About death and grief Expand A Special Scar: The experiences of people bereaved by suicide Alison Wertheimer Written and researched by a bereaved sibling, this book covers the losses of siblings, parents, children and friends. Buy from Amazon From a Clear Blue Sky Timothy Knatchbull A powerful survivor’s account of the IRA bomb that killed the author’s 14-year-old twin brother, his grandparents and a family friend, published on the 30th anniversary of the atrocity. Buy from Amazon GriefWorks app Julia Samuel Drawing on Child Bereavement UK’s Founder Patron Julia Samuel’s 30 years of experience as a leading grief therapist, the GriefWorks app was designed to effectively address the full range of emotions surrounding grief. The app pairs Julia’s advice with actionable practices and exercises, gently nudging you to record and examine your own thoughts and feelings. The app also offers more than 30 interactive tools including breathing visualisation exercises, guided meditations, daily gratitude check-ins, prompted evening reflections, and more. Available via Grief Works How to Get to Grips with Grief: 40 Ways to Manage the Unmanageable James Withey This book is for anyone who has lost someone. It may have been recently, or it may have been years ago, but still it stings like it was yesterday.In his twenty years supporting people with their own grief, as a counsellor and social care worker, he has helped others work through their despair and reconcile the injustice of grief. With his trademark humour and warmth, he provides forty ways to help you live with and manage your grief no matter what stage you're at. It provides comfort for when it all gets too much, ideas for when you feel at a loss for what to do and more than a laugh or two to balance out the sadness. Purchase from Amazon It's Okay that you're Not Okay Megan Devine When a painful loss or life-shattering event upends your world, here is the first thing to know: there is nothing wrong with grief. "Grief is simply love in its most wild and painful form," says Megan Devine. "It is a natural and sane response to loss." So, why does our culture treat grief like a disease to be cured as quickly as possible? In It's OK That You're Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Buy from Amazon Michael Rosen's Sad Book Michael Rosen A very personal story that speaks to adults as well as children. The author describes feeling sad after the death of his son and what he does to try to cope with it. Buy from Amazon We Get It Heather L. Servaty-Seib and David C. Fajgenbaum A unique collection of 33 narrative by bereaved students and young adults in America, this book aims to help young adults who are grieving and provide guidance for those who seek to support them. It has been described as like having a group in a book. Buy on Amazon You Are Not Alone Cariad Lloyd In You Are Not Alone, Cariad shares all that she has learned from presenting her podcast, Griefcast. She reflects on her own grief, the grief of others, and the psychology and science behind how our society deals with death and loss. Funeral thoughts, therapy, coping with anniversaries, bad friends, good friends, birthdays, weddings, missing them, not missing them - this is grief in all its sad, surprising, awkward, tender and sometimes funny forms. You Are Not Alone is a road map for all of us: for anybody who has ever felt lost in grief, who would like to help someone they know through theirs, or who just wants to understand life a little better. Buy on Amazon
When someone is not expected to live (pre bereavement) Expand With the End in Mind: How to Live and Die Well Kathryn Mannix Told through a series of beautifully crafted stories taken from nearly four decades of clinical practice, her book answers the most intimate questions about the process of dying with touching honesty and humanity. She makes a compelling case for the therapeutic power of approaching death not with trepidation but with openness, clarity and understanding. Buy on Amazon
When a parent has died Expand A Half Baked Idea Olivia Potts At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake, badly. She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband. Afterwards, grief pushed Olivia into the kitchen. She came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Her cakes sank and her custard curdled. But she found comfort in jams and solace in pies, and what began as a distraction from grief became a way of building a life outside grief, a way of surviving, and making sense of her life without her mum. Buy from Amazon Big Boys (Television Series) Written by comedian Jack Rooke and loosely based on his own experiences, Big Boys tells the story of two mismatched boys who strike up an unlikely friendship when they're thrown together at university, following the death of one of their fathers. Watch on Channel 4 Crying in H Mart Michelle Zauner From the indie rockstar Japanese Breakfast, an unflinching, powerful, deeply moving memoir about growing up mixed-race, Korean food, losing her Korean mother, and forging her own identity. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic 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. Buy from Amazon Grief Is The Thing With Feathers Max Porter He comes with a crackling of feathers and a smell of decay. He comes like the worst thing you could ever imagine, like something you should never have to imagine, he comes when you need him. He is a reminder, a companion, a harbinger, a scruffy homeless layabout, a friend. He is Crow. In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family becoming the mouthpiece for their sorrow, an echo of what cannot be said. Slowly, as the months pass, they become familiar with Crow and his odd companionship and almost imperceptibly, they begin to heal. Buy from Amazon
When a sibling has died Expand A Manual for Heartache Cathy Rentzenbrink When Cathy was still a teenager, her happy family was torn apart after an accident. In A Manual for Heartache she describes how she learnt to live with grief and loss and find joy in the world again. She explores how to cope with life at its most difficult and overwhelming and how we can emerge from suffering forever changed, but filled with hope. It is a moving, warm and uplifting book that offers solidarity and comfort to anyone going through a painful time, whatever it might be. It's a book that will help to soothe an aching heart and assure its readers that they're not alone. Buy from Amazon Sisters and Brothers: Stories about the death of a sibling Julie Bentley and Simon Anthony Blake Sometimes those who have lost a sibling can feel like forgotten mourners. This book is a collection of short contributions discussing sibling loss. It tells the very individual story of 12 people’s individual experience of bereavement when facing the death of an adult sibling. Buy from Amazon The Last Act of Love: The Story of My Brother and His Sister Cathy Rentzenbrink The Last Act of Love is a book about Cathy Rentzenbrink’s own relationship with her brother, Matty. In 1990, when Matty was just weeks away from getting his GCSE results, he was in a hit and run accident and left in a permanent vegetative state. This book is the love that came before this event and what happens in the aftermath of tragedy. Buy from Amazon
When a friend has died Expand Boy Friends Michael Pedersen In 2018, poet and author Michael Pedersen lost a cherished friend to suicide, Scott Hutchison (from the band, Frightened Rabbit), soon after their collective voyage into the landscape of the Scottish Highlands. Just weeks later, Michael began to write to him. As he confronts the bewildering process of grief, what starts as a love letter to one magical, coruscating human soon becomes a paean to all the gorgeous male friendships that have transformed his life. Buy on Amazon Delicacy: A memoir about cake and death Katy Wix Delicacy is the memoir of comedian, actor and writer Katy Wix, focusing on twenty-one snapshots of a life - some staccato, raw and shocking, some expansive, meditative, and profound, underpinned with moments of startling humour that shatter the darkness - all beginning with a single memory. A memory of cake. It discusses the death of her friend and the grief she felt around that, as well as the bereavement of her parents. Buy from Amazon