Bereavement & Grief Anthology
Early Grief/Recent Bereavement/Living with Grief.
Dear Readers, Welcome!
A big hug, I see you. Life has grown around my grief, but in the calm, less stressful periods of life, there are sudden waves that consume me.
Grief was relegated and boxed when I moved from one rollercoaster to another. So now, it tends to erupt and break free.
What happens when grief for one person is smothered by the need to care for another? Containing grief through surgery, healing, chemo-, radiotherapy and administering probate. It’s like an intermittent howl, muted. You know it’s lurking, powerless, unsure when it jumps you.
And yet, in the most unlikely place - ‘Wandavision’ the Marvel TV series, something clicked and resonated.
This anthology is one of many I’m producing to leverage our community’s diverse experience. This way, we can support each other and new readers with Empathy and Inspiration.
I’m not a ‘Grief’ or bereavement expert, so I seek out the expertise of others to hear from those trained to counsel, support and offer resources about grief.
Many writers/authors/creators on this platform, Substack, share their bereavement and grief experiences. Although it may not be the primary focus of their publication, they share their personal story and insights.
[Please let me know if you see any mistakes via DM or vlchin@carermentor.com Thanks!]
I hope these real-life experiences that resonated with pieces of my journey will resonate with you.
I hope readers will explore the directory of publications for other articles.
If you have a personal recommendation for a resource, book, organisation or article, please share the URL in the comments.
This page will evolve on the Carer Mentor website. Please bookmark this page for future reference and share it to help others.
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Thank you!
Articles by Victoria at Carer Mentor
‘Grief is messy. It’s not a tidy five-stage path.’ Shankar Vedantam's interview of Lucy Hone offers us a broader context to her resilience research work and how she leverage her own work to navigate the grief of losing her daughter. Lucy Hone’s book is Resilient Grieving. This is NOT about ‘toxic-positivity’ grit or pushing through feelings. It’s about having practical, realistic actions as enablers.
I exhaled deeply when I found Megan Devine’s work. I share her ‘Refuge in Grief’ Website & Book in this article. Resource: Megan Devine's 'How do you help a grieving friend?' Megan Devine’s book is ‘It’s OK that you’re not OK.’ Something we ALL need to hear!
Personal Reflection & Resources: life grows around grief.
Personal Reflection: Grief is love persevering
Directory of the Authors | Writers | Publications included.
Recent additions are highlighted in bold, italic
Kristina Adams Waldorf, MD at After He Said Cancer.
Anne at The Future Widow
Sarah Bain at
Dina Bell-Laroche at The Grieving Place. Stories of Love and Loss
Amy Brown at Living in 3D: Divorce, Dementia and Destiny
Leann Burch at Leann Burch Writing
Sarah Coomber at Sandwich Season.
Jackie Daly at Creative Seasoning
Jody Day at Gateway Elderwomen.
Janine De Tillio Cammarata at The Pause Place
Anna De La Cruz at GenXandwich
Beverley Dickson at
Cinquain poemsAnna Du Pen at Betwixt & Between Proxy.
Sue Fagalde Lick at Can I Do It Alone
Mariah Friend at Heartbeats
Susan Fusco-Fazio at Blue Sunflower
Amy Gabrielle at Amy Gabrielle’s Substack
Laurita Gorman | MSW SEP at Wildly Unraveled.
Ramona Grigg at Constant Commoner
Amber Groomes,Ph.D. at Dr. Amber_Writes.
Nici Harrison at Grief Balm a duet of wonder and grief
Tina Hedin at Letters from Turkey Town
Amanda B. Hinton at The Editing Spectrum
Elizabeth Kopple at Elizabeth Kopple
Danusia Malina-Derben at Parents Who Think.
Sally McQuillen at Life is honestly so beautiful
Sasha Neal at
Jessica Nordell at Who We Are To Each Other
Larry Patten at
Lily Pond at Lily Pond
Jane Ratcliffe Alua Arthur and at Beyond by Jane Ratcliffe
Mary Roblyn at Wri/ter Interrupted.
Tahia Sherebanou Fakhri at Contemplations
Bess Stillman at Everything is an Emergency.
Bonnie Tai. at Let's Just Be
Trevy Thomas at Our Hundred Years
Ruhie Vaidya at From The Heart to Beyond
Christine Vaughan Davies At Journeying Alongside
Neena Verma at Grief Wise with Neena Verma
Janice Walton at Aging Well Newsletter.
Debbie Weil at [B]OLD Age with Debbie Weil
Anthology Table of Contents
Part 1 What is Grief?
Part 2 The Personal Experiences Navigating bereavement and grief
Grief of a Parent/Parent-figure | Grandparent | Family Member | Chosen Family
Moving from ‘Private grief to Community Healing’ (phrase by
Mariah Friend)
Part 3 Enablers | Tools
Part 1
Grief is a unique experience and journey.
I recommend reading Debbie’s article and the comments. They highlight how no two experiences are the same because no two people or relationships are alike.
I appreciated Debbie’s article because many people expected me to be sobbing in grief, but I was relieved: Dad was finally released from his pain & diseased body. Then, grief was deprioritised by more caregiving and complicated by traumatic memories of falls and hospital discharges.
Please don't say "Sorry for your loss". A complicated relationship with my dad has led to complicated grief. By
Finding a place to grieve
Grief Balm a duet of wonder and grief by
The Pause Place. The Space Between Grief and HOPE By @Janine De Tillio Cammarata
Disenfranchised / Marginalised Grief
This is Disenfranchised Grief. YouTube video The lost tribe of childless women by
at TEDxHull June 2 2017.Grief Encounters of the Non-Death Kind On the Ambiguous Losses of caregiving By
. This article resonated. I shared that ‘Grief, emotional trauma/PTSD rewired my brain. It also burned a brand/tattoo on my heart.’
Opening our hearts and minds to everyone. Grief is an individual experience but for some they are suffocated or marginalised. Feeling suffocated? A social justice approach to grief and loss means we recognize and validate those that are cast aside. By
:Suffocated grief is a term that she coined to acknowledge the sorrow that marginalized people may experience. Different than disenfranchised grief (Ken Doka’s beautiful work), where our sorrow isn’t acknowledged or accepted, suffocated grief speaks to the bereaved not being able to express their pain, for fear of being penalised.
- eloquently shares her betrayal grief : Grief is Fermentation, and I’m Turning into Kimchi. A look inside the jar where I spent the last few months grieving for ambiguous loss.
the grief of the loss of an intimate partner as betrayal revealed that I had been living in a "reality" that was not real? I had to grief of the loss of my reality and the loss of a future of endless love that I had imagined. Many people have experienced this kind of loss but there isn't enough recognition in our society that we need time and people's support to go through the grieving process.
Do’s and Don’ts of supporting someone who’s grieving
5 Statements that are Decidedly Not Helpful. Even though we both wish they were. . .By
7 Ways You Can Help Your Grieving Friend. A Shopping List. By
- :
“The song of the soul that cries can only be heard by one’s soul who has already cried.” I tell my chaplaincy students, this is the crux of why we explore their own pain, so they can more fully sit with others in their pain.
Part 2 Navigating Bereavement and Grief
Death Doula & End of Life.
A compassionate discussion about being a Death Doula: ‘Guided By Joy: A Conversation with Alua Arthur’. On being a death doula, empathy v. compassion, toxic self-reliance, boundaries, celebrating celebrations, and so much more! By
andThe 4 Things You Must Say Before You Die by Thank you
and Brenda Hartman
Anticipatory Grief/Early Grief. The Long Goodbye.
The Grief Before the Grief. Blessing or Burden? Understanding Anticipatory Grief By
. I appreciate Christine’s ability to articulate experiences and express feelings. I highly recommend reading this. It resonated a lot with me.Anticipatory Grief is the preparation for a change or a loss that is about to take place. It involves all the thoughts, feelings and experiences one goes through when change is clear and inevitable.
The impact of dementia and long term illness. The grief we feel before they’ve gone. ‘The Long Goodbye. Navigating my parents' dementia, and my brain's attempt to let it consume me.’ By
‘Dementia is a thief that steals from us all’. By
The paradox of blessing-burden and grief-joy. There are so many quotes I wanted to share from this! ‘Exploring the blessings/burdens of this season. Catastrophising with my cup half full.’ By
Kristina’s vulnerably raw memoir that shares what happens after her husband’s diagnosed with breast cancer. ‘How it Began’ By
The beautiful writing of Bess and Jakes journey. Quote: ‘Every bonus hour has become the golden hour. We haven’t been around as long as Newgrange, but it feels like, just by getting to this solstice, we’re a monument to something. Maybe a monument to how much love can do. We’re beautiful in this light.’ ‘How the light gets in: a solstice at the border of life and death. The fire in each of us, on the shortest day of the year’ By
Navigating grief in life. ‘Intentionally Building Resilience One Day at a Time’ By
Good News! I Cry Pretty Now. Progress. . . I Guess. By
Bearing witness to the decline and feeling the crescendo of grief. ‘When Death is Slow to Come.’ Finding Gratitude in the Midst of Pain By
Widow | Widower/ Grief of a Partner
A poignant essay. ‘What I Learned in My First Year as a Widow. Gratitude is how you get through grief.’ By
My husband died a year ago from Alzheimer’s Disease. Right afterward, I wanted to go with him. Gratitude Graces Loss. Unconscious Intimacy By
However long it’s been, you’re not alone in your grief. Have a read of this by Joan. xo The Heaviness of August Grief depression this time of year sucks...but worth a few bad weeks By
I didn’t write for six months after he passed, then I wrote it all…raw and angry and sad. I shared it here about five months into joining Substack…when I realized there were other widow warriors writing about grief.
