Relationship Loss

No one who lives and loves will be immune from grief and trauma. While this suffering is universal, living through a devastating event often leaves people feeling alone and even alienated. Michele Neff Hernandez experienced this when her 39-year-old husband died after being hit by a car while riding his bicycle. Her most transformative realization was that grief changes us. There is no going back or bucking up. Life is now different.

Adoption is often framed by happy narratives, but the reality is that many adoptees struggle with unaddressed trauma and issues of identity and belonging. Adoptees often spend the majority of their youth without the language to explore the grief related to adoption or the permission to legitimize their conflicting emotions. Adoptee and counselor Cameron Lee Small names the realities of the adoptee's journey, narrating his own and other adoptees' stories in all their complexity.

David and Judith's fragile marriage is threatened by the sudden death of their beloved 13-year-old daughter, Melanie. As they struggle to cope with their loss, they confront bewildering challenges. But instead of turning to each other, they find comfort with others. David is drawn to Nancy, a colleague and single mother, and a survivor of her own personal tragedy, while Judith grows close to Jeffrey, a recently widowed physician whom she meets through her volunteer work at a thrift shop, itself the scene of multiple daily dramas.

At the age of 60, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: She now weighs less than her neighbor's retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience - the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance - of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches.

Based on the accidental death of the author's father due to a surgical mistake, Early Winter will help you to reconnect with your own feelings of loss and eventual acceptance. This book will make you laugh at times and cry at others as it takes you through the process of challenging loss and delivers you to a better place.

Maximum Ride and her faithful friends stand ready to face the two greatest threats that humankind has ever known, now combining forces in an unbeatable plot to destroy life as we know it once and for all. And this time, the enemy truly can't be stopped. The danger mounts just as Dylan has worked his way into Max's heart—but then Fang unexpectedly returns to the flock. An explosive confrontation between the two boys grows into a battle to win Max's heart, and the entire world hangs in the balance.

Of the many critical conversations we will all have throughout our lifetime, few are as important as the ones discussing death—yet few of these conversations are actually happening. Let's Talk About Death (over Dinner) offers keen, practical advice on how to have these conversations—not just at the dinner table, but anywhere. There's no one right way to talk about death, but Hebb shares time- and dinner-tested prompts to use as conversation starters, ranging from the spiritual to the practical, from analytical to downright funny and surprising.

You are the co-creator of your reality, with every belief and every thought that you have. And our own brain is limiting us to achieve the full extent of our capabilities! Since your thoughts create how you view the world.... What if I told you there is a simple and powerful way to change your thought patterns and beliefs? In fact, rewriting your reality with affirmations is easier than you think....

When a loved one passes unexpectedly, the person left behind can lose their bearings. After the sudden loss of her mother, Chelsea Hanson, a nationally recognized grief educator and founder of With Sympathy Gifts and Keepsakes, didn't know where to turn for help, what to do next, or how to put the pieces of her life back together. Hanson's The Sudden Loss Survival Guide gathers everything that she learned during her own recovery process and provides an indispensable road map to aid those who've experienced a life-changing loss.

Life After Losses is a memoir with a message. Author James LaVeck offers help for grieving while taking listeners on an intimate journey of love, loss, healing, recovery, and discovery.

Lisa Lisson's life seemed perfect: she had married her high school sweetheart, applied her marketing degree to a position at FedEx Express Canada, and would ultimately become president of the company. One night, after putting their four children to bed, her husband, Patrick, marvelled at their lives. Just a few hours later, Patrick had a massive heart attack and was in a coma. Part leadership guide, part memoir of loss, and part personal empowerment primer on how to achieve your goals, Resilience is an inspirational story.

After author Jess Keefe ended things with her long-term boyfriend, she moved in with her brother in hopes that family could help her not only heal from the break-up but also evolve into a healthy adult. But that fantasy ended when Matt’s heroin addiction came roaring back after lying dormant for years, leading to a fatal overdose one October night. Thirty-Thousand Steps is a powerful and transformative memoir that interweaves the author’s obsessive training to becoming a distance runner, along with her focused research into the science of addiction in the shadow of grief.

A “conspiracy of improbabilities” was how Deepak Chopra described the tragic events that took the life of Joshua Rothstein in 2002 when he was struck by a car at just fifteen-and-a-half years old. That conspiracy would thrust Nancy, her husband, and their two daughters into a profound state of grief sparked by Josh’s sudden death. Yet with pure grace, the wall of death was shattered for Nancy, and she stepped back into life.

“It’s just grief,” they’ll tell you. “It will pass. We all lose someone at some point in our lives.” But the death of a partner is so much more than “just grief.” It’s a different kind of grief—the kind that permanently shifts our perspective on life.

Dying Well is an inspiring love story of how a man celebrated life while facing his death with grace and dignity. His widow guides you through decisions made and actions taken on their nine-month journey from diagnosis through celebrations and goodbyes, to a peaceful death free of fear and regret. She shares lessons learned as their family came to terms with her husband’s impending death and found ways to make this last stage of his life as loving and happy as possible.

It's time to explore and build new, positive relationships with food, moving away from restriction, deprivation, and obsession with body image. The Intuitive Eating Plan provides you with the information and steps necessary to heal your relationship with food and accept your body's beautiful intuition.

A friendly and accessible book of 75 lists that will help anyone experiencing a change or loss—for fans of Maggie Smith, Cheryl Strayed, and Katherine May—from the creators of the popular What's Your Grief website and community.

While grief is a normal, healthy response to losing a beloved pet, it is important to work through its various stages and eventually find a way to move forward. Understanding the depth of your bond and learning to celebrate rather than mourn your years together helps memorialize your pet. It also equips you with perspective and the capacity to love again. This book is your compassionate and comforting guide throughout the healing process—an understanding companion as you explore the depths of your grief. The journey to peace and recovery starts here.

We live in a culture that suppresses our ability to truly feel our grief—deeply, safely, and on our own terms. But each person’s experience is as unique as the grief itself. Here, Camille Barton’s take on grief speaks directly to the ways that BIPOC and queer readers disproportionately experience unique constellations of loss.

As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge, and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood.