RECOMMENDED BOOKS

The Widow’s Handbook: Poetic Reflections on Grief and Survival

Jacqueline Lapidus (Editor), Lise Menn (Editor), & Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Foreword)

Widows convey their feelings and survival strategies in this compelling anthology The Widows' Handbook is the first anthology of poems by contemporary widows. This collection celebrates the strategies widows learn and the resources they muster to deal with people, living space, possessions, social life, and especially themselves, once shock has turned to the realization that nothing will ever be the same.
The Widows' Handbook includes the work of 87 American women of all ages, legally married or not, straight and gay, whose partners or spouses have died.
With courage and wry humor, these women encounter insidious depression, poignant memories, bureaucratic nonsense, unfamiliar hardware, well-intentioned but thoughtless remarks, demanding work, spiritual revelation, and unexpected lust, navigating new relationships in the uncertain legacy of sexual liberation. They write frankly about being paralyzed and about going forward.

Reviewed by W Connection Member

Both Sides of Now

Nancy Sharp

Both Sides Now is a true story of love, loss and bold living by Nancy Sharp. The book is a memoir that hinges on the day the author delivered premature twins and her husband's brain cancer returned after eighteen months in remission. In plainspoken language the story moves back through Nancy and her husband's courtship and marriage-and forward through his death when the twins were two and a half, he was not-quite forty and Nancy was thirty-seven. Both Sides Now examines what it is like to hold life and death in the same moment and the necessity of learning to see beyond the frame's edge.
The final section follows the family's hopeful move to Denver in 2006. Through a magazine feature on eligible bachelors, Nancy met, fell in love with, and married Steve, a popular television anchor turned politician as well as a widower who'd lost his wife to cancer, and was raising two sons a decade older than Nancy's twins. Nancy gives us this hopeful ending, while also letting us into the challenges of blending the past and present at once.

Reviewed by W Connection Member

Words of Comfort to Pave Your Journey of Loss

Ellen Gerst

"Words of Comfort To Pave Your Journey of Loss" presents hope, support and a change in perspective that can help the bereaved move successfully from the darkness of loss to the light of renewal of both body and soul. Written by a former widow, Ellen Gerst uses both her personal experience and her professional expertise as a coach to shine a light down the dark tunnel of grief. Readers can figuratively grab hold of her hand as she lifts them up from the depths of their loss with inspirational tips and thoughts.

Living with Loss, One Day at a Time

Rachel Blythe Kodanaz

"I am so glad that Rachel wrote this book so she can continue to help more people live with loss. She has a special gift for imparting small and manageable ideas that can profoundly impact someone grieving. Loss is never easy, but Rachel's words and wisdom can help make the journey a bit more bearable and perhaps even more meaningful."—Sharon Liese, from the foreword.
Living with Loss offers daily encouragement to individuals and families who have recently lost a loved one. The short entries are easy to read and give realistic, practical advice to guide readers through the day. By providing tools and suggestions that offer hope, optimism, introspection, and self-discovery, this book enables readers to embrace the happy days of life with their loved one and gently guide them through their grief.

Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives

Becky Aikman

Saturday Night Widows is a wise and often funny memoir about a group of younger widows who come together to rediscover their lives one Saturday night at a time.
Becky's book charts the ups and downs of life as a widow. The book addresses the stereotypes of widowhood and openly discusses the challenges that widowhood presents for all us. Most importantly though, the books deal directly with the hopes we all have for finding happiness again.

Reviewed by W Connection Member

Being A Widow

Lynn Caine

Caine offers practical advice and guidance to women lost in the loneliness and stress of widowhood. She writes candidly about the universal issues of grief--the impact of death, depression, legal and financial problems, re-emerging sexuality, dreams, and more.

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later–the night before New Year’s Eve–the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through.

Waking Up Alone: Grief & Healing

Julie K. Cicero

Surviving the death of a spouse/companion: Whether your loss was sudden or anticipated, your relationship brief or long-term, everyone's experience with grief is different. Recognizing and understanding the varied pathways of grief is crucial to your healing process. As the shock subsides and the healing begins, it is imperative for survivors to identify their emotions and reactions as well as the actions of those around them. The often-noted inability of friends, family and society to deal with death and dying is confusing and hurtful, and at times can interfere with the ability to assimilate your loss.

