest thinking on bereavement, resiliency and post-traumatic growth with the true story of seven men who were raising children on their own after the deaths of their wives.

The loss of a husband or wife is traumatic. You will never be the same, but you can heal and grow. Let Heartbroken join you on your grief journey. You'll be glad you did.

The Hot Young Widows Club isn’t just for people who have lost a spouse, but an essential tool for anyone who has gone through a major life struggle.

This is for people who aren’t sure if they’re saying or doing the right thing (you’re not, but nobody is). This is for people who had their life turned upside down and just learned to live that way. For people who have laughed at a funeral or cried in a grocery store.

No Happy Endings is a book for people living life after life has fallen apart. It's a book for people who know that they're moving forward, not moving on. It's a book for people who know life isn't always happy, but it isn't the end: there will be unimaginable joy and incomprehensible tragedy.

A modern take on loss, Widowish illuminates the twists of fate that break our world, the determination that keeps us moving forward, and the surprises in life we never see coming.

In You Can't Do It Alone, Whitesell tells her story and teams up with licensed therapist Lauren Schneider to provide readers with a roadmap for walking through illness, death and grief.

Traumatic Loss

Readers have described this book as:...a practical guide for coping with suicide, from the first few days through the first year and beyond.

Reach out and grab the hand of multiple award-winning author and grief counselor Gary Roe. Let him walk with you through this uncharted, forbidding territory.

For more than 35 years, Dr. Kirk has been studying, teaching, and researching the literature of black suicide. In this landmark study, he discusses several theories about suicide.

The authors of this book break through suicide's silent stigma offering gentle advice for those left behind, so that healing can begin.

After a suicide, loved ones painfully struggle to make sense of the unexplainable tragedy. The Gift of Second comes alongside loss survivors and helps navigate the common pitfalls for those left behind. It offers hope and encouragement to guide survivors through this desperate time.

'Silent grief is a book for and about

Death of a Child

This book is a simple book of letters written for you, a grieving loss dad, from other loss dads who are living and surviving after the death of their precious child.

Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back is a collection of candid stories from grieving dads that were interviewed over a two year period.

Unthinkable. Unbelievable. Heartbreaking. Whatever words we choose, they all fall far short of the reality. The loss of a child is a terrible thing. How do we survive this? Can we? Shattered: Surviving the Loss of a Child was written to help.

Three Minus One: Parents' Stories of Love and Loss is a collection of intimate, soul-baring stories and artwork by parents who have lost a child to stillbirth, miscarriage, or neonatal death, inspired by the film Return to Zero.

When your baby dies, you find yourself in a life you never expected. And even though pregnancy and infant loss are common, they're not common to you. Instead, you feel like a stranger in your own body, surrounded by well-meaning people who often don't know how to support you.

No matter where you are in your grieving process, The Unspeakable Loss provides a space to mourn in your own way, and helps you understand how the death of a child affects siblings, other family members and friends, recognizing that we each grieve differently.

This book is a simple book of love written for you, a grieving loss mom, from other loss moms who have also heard those life-altering, soul-shattering words, “I’m sorry there is no heartbeat” or “I’m sorry, your baby is gone.”

New Perspectives

A hospice doctor and caregiver shares the 7 inspirational lessons she has learned from the dying—and gives a daily spiritual practice to help live them.

Explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying,

The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington, inflated cremation costs, the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves, and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations.

Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all the way to the very end.

In this book, Halifax offers lessons from dying people and caregivers, as well as guided meditations to help readers contemplate death without fear, develop a commitment to helping others, and transform suffering and resistance into courage.