Grief Biography

When Cody Delistraty lost his mother to cancer in his early 20s, he found himself unsure how to move forward. The typical advice was to move through the five stages, achieve closure, get back to work, go back to normal. So begins a journey into the new frontiers of grief, where Delistraty seeks out the researchers, technologists, therapists, marketers, and communities around the world who may be able to cure the pain of loss in novel ways.

Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School with a modest Christian upbringing, but she specializes in the study of the prosperity gospel, a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God's disapproval. At 35, everything in her life seems to point toward "blessing". She is thriving in her job, married to her high school sweetheart, and loves life with her newborn son. Then she is diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer.

Amy Lin never expected to find a love like the one she shares with her husband, Kurtis, a gifted young architect who pulls her toward joy, adventure, and greater self-acceptance. On a sweltering August morning, only a few months shy of the newlyweds’ move to Vancouver, thirty-two-year-old Kurtis heads out to run a half-marathon with Amy’s family. It’s the last time she sees her husband alive.

At a time when society’s relationship with science is increasingly polarized while threats to human life on earth continue to rise, Townsend offers a balanced, moving perspective on the common ground between science and religion through the spiritual fulfillment he found in his work. Awash in Townsend's electrifying and breathtaking prose, THIS ORDINARY STARDUST offers hope that life can carry on even in the face of near-certain annihilation.

Two years after Marilyn loses her fiancé to cancer, she becomes a Christian and marries Henry, joining him in a worldwide ministry that leaves little time for family or personal reflection. When her old grief resurfaces, she’s shocked by the tsunami that rips through their lives. Intensive counselling fails to bring healing, and when Henry writes a public letter that decimates their churches and spins them out of fellowship—and lifelong employment—she faces an emotional and spiritual reckoning that challenges her to the core.

Leanne Friesen thought she knew a lot about bereavement. She had studied it in school and preached at memorial services. But only when her own sister died from cancer did she learn, in her very bones, what grieving people don't need—and what they do. In Grieving Room, Friesen writes with vulnerability, wisdom, and somehow even wit about the stark and sacred lessons learned at deathbeds and funerals, and pushes back against a world that wants to minimize our sorrow and avoid our despair.

In the span of four months in 2012, Tig Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease called C. diff, her mother unexpectedly died, she went through a breakup, and then she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Hit with this devastating barrage, Tig took her grief onstage. Days after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she broke new comedic ground, opening an unvarnished set with the words, "Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer."

On the morning of May 11, 2015, Erin Davis, one of Canada’s most beloved radio personalities, suffered a devastating blow when her daughter, Lauren, who had marked a joyous Mother’s Day with her husband and young son only hours before, failed to awaken to her baby’s cries. Thus began Erin’s journey of grieving out loud with her family, friends, and listeners and of demonstrating by example how to pick up and keep going after suffering the worst loss a parent can endure.

When four-year-old Colton Burpo emerges from life-saving surgery with remarkable stories of his visit to heaven, his family doesn’t know what to believe. Heaven Is for Real details what Colton saw and his family’s journey towards accepting their young son had visited the afterlife.

Life hit Pat and Tammy McLeod hard when their son Zach collapsed on a high school football field; he had sustained a severe brain injury. Facing the devastating possibility that things would never be the same for their beloved son, they committed to staying strong as a family and finding a way to maintain their footing. But the journey would reshape their faith, their family, and their future in ways they never saw coming.

A 29-year-old son and only child passes. He nudges his mother to open up to spirit so she can build a new relationship with him. Letters to David unlocks a door to spirit and offers hope for parents who have suffered tragic grief. There is an immediacy and accessibility to Claudia and David's relationship that provides laughter, tears, and hope to those grieving what they see as the "end" of a relationship. Enclosed, you will find valuable tools for healing and growth. We don't die, and our loved ones remain with us forever.

In The Wheel of Life, when Kübler-Ross was 71 years old and facing her own death, this world-renowned healer told the story of her extraordinary life. Having taught the world how to die well, she offered a lesson on how to live well. The Wheel of Life is an adventure of the heart - powerful, controversial, inspirational - a fitting legacy of a powerful life.

In 2018, 34 people were shot at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Jaime Guttenberg, a 14-year-old, was the second to last victim. That she and so many of her fellow students were struck down in cold blood galvanized many to action, including Jaime's father, Fred, who has become an activist dedicated to passing common-sense gun-safety legislation. This book is not about gun safety or Parkland. Instead, it tells the story of Fred Guttenberg's journey since Jaime's death and how he has been able to get through the worst of times thanks to the kindness and compassion of others.

How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of lapidary meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works - from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and Primo Levi - esteemed writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience.

Allison Holker was just eighteen when she found fame as a contestant on the reality TV show So You Think You Can Dance. Over the next several years, she had her first child, built a successful career as a professional dancer despite the industry being hostile to working moms, and fell in love with and married fellow dancer Stephen Boss, the former hype man and DJ of The Ellen DeGeneres Show known for his charisma and relentless positivity.

What Remains begins with loss and returns to loss. A small plane plunges into the ocean, carrying John Kennedy, Anthony's cousin, and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, Carole's closest friend. Three weeks later Anthony dies of cancer. The summer of the plane crash, the four friends were meant to be cherishing Anthony's last days. Instead, Carole and Anthony mourned John and Carolyn, even as Carole planned her husband's memorial.

Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone.

The death of a sibling is unlike any other. Gloria Reuben's little brother died just before his 22nd birthday. Two decades later, her oldest brother, Denis, died two weeks short of his 60th birthday. In My Brothers' Keeper, Gloria bares her soul as she reveals the intimate details of her life at home as a young girl. How the death of her father when she was 12 shaped her view of love and life. How David's death was the impetus for her move from Canada to the United States. And how her brother Denis was her heart's twin in a multitude of ways.

The powerful testimonies of 11 widows of the Bible are brought to narrative life in lyrical, visceral prose that brings listeners deep inside the women's grief, strength, and faith. Full of both haunting and hope, Not Alone connects Biblical widows' voices in a chorus of commiseration that reminds us what it means to love - and what it means to live with God.

Trent Preszler thought he was living the life he always wanted, with a job at a winery and a seaside Long Island home, when he was called back to the life he left behind. After years of estrangement, his cancer-stricken father had invited him to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. It would be the last time he saw his father alive. Preszler’s only inheritance was a beat-up wooden toolbox that had belonged to his father, who was a cattle rancher, rodeo champion, and Vietnam War Bronze Star Medal recipient. This family heirloom befuddled Preszler.