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I'm Grieving as Fast as I Can: How Young Widows and Widowers Can Cope and Heal

Linda Feinberg

A guide for young widows and widowers through the normal grieving process that highlights the special circumstances of an untimely death. Young widows and widowers share thoughts and dilemmas about losing a loved one, what to tell young children experiencing a parent's death, returning to work and dealing with in-laws.

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Widow To Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas For Rebuilding Your Life

Genevieve Davis Ginsburg

In this remarkably useful guide, widow, author, and therapist Genevieve Davis Ginsburg offers fellow widows-as well as their family and friends-sage advice for coping with the loss of a husband. From learning to travel and eat alone to creating new routines to surviving the holidays and anniversaries that reopen emotional wounds, Widow to Widow walks readers through the challenges of widowhood and encourages them on their path to building a new life.

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Widowhood: A Doorway to Calling and Conversion Paperback

Elizabeth Jacks Scott

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Epilogue: A Memoir Hardcover – Deckle Edge

Anne Roiphe

From Anne Roiphe, the critically acclaimed author of Fruitful, comes the New York Times bestselling Epilogue, a beautiful memoir about death, life, and widowhood. Roiphe explores what happened when, at age 70, she lost her husband of 40 years. Moving between heartbreaking memories of her marriage and the pressing needs of a new day-to-day routine, Epilogue takes readers on her journey into the unknown world of life after love.

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Widow to Widow: How the Bereaved Help One Another:2nd (Second) edition Silverman K. Silverman

Phyllis R. Silverman

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Beginnings: A Book for Widows

Betty Jane Wylie

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Someone Used to Love Me: A Positive Walk Through the Loss of a Spouse

Susan J Gross

Susan J. Gross lost her husband in 2003 after a forty-one-year marriage. She shares a simple walk through the confusion and depression of the grief process and demonstrates how she developed strength and insight. She hopes that her insight will help you through your grief and help you realize that you are safe and not alone. Positive change and strength are waiting. Begin the journey. Make the impossible ... possible.

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Crossing the Minefield. One Widow’s Journey

Melinda Richardz Lyons

Suddenly, there she was, smack in the middle of the widowhood minefield. She wasn’t expecting to be catapulted into this landscape when she woke up that morning. Now, without choice, without options, and without a chance to prepare, she was there!

Melinda Richarz Lyons, the author of Crossing the Minefield, One Widow’s Journey, (2011), takes the reader through the heart-rending and life-altering landscape of widowhood from one widow's perspective, her own. Touching on essential topics most widow's face, Lyons vividly describes her journey as "…what is must be like to cross a minefield." She continues, "To me, it was more than just experiencing those intense highs and lows. It was the fact that being knocked back down into that awful hole of grief often came from stepping into a situation that took me by surprise and ripped me apart."

That statement resonates within my widowed heart.

In seeking answers for her many questions, the author writes her uncertainties in several chapters where she also answers or explains her issues too. I found this helpful. I was glad to see her touch on the topics of Skin Hunger, Sex, and Safeguarding; Happiness Guilt; and, God Has a Sense of Humor. As widows, we are sometimes a timid and polite bunch. Yet, these topics are vital to our overall health, wellbeing, and forward movement.

Crossing the Minefield, One Widow’s Journey discusses common obstacles widow’s face. It will have you nodding with understanding and will show readers it’s possible to live a full and beautiful life after loss.   

Review written by:
Laureen Gambill, W Connection, Southeast Florida Chapter Leader 
 

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The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life

Donald L. Rosenstein & Justin M. Yopp

A powerhouse! A MUST read for any solo parent trekking through the widowhood wilderness. Woven with real-life stories and professional expertise, The Group, is packed with experiential lessons learned by both the fathers in the book and the authors, who led the group.

