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Mother's Day can be a hard day for people we love. Books on grief have been a balm to my heart since my mom passed in 2015. If you have a friend for whom Mother's Day might be hard this year, I offer these book suggestions as a way to let them you know you see them & love them.
THE ART OF LOSING is an anthology of poetry about grief & healing edited by @Deardarkness. This book showcases the multi-faceted fullness of grief: light, dark, hopeless, grateful, angry, numb, confused, and more, from poets modern & legendary. What a gift this book is.
This nonfiction book by @hope_edelman shows the effect of losing one's mother over various ages of your life. It's empathic, well-researched, and resonate. Seeing myself in so many women in this book made me feel so much less alone in my grief.
I will continue this thread shortly! Life intervened.
Grief can reveal both the things your mother left you which glitter, stubborn, inside of your being, as well as the fresh parts of you you are forced to create the vacuum in her absence. @theferocity captures both beautifully in his memoir HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES.
The 1st year of grief is brutal, as each new holiday, bday is the first one w/out ma. But what about the years that follow, when grief still surprises you? When your life "after" still feels half-built & unsettled? @OmarHolmon's WE WERE ALL SOMEONE ELSE YESTERDAY meets you there.
Losing a funny, iconoclastic, soulmate of a mom too soon is singular, terrible grief. DANCING AT THE PITY PARTY by @tylerfederdraws is somehow both a honest, wrenching reckoning w/ loss & a full-hearted, love-soaked celebration of life. Can't recommend this graphic novel enough.
So the last book is my poetry collection about losing my mother, HOW TO LOVE THE EMPTY AIR, but it also serves a placeholder for writing down your own grief, your own memories, your own experience. A page can hold something, so your brain & your heart can rest. Let it.
This thread is by no means comprehensive! Just ones that resonated with me today! If you have suggestions, please feel free to add them! & if you are the one in grief, know that I'm so sorry. Know you are not alone. Know you can reach out! & remember you are very, very loved.
