Best Grief Books for Adults

Talking about and understanding grief can be difficult at any age. The following books have been chosen as the top choices for grieving adults. They are intended to cover a variety of different situations where a reader may be experiencing grief. Make sure to also check out our recommended children’s books for grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, friend, grandparent, and anticipatory grief.

It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t Understand, by Megan Devine

In It’s OK That You’re Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides―as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved partner―Megan writes with deep insight about the unspoken truths of loss, love, and healing. She debunks the culturally prescribed goal of returning to a normal, “happy” life, replacing it with a far healthier middle path, one that invites us to build a life alongside grief rather than seeking to overcome it. Link to Purchase**

What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love, by Laurel Braitman

Laurel Braitman spent her childhood learning from her dad how to out-fish grown men, keep bees, and fix carburetors. Diagnosed young with terminal cancer, he raced against the clock to leave her the skills she’d need to survive without him. This was one legacy. Another was relentless perfectionism and the belief that bravery meant never acknowledging your own fear. This true story explores the ways that childhood loss can transform us into the people we want to become. Link to Purchase**

When You Lose Someone You Love, by Joanne Fink

Providing gentle comfort and healing with life-affirming insights from the personal grief journal of award-winning artist, author Joanne Fink, When You Lose Someone You Love is a beautiful 116-page book with the look and feel of a very personal and empathetic greeting card. Filled with expressive sentiments and beautiful illustrations, this special and heartfelt book offers a healing connection with all who have suffered a loss and are in mourning. Link to Purchase

Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant

Option B combines Sheryl’s personal insights with Adam’s eye-opening research on finding strength in the face of adversity. Beginning with the gut-wrenching moment when she finds her husband, Dave Goldberg, collapsed on a gym floor, Sheryl opens up her heart—and her journal—to describe the acute grief and isolation she felt in the wake of his death. But Option B goes beyond Sheryl’s loss to explore how a broad range of people have overcome hardships including illness, job loss, sexual assault, natural disasters, and the violence of war. Their stories reveal the capacity of the human spirit to persevere . . . and to rediscover joy. Link to Purchase**

So Sorry for Your Loss: How I Learned to Live with Grief, and Other Grave Concerns, by Dina Gachman

Since losing her mother to cancer in 2018 and her sister to alcoholism less than three years later, author and journalist Dina Gachman has dedicated herself to understanding what it means to grieve, healing after loss, and the ways we stay connected to those we miss. Through a mix of personal storytelling, reporting, and insight from experts and even moments of humor, Gachman gives readers a fresh take on grief and bereavement. Link to purchase**

Little Boy Lost: A Story of Hope and Redemption, Set Amidst the Backdrop of a Mother’s Suicide, by David W. Peters

As the youngest of three sons and a bona fide momma’s boy, David Peters thinks that having a mother who spends months at a time in psychiatric hospitals is normal. Then on St. Patrick’s Day 1974, his world shatters when she dies by suicide. By sharing his story, David Peters hopes that Little Boy Lost will help readers gain an understanding of how to find hope and healing after family trauma from mental illness and suicide. Link to purchase

A Half Baked Idea: How grief, love and cake took me from the courtroom to Le Cordon Bleu, by Olivia Potts

At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake, badly. She was trying to impress the man who would later become her husband. Afterwards, grief pushed Olivia into the kitchen. She came home from her job as a criminal barrister miserable and tired, and baked soda bread, pizza, and chocolate banana cake. Her cakes sank and her custard curdled. But she found comfort in jams and solace in pies, and what began as a distraction from grief became a way of building a life outside grief, a way of surviving, and making sense of her life without her mum. Link to Purchase**

Forget Prayers, Bring Cake: A Single Woman’s Guide to Grieving, by Merissa Gerson

Though at times it may seem impossible, we can heal with help from our friends and community– if we know how to ask. This heartrending, relatable account of one woman’s reckoning with loss is a guide to the world of self-recovery, self-love, and the skills necessary to meeting one’s own needs in these times of pain– especially when that pain is suffered alone. Link to Purchase**

Tear Soup, by Pat Schwiebert

In this modern-day fable, a woman who has suffered a terrible loss cooks up a special batch of “tear soup,” blending the unique ingredients of her life into the grief process. Along the way she dispenses a recipe of sound advice for people who are in mourning. Link to Purchase

Healing the Adult Sibling’s Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas After Your Brother or Sister Dies, by Alan D. Wolfelt Ph.D.

Compassionate and heartfelt, this collection offers 100 practical ideas to help understand and accept the passing of a sibling in order to practice self-healing. The principles of grief and mourning are clearly defined, accompanied by action-oriented tips for embracing bereavement. Whether a sibling has died as a young or older adult or the death was sudden or anticipated, this resource provides a healthy approach to dealing with the aftermath. Link to Purchase**

The Group: Seven Widowed Fathers Reimagine Life, by Donald L. Rosenstein & Justin M. Yopp

The Group offers a singular perspective on grief by weaving together the latest thinking on bereavement, resiliency and post-traumatic growth with the true story of seven men who were raising children on their own after the deaths of their wives. The men connected with each almost immediately, and over the next several years forged a deep bond as their monthly meetings evolved into a forum for healing and personal reinvention that transformed them in unexpected ways. Link to Purchase**

The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change, by Pauline Boss

The COVID-19 pandemic has left many of us haunted by feelings of anxiety, despair, and even anger. In this book, pioneering therapist Pauline Boss identifies these vague feelings of distress as caused by ambiguous loss, losses that remain unclear and hard to pin down, and thus have no closure. Collectively the world is grieving as the pandemic continues to change our everyday lives. Link to Purchase**

Life After Loss: How to Deal with Grief and Bereavement after the Death of a Parent, Spouse, Child or Loved One, by Sheila West

Your world has come crashing down. And the pain is excruciating. In this grief recovery handbook, Sheila walks you through the difficulties and shares tools to help you find peace and comfort. Drawing on her grief experience after losing her sister to cancer, this book can help to make the gaping hole inside you a lot less painful. Link to Purchase.

Please let us know if you have any favorites that we are missing. Email Sarah

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