Solo parents, men, and women alike will find familiar stories of struggle and small steps forward. They will read of deep despair and unimaginable triumph. They will learn there is healing and growth available when bearing your soul with another kindred traveler who “gets it” because they too, live it.

If you’re widowed and a solo parent like I am, the stories of topics rarely discussed, helped boost my resilience and courage. For me, this book was a page-turner. I couldn’t put it down.

Yes, it’s a book about grief and loss yet, it’s so much more! It’s about living life, the good, the bad, and the ugly! It’s about learning to thrive, not merely survive! It’s about knowing you aren’t the only one with epic parenting fails or over-the-top joy from shared moments; only a widowed parent and their bereaved children can understand.

The Group should be required reading for all professionals working with bereaved parents or kinship caregivers! Authors, Donald Rosenstein, M.D. and Justin M. Yopp, Ph.D., delivered a raw and tender, insightful, realistic, and hopeful insider view of parenting while grieving the loss of a spouse or life partner.

Hats off to the Fathers and their children in this book, and to the authors Justin Yopp and Donald Rosenstein! A heartfelt THANK YOU for this timely, relevant, and important book.   

Review written by:
Laureen Gambill, Southeast Florida Chapter Leader – W Connection. Certified Widow and Life Transition Coach. Speaker. Professional Member of Association of Death, Education, and Counseling (ADEC) and National Alliance for Grieving Children (NAGC)  
 

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Widows - Our Words and Ways: A Collection of Personal Stories

Barbara Kretchmar

“Widows- Our Words and Ways” is an interesting book that speaks to the experience of becoming a widow, grief, and rising from the ashes. The book includes twenty-five stories based on interviews with a diverse group of widows whose circumstances and situations run the gamut. The author, Barbara Kretchmar, is an attorney who became a widow at a young age. Though the author focuses on young widows like herself, she takes pains to include older widows as well.

What is particularly useful in this collection, is the emphasis on how these women learn to rebuild their lives after the death of their partners. Some found solace through work, others through religion, some were supported by family and friends, and still others were encouraged by talk therapy, their dreams and even mediums. The message here is that there is no one way to rise again. Each widow can and should find what works best for them.

This book should be included with others in a bibliography on the total experience of widowhood.   

Review written by:
Carole Cohen, Philadelphia Chapter Member - W Connection.
 

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Four Funerals and a Wedding: Resilience in a Time of Grief
Jill Smolowe

In Four Funerals and a Wedding, Jill jostles preconceptions about caregiving, defies cliches about losing loved ones, and reveals a stunning bottom line--far from being uncommon, resilience, like hers, is the norm among the recently bereaved. With humor and quiet wisdom, and with a lens firmly trained on what helped her tolerate and rebound from so much sorrow, she offers answers to questions we all confront in the face of loss, and reminds us that grief is not only about endings--its about new beginnings.
Reviewed by W Connection Member

A Guide for the Bereaved Survivor
Bob Baugher

If you are looking for a basic Grief 101 book, this new, expanded 78-page guide is for you. On each even-numbered page is a brief description of a grief reaction (denial, shock, guilt, anger). One each facing page is a list of suggestions for that reaction. This book is especially helpful to the bereaved person who desires grief information without a great deal of reading. Many readers order additional copies to give away.

The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss
George A. Bonanno

We tend to understand grief as a predictable five-stage process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But in The Other Side of Sadness, George Bonanno shows that our conventional model discounts our capacity for resilience. In fact, he reveals that we are already hardwired to deal with our losses efficiently—not by graduating through static phases. Weaving in explorations of mourning rituals and the universal experiences of the death of a parent or child, Bonanno examines how our inborn emotions—anger and denial, but also relief and joy—help us deal effectively with loss. And grieving goes beyond mere sadness: it can deepen interpersonal connections and often involves positive experiences. In the end, mourning is not predictable, but incredibly sophisticated. Combining personal anecdotes and original research, The Other Side of Sadness is a must-read for those going through the death of a loved ...

I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye: Surviving, Coping and Healing After the Sudden Death of a Loved One
Brook Noel, Pamela Blair PhD

Now there is a hand to hold... Each year about eight million Americans suffer the death of someone close to them. Now for thse who face the challenges of sudden death, there is a hand to hold, written by two women who have experienced sudden loss. This updated edition of the best-selling bereavement classic will touch, comfort, uplift and console. Authors Brook Noel and Pamela D. Blair, Ph.D. explore sudden death and offers a comforting hand to hold for those who are grieving the sudden death of a loved one. Featured on ABC World News, Fox and Friends and many other shows, this book acts as a touchstone of sanity through difficult times. I Wasn't Ready to Say Goodbye covers such difficult topics as the first...

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

In this moving and compassionate classic—now updated with new material from the authors—hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. 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...

When Your Spouse Dies: A Concise and Practical Source of Help and Advice
Cathleen L. Curry

This book deals with a variety of practical concerns for those who have lost their mates to death, including stages of grief for adults and children, mourning, loneliness, sexuality, networks of support, financial priorities and planning, good health practices, and healing.

In the Midst of Winter: Selections from the Literature of Mourning
Mary Jane Moffat

Death silences not only those it takes, but those it leaves behind: All too typically we can neither express our grief nor express sympathy for the bereaved. In his sensitive collection, toss finds a voice -- or several voices -- in the poetry, fiction, letters, and diaries of the world's great writers. Here are James Agee, recording the shock of his father's death; William Shakespeare, making poetry of Cleopatra's grief; the Biblical wisdom of The Book of Lamentations; the psychological acuity of Marcel Proust. Here are mourners from classical Rome to eleventh-century China, from the Paiute Indians to present-day Ireland. Arranged in sections that correspond to the stages of mourning, In the Midst of Winter is a collection whose breadth and resonance make it invaluable and utterly unique.

Surviving Grief ... and Learning to Live Again
Catherine M. Sanders

The Rules of Inheritance
Claire Bidwell Smith

A coming-of-age story that is both heartbreaking and exhilarating. In this astonishing debut, Claire Bidwell Smith, an only child, is just fourteen years old when both of her charismatic parents are diagnosed with cancer. What follows is a coming-of-age story that is both heartbreaking and exhilarating. As Claire hurtles towards loss she throws herself at anything she thinks might help her cope with the weight of this harsh reality: boys, alcohol, traveling, and the anonymity of

A Time to Grieve: Meditations for Healing After the Death of a Loved
Carol Staudacher

A collection of truly comforting, down-to-earth thoughts and meditations -- including the authentic voices of survivors -- for anyone grieving the loss of a loved one.

The Courage to Grieve: The Classic Guide to Creative Living, Recovery, and Growth Through Grief
Judy Tatelbaum

This unusual self-help book about surviving grief offers the reader comfort and inspiration. Each of us will face some loss, sorrow and disappointment in our lives, and The Courage to Grieve provides the specific help we need to enable us to face our grief fully and to recover and grow from the experience. Although the book emphasizes the response to the death of a loved one, The Courage to Grieve can help with every kind of loss and grief. Judy Tatelbaum gives us a fresh look at understanding grief, showing us that grief is a natural, inevitable human experience, including all the unexpected, intense and uncomfortable emotions like sorrow, guilt, loneliness, resentment, confusion, or even the temporary loss of the will to live. The emphasis is to clarify ...

Living Again: A Personal Journey For Surviving the Loss of a Spouse
William Wallace

A guide to surviving the loss of a mate with practical exercises to gain greater insight into this agonizing, yet necessary personal journey.

A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort: A Guide to Jewish Bereavement (The Art of Jewish Living) 2nd Edition
Dr. Ron Wolfson

A Step-by-Step Guide for Honoring the Dead and Empowering the Living When someone dies, there are so many questions―from what to do in the moment of grief, to dealing with the practical details of the funeral, to spiritual concerns about the meaning of life and death. This indispensable guide to Jewish mourning and comfort provides traditional and modern insights into every aspect of loss. In a new, easy-to-use format, this classic resource is full of wise advice to help you cope with death and comfort others when they are bereaved...