Quote: ‘Be that as it may, there remains a constant sadness in me that I don’t think will ever go away. My life is unequivocally changed - and it wasn’t a change I wanted or planned for. I miss him more than I could have imagined.’ ‘Three Years a Widow. It doesn’t Seem Possible.’ By
Quote: As a fellow writer said when writing about her husband’s death, “our love is breathing still.” Even though my husband of 60 years is physically gone, constants remain in life - maybe, our love is breathing still - just differently.’ ‘Walk in the Woods’ By
Referenced by Janice. I Buried Him. Our love is breathing still. By
Pink Juice Reflections Taking a little control at life's end. By
.
When I read Trevy’s reflections, I could feel myself trying to get my heart and head around the pain within these lines. The quote I’d like to share is not from the main text but from the discussion—comments exchange between Trevy and
. I hope readers will click through to read the full article and comments exchange—big empathy AND pointing out societal conditioning. (I’m glad Trevy’s found a good one too!)Oh Trevy, my heart goes out to you. From one widow to another, I get it. It's the "what ifs" and the "should haves" that get to us, even years later. It really is our brains trying to make sense of something awful by drawing unfair conclusions. We cannot go back in time, but oh how I wish we could.
Your Objects Are Emotional Keepsakes. Why do our belongings feel so charged with energy? By
QUOTE: ‘In grief I learned so well that objects hold energy. It’s a phrase I never really understood before.’
Grief of a Parent/Parent-figure | Grandparent | Family Member | Chosen Family
- to her mother about sorting everything in her mother's home. Thank you for sharing, Sarah
Some of the things I’ve kept from your home, mama. I know you’d be sad no one wanted the china or silver. No one took all the Hummels. No one wanted the antiques or the clocks. We even left behind the new bed. But here is some of what I kept:
Emptying by
Thank you for sharing this Sasha.It’s my sixth visit to my mother’s house since she died, and my last. We step from the pavement into the living room, breathe old woodsmoke and damp stone, dip our heads under the blackened, sloping beams to carry bags upstairs and make our beds, and what surprises me most is not that I can’t summon sadness when I want to, but how much I wish the kids were there.
‘I want to do it intentionally,’ I told my sister on the long drive west and north through Friday night traffic, ‘I don’t want to get into an unthinking rush.’ But there’s just so much to do.
A beautiful poem ‘Death Came’
A grief-empathy-exchange between myself and
. Ruhie wrote a note about ‘firsts’ that trigger grief. We shared thoughts on memories, music and how we are gaslit when people say, ‘Time will heal…or your grief will get better with time….’UGHHH. When we connect with others who are grieving, we feel seen and less alone. Thank you, Ruhie.Navigating feelings after a recent bereavement. ‘Don't let guilt steal your grief.’ By
‘Quote’ ‘There was nothing I could do to stop the vortex of chaos, and nothing for me to hold onto and take refuge. The only thing I was able to do – in Alan Watts’s words – “to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”'Be Present and Dance with Grief. On moving forward when everything falls apart'. By
Quote: ‘I had the sense of a circle being brought to completion, of a contract having been honoured.’ A parting gift. Being with my mother at the end. by
Reframing our relationship with grief. ‘It is clear to me now that I was fearful of grief because I had no framework to make sense of the experience of death, and I had no models for how to cope effectively with overwhelming emotion’ An Invitation to Grieve Fearlessly. Grief can be frightening, but there is nothing to fear’.By
Learning how we can be like a good friend to our-grieving-selves. Meet Your Grief With Self-Compassion How I've used self-compassion while grieving, and how you can too. By
‘A keening ceremony Finding the doorway into a shared experience of grief and love’ by
‘Somehow the loss keeps happening An exploration of time, felt as a pulse, rather than a period’ By
Grief of a Child
‘Women are designed to Howl if we're not howling are we even healing?’ By
The dark side of grief. ..or how family members get in the way of grief By
. Thank you for this, Sarah:It wasn’t until more than a year later, sitting in a circle with other women whose babies had died, that I confessed my feelings. I couldn’t look at babies, hold babies, see my friends with babies, or smile at babies. And as I quietly confessed my thoughts, a collective sigh of relief took over.
It turns out I wasn’t alone.
