Grief Biography

When Melissa Gould’s husband, Joel, was unexpectedly hospitalized, she could not imagine how her life was about to change. Overwhelmed with uncertainty as Joel’s condition tragically worsened, she offered him the only thing she could: her love and devotion. Her dedication didn’t end with his death. Melissa soon realized that her and Joel’s love lived on. Melissa found she didn’t fit the typical mold of widowhood or meet the expectations of mourning. She didn’t look like a widow or act like a widow, but she felt like one. Melissa was widowish.

Ao trazer a morte da mãe para o centro deste relato, Noemi Jaffe, uma das principais vozes da literatura brasileira, expõe de forma brutal as feridas do luto e o que é possível fazer para vivê-lo. Em fevereiro de 2020, aos 93 anos, falece Lili, sobrevivente do Holocausto, mãe de três filhas e viúva. Sua doença vinha se estendendo há tempos, mas isso não faz com que a dor de sua partida seja menor. A banalidade da causa, "uma infecção nos pés", é confrontada com um sentimento de descrença. Como é possível que aquela que sempre esteve presente não exista mais?

Mia St. John has always been on top of her game. A five-time world champion boxer known as The Knockout because of her ability to level any opponent charging toward her, Mia spent two decades in the spotlight transforming her body into the ultimate fighting machine. But what most people don't know is that outside the ring, she was battling a lifetime of demons while struggling to keep her family together.

In the early 1990s, Heather McCalden lost both her parents to AIDS. She was seven when her father died, ten when she lost her mother. Raised by her grandmother, Nivia, she grew up in Los Angeles, also known as ground zero for the virus and its destruction. Years later, she begins researching online the history of HIV as a way to deal with her loss, which leads her to the unexpected realization that the AIDS crisis and the internet developed on parallel timelines.

In What We Wish Were True, Quinn achingly grapples with the possibility of leaving behind the husband and children she adores, and what it means to live with a terminal diagnosis and still find meaning. “I think about how my purpose may be the same in death as it continues to be in life—surrendering to the hope that our weaknesses can be made strong, that what is broken can be made whole,” she writes.

Kelsey Parker's world was turned upside down in the summer of 2020 when her husband Tom, singer in boyband The Wanted, was cruelly diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. Heavily pregnant with their second child and coping with her own heartache at losing her partner of 13 years, Kelsey remained a tower of strength and positivity for Tom during his darkest days. When traditional treatments stopped working, she spent hours researching alternative therapies to give her husband extra time with his young children Aurelia and Bodhi.

Liz Hauck and her dad had a plan to start a weekly cooking program in a residential home for teenage boys in state care, which was run by the human services agency he co-directed. When her father died before they had a chance to get the project started, Liz decided she would try it without him. She didn’t know what to expect from volunteering with court-involved youth, but as a high school teacher she knew that teenagers are drawn to food-related activities. This is the story of what happened around the table, and how one dinner became one hundred dinners.

Zibby Owens has become a well-known personality in the publishing world. Her infectious energy, tasteful authenticity, and smart, steadfast support of authors started in childhood, a precedent set by the profound effect books and libraries had on her own family. But after losing her closest friend on 9/11 and later becoming utterly stressed out and overwhelmed by motherhood, Zibby was forgetting what made her her. She turned to books and writing for help.

In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home: stabbed at least 150 times and left facedown in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered.

Laura Trujillo had been close to her mother for most of her adult life, raising her four children within a few miles of their beloved grandmother’s Phoenix home. But just three months after moving her young family to Cincinnati for a new job, Laura receives shocking news: Her mother had taken her own life—by jumping off a ledge into the Grand Canyon, a place Laura knew her mother had always loved.

Texas businessman Mike Fechner had it all. Money. Investments. Prestige. Until he did the unthinkable. He sold his company and poured his life's earnings into a ministry for the poor. With a strong faith in God at his core, this millionaire turned missionary envisioned a long future serving the urban Dallas poor and the people of poverty-stricken Africa.

In this unabridged audio download, Letters from the Land of Cancer, award-winning writer Walter Wangerin Jr. offers his profound insights into the greatest challenge we face: confronting our own mortality. Diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer in January 2006, Wangerin began writing letters to his friends and family members. Now he offers these intimate letters to all who ask questions about living and dying well.

A chilling behind-bars encounter with a killer unfolds. Step into the heart-wrenching world of his victim’s grieving mother. Can the unforgivable be forgiven? As Tammy Horvath grapples with the weight of depression following her profound loss, she discovers that no amount of exercise or travel can completely mend her shattered soul. The quest for genuine healing takes a courageous turn as she confronts the murderer, unraveling the haunting mysteries behind Luke’s tragic death.

Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, brilliant newcomer Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, returning to the family farmhouse and laboring over elaborate meals in the hopes of nourishing her back to health. In a series of vibrant vignettes - lipstick applied, novels read, imperfect cakes baked - McColl reveals a woman of endless charm and infinite love for her unruly brood of children.

Because Ella Risbridger has learnt to focus on the little things that bring her joy, feeding as many people as she can squeeze round her tiny table and sharing recipes that are good for the soul. Miracle Pie is her journal and storybook of cooking, where the food is so good you want to lick the bowl, with recipes like fancy fish pie, cardamom-cinnamon chicken rice, chimichurri courgettes, triple carb soup, blackberry miso birthday cake, fried jam sandwiches and sticky toffee Guinness brownies.

A lifetime of finding punchlines in his heartache comes to a shuddering stop when comedian and writer Shawn Hitchins loses two great loves, five months apart, to sudden death. In this deeply poignant memoir that combines sober self-portrait with tender elegy, Hitchins explores the messiness of being alive: the longing and desire, scorching-earth anger, raw grief - and the pathway of healing he discovers when he lets his heart remain open.

A memoir of the profound destabilization that comes from losing one’s faith - and a young woman’s journey to reconcile her lack of belief with her love for her deeply religious family.

When Lu Spinney's 29-year-old son, Miles, flies up on his snowboard, "he knows he is not in control as he is taken by force up the ramp," writes his mother, "skewing sideways as his board clips the edge and then he is hurtling, spinning up, up into the free blue sky ahead.... " He lands hard on the ice and falls into a coma. Thus begins the erratic loss - Miles first in a coma and then trapped in a fluctuating state of minimal consciousness - that unravels over the next five years.

A son killed by a single bullet. A mother’s heart shattered. As Tammy Horvath struggles to come to terms with her son’s death, a voice tells her to forgive his killer. With her soul tormented by the loss of her son, Tammy fights to get out of bed every day because she can’t face a seemingly hopeless future. But Luke would want her to be happy. So she pushes forward and embarks on a journey, searching for peace, hope, and a chance to keep her son alive in her heart.

As young adults, John and Kara—father and daughter—had much in common. Avid sports lovers. Life of the party. Abiding faith in God. And a diagnosis that blindsided and benched them: aggressive, terminal cancer. John and Kara battled their diseases with cutting-edge medical treatments. Both had countless prayers lifted on their behalf. Both believed in a powerful, loving God who could heal. Yet one lived and one died. How can we accept both endings as from the hand of God? Did one person have greater favor? Deeper faith?