Books About Grief and Loss
There are many great resources out there, from books to podcasts. If there’s something you’d like to share, be sure to let us know at info@endoflifeoptionsnm.org or Contact Us through the website.
featured:
Grieving Mindfully:
A Compassionate and Spiritual Guide to Coping with Loss
by
Grief is a personal journey, never the same for any two people and as unique as your life and your relationships. Although loss is an inevitable part of life, how you approach this fact can make the difference between meaningless pain and the manifestation of understanding and wisdom. This book describes a mindful approach to dealing with grief that can help you make that difference.
By walking this mindful path, you will discover that you are capable of transforming and healing the grief you carry and finding the spiritual and emotional resilience you need to move through this challenging time. These mindfulness practices, explained here in simple and practical language, will help you bear your time of grief. But they will do more than that, too. They will guide you to a life more fully lived, with more meaning. These simple practices will help you experience what richness comes from asking deeper questions about loss and about life.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
Unattended Sorrow
Recovery from Loss and Reviving the Heart
by Stephen Levine
Unattended Sorrow invites readers to meet grief with presence rather than avoidance. Stephen Levine explores how unacknowledged sorrow can shape our inner lives, and how compassionate attention allows grief to soften and transform. Blending spiritual insight with lived experience, this book offers a quiet, steady companion for those carrying loss — reminding us that grief, when tended with care, can deepen connection, meaning, and love.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
I’m Not a Mourning Person
Braving Loss, Grief, and the Big Messy Emotions That Happen When Life Falls Apart
by Kris Carr
I’m Not a Mourning Person blends honesty, humor, and compassion to explore grief in all its messy, human complexity. Writing from personal experience, Kris Carr offers permission to grieve without doing it “right,” acknowledging anger, confusion, love, and resilience along the way. This book speaks especially to readers who don’t recognize themselves in traditional grief narratives and are seeking a voice that feels real, approachable, and deeply humane.
Find it at your library, or order at Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
Being Mortal
Medicine and what matters in the end
by Atul Gawande
A compassionate look at how the medical industry currently handles aging, terminal illness, and end-of-life issues. Often medical professionals ignore quality of life, or a person’s overall well-being, in favor of more treatments. There are no easy answers, but our reluctance to address these issues has not helped us to make more informed choices.
Find it at your library, or order at Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
Meetings at the Edge
Dialogues with the Grieving and the Dying, the Healing and the Healed
by Stephen Levine
Based on his extensive counseling work with the terminally ill, a bestselling author offers unique support to anyone facing the dying process. This book integrates death into the context of life with compassion, skill, and hope. Capturing the range of emotions and challenges that accompany the dying process, Stephen Levine shares his wisdom to readers dealing with this difficult experience.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief
by Francis Weller
Noted psychotherapist Francis Weller provides an essential guide for navigating the deep waters of sorrow and loss in this lyrical yet practical handbook for mastering the art of grieving. Describing how Western patterns of amnesia and anesthesia affect our capacity to cope with personal and collective sorrows, Weller reveals the new vitality we may encounter when we welcome, rather than fear, the pain of loss. Through moving personal stories, poetry, and insightful reflections he leads us into the central energy of sorrow, and to the profound healing and heightened communion with each other and our planet that reside alongside it.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
The Grief Recovery Handbook
20th Anniversary Expanded Edition: The Action Program for Moving Beyond Death, Divorce, and Other Losses
by By Russell Friedman and John W. James
Updated to commemorate its 20th anniversary, this classic resource further explores the effects of grief and sheds new light on how to begin to take effective actions to complete the grieving process and work towards recovery and happiness.
Incomplete recovery from grief can have a lifelong negative effect on the capacity for happiness. Drawing from their own histories as well as from others’, the authors illustrate how it is possible to recover from grief and regain energy and spontaneity.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go
A modern guide to navigating loss
by Gina Moffa Grief hurts. Don’t do it alone. Learn to navigate any loss—a parent, a friendship, a job, a miscarriage—at your own pace with the help of a licensed grief and trauma therapist. After nearly two decades of clinical experience and her own journey after losing her mother to cancer, Gina Moffa, LCSW offers knows all too well how disorienting, painful, and lonely grief can be. Moving On Doesn’t Mean Letting Go
On Death and Dying
What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy and Their Own Families
by by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (Author), Ira Byock M.D. (Foreword)
This commemorative edition of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s groundbreaking classic, On Death and Dying, revisits the five stages of grief she first introduced: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Through powerful interviews and insights, the book explores how facing death impacts patients, their families, and caregivers. This edition also features a new introduction by palliative care expert Dr. Ira Byock and includes Dr. Kübler-Ross’s testimony on death with dignity.such difficult situations.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
Ambiguous Loss
Learning to Life with Unresolved Grief
by Pauline Boss
This sensitive and insightful book by Pauline Boss explores the challenges of grieving a loved one lost in ways that lack closure, such as through dementia or missing in action. Drawing on her research and clinical experience, Boss offers strategies to help families navigate the pain of ambiguous loss, sharing stories of those who have found ways to move forward. With a message of hope, this book provides valuable guidance for anyone facing such difficult situations.
Find it at your library, or order through Collected Works in Santa Fe, or a local bookstore nearest you!
It’s Ok that You’re Not Ok
Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture The Doesn’t Understand
by Megan Divine
Many people who have suffered a loss feel judged, dismissed, and misunderstood by a culture that wants to “solve” grief. Megan writes, “Grief no more needs a solution than love needs a solution.” Through stories, research, life tips, and creative and mindfulness-based practices, she offers a unique guide through an experience we all must face―in our personal lives, in the lives of those we love, and in the wider world.
Find it at your library or support your local bookstore.
A Matter of Death and Life
Love, Loss and What Matters in the End
by Irvin D. and Marilyn Yalom
In ‘A MATTER OF DEATH AND LIFE,’ internationally renowned psychiatrist Irvin Yalom and his wife, feminist author Marilyn, share their poignant journey through grief and love as Marilyn faces a terminal diagnosis. This heartfelt memoir explores universal questions of intimacy, love, and grief, offering solace and wisdom for those confronting death and seeking meaningful living.
Find it at your library or support your local bookstore