Quote: ‘These days in my mind, grief looks like a circle of people—all different ages and sizes of Amanda—sitting around, each passing a parcel from person to person. It seems now that when grief had brought someone closure, they passed it on to the next Amanda who was ready.’ ‘The Alchemization of Grief A New Orleans cab driver helps me grieve my daughter’ by
Emotional Memory of Grief. Hurricane Season By
Quote: “AHHH, I BUILT A HOME FOR MY GRIEF TO LIVE IN. “7 Years of Grief” is the home of my acute ache.’ ‘DOES SADNESS BELONG ON THE PAGE FOREVER?’ By
Quote: ‘We don’t return, we don’t pretend, and we don’t just move on. We cannot return to our previous grief free days because we aren’t the same anymore, how could we be after such loss?’ ‘Give Grief a Seat’. Making space for our pain. By
- . Thank you for sharing Christopher with us, Sally
With Christopher, it’s different. Time doesn’t really mean a thing. When his little sister gets married, (and she will always be his little sister), I have no doubt that he will be a part of all the celebrating in the year ahead. He will definitely be at the parties. He wouldn’t miss a party. And who knows? Maybe he even brought the gift of Paul Caroline’s way in the first place.
- and sharing Kiki’s story with us ‘Start Here. A good thing plus the backstory’
Eric and I entered the world of grief, and discovered that when the worst thing happens, the cruelest part is, it doesn’t kill you. The pain makes you wish you were dead yet you have to go on. And that’s what I’m doing here. Finding a path through the darkness. Learning how to carry grief. Learning how to find joy and hope again.
Channeling Grief after Henry Anniversaries - the other kind By
A beautiful legacy. ‘Happy Birthday my eternal child. 24th June ... Happy Birthday to a child long gone, a child ever here’. By
Bereaved Parents: Reflections on Laura’s Would be 38th Birthday Written on July 13, 2024 By
Grief of Furbabies | Cats | Dogs | Pets
Navigating Grief with Children
- shares her experience and some resources.
Grief Empathy is painful
When ‘Til Death Do Us Part Happens’. Another widow finds herself suddenly alone By
writes a beautifully empathetic piece. Many of us, I’m sure, have felt the resurgence of grief on special occasions, but I think it’s particularly potent when we feel empathy for someone else. Thank you for this, Sue.
‘Moving from Private Grief to Community Healing.’ NOT moving on, but life growing around the grief that is part of us. They are part of us.
When was the last time you cried in public? Moving from private grief to community healing By
Bloom: A season of grief & gratitude Two poems and the start of something new By
Unhappy Anniversary? What do you say . . . By
. Larry highlights the awkwardness many feel around the anniversary of someone’s death. The English language and traditions deter, rather than accommodate, grieving-in-community. Unlike, for example, the Jewish tradition of ‘Yahrzeit.’ I agree with Larry, saying something in empathy is much better than avoidance.
These next two articles by Jackie resonated because specific music reminds me, moves and shifts the grief within me. This is part of my father’s legacy, gifted to me from a young age.
What a dance weekend taught me about living with grief. Dancing, life chapters, and matryoshka dolls By
How good times struck me like a tuning fork. "Good times. These are the good times." By
In an article published by
(November 10, 2024), Veronica Stanwell shared these words of wisdomAs everyone, one by one, placed their items on the grief altar, tears flowed in what felt like one of the most beautiful honourings I have ever experienced. In those tears, I felt the sheer breadth of love the human heart is capable of. I was reminded of Cole Arthur Riley’s quote:
Grief is an honouring.
It really is. An honouring of your love. Of life. Of all that tears us open to the mysteries of this existence.
I appreciate how Nici shares diverse grief practices and perspectives. I highly recommend exploring Nici’s publication
.Part 3 Enablers | Tools
Resources | Organisations
UNITED KINGDOM
- recommends The Bereavement Journey. Thanks to Beverley commenting on a discussion thread where I’d shared an insight that ‘Grief is fingerprint unique’
What a great personal observation “grief is fingerprint unique”. I can really resonate with this having done The Bereavement Journey twice and having the privilege of hearing so many heartbreaking experiences of grief and the unique impact on each person.
My aha moment has been how much writing poetry has helped me do “good grief work” - a term I heard in The Bereavement Journey.
USA
Books
**I’ve read. The link takes you to Carer Mentor’s affiliate bookshop.
Kokoro: Japanese Wisdom for a Life Well Lived by Beth Kempton
- , PhD. Two books: Grief Growth Grace. A Sacred Pilgrimage. and A Mother’s Cry. A Mother’s Celebration
Grief Works: Stories of Life, Death and Surviving by Julia Samuel**
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Your support is greatly appreciated and helps validate my time and effort.
Thank you!
Thank you so much for putting this together. I’m glad Tina Hedlin restocked it. Please check out my Substack on grief and love as well at:
https://open.substack.com/pub/sallymcquillen
Thank you for the work you are doing~
Speaking openly and grief, death, and dying is essential in a death-denying culture.