Grief Biography

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?

In his exceptionally thought-provoking and moving memoir, neurosurgeon Joseph D. Stern explores how personal loss influences the way physicians relate to patients and their families.

As a child in the 1950s, Kevin O’Connor knew his house was different than his friends. A stately, three-story 19th-century Victorian. His bed tucked next to a stage in a former ballroom. His uncle and aunt lived with their three daughters on the floor below. A large electric organ in a bay window of the first-floor mortuary business. Stacked caskets and an embalming room in the basement.

Jemima Atar first experienced the unfolding of her complex narrative when she began exploring her life with the help of her therapist. Throughout the turmoil that characterized facing up to the truth of painful childhood trauma, Jemima’s therapist was her steadfast anchor, providing safety and support. But when he suddenly had to terminate the sessions after almost two years, Jemima found herself thrown into the depths of unfamiliar, isolating, misunderstood grief.

Part memoir, part fiction, A Grief Sublime begins at the moment the author learns of the sudden death in a car accident of her husband of 30 years, Steve "Sproutman" Meyerowitz. Ricocheting between the splintered past and the present, in her grief, Robbins enters into conversation with Keats and Whitman, Melville and Dickinson. Beautifully read by award-winning narrator Karen Allen with James Warwick as the voice of the poets, Beth Robbins' lyrical, powerful story takes us with her as her despair transcends into a hopeful new experience of life.

A brave story of confronting life’s hardest moments with emotional honesty, End of the Hour is for anyone who has experienced the unpredictable, lasting power of grief―and wondered how they’d ever get through it.

This is a true story of the death of a child through homicide. It is about a mother's healing journey and the pivotal decisions she had to make in order to survive her son's death. It is about betrayal, and a shocking verdict but it's also about love, courage, and faith. It is hope for survival and inspiration for revival for those that are suffering a similar loss.

Diagnosed with cancer at age twenty-six threw all the life plans Emily had made out the window. In between attempting to fight Hodgkin's lymphoma and working, full-time Emily discovered she was in a deep state of grief. She realized in the middle of it all she had lost herself and would need to not only fight the cancer, but her mind in order to survive.

Losing a child is an experience beyond this world. In her seminal work, The Flight, Cammie Wolf Rice shatters reality — and in the process, reshapes our perspectives on pain, suffering and the meaning of it all. The Flight displays her struggle to make sense of losing her son to opioids. In this journey, you will find your own.

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.

On July 23, 2007, Dr. William Petit suffered an unimaginable horror: Armed strangers broke into his suburban Connecticut home in the middle of the night, bludgeoned him nearly to death, tortured and killed his wife and two daughters, and set their house on fire. He miraculously survived, and yet living through those horrific hours was only the beginning of his ordeal. Broken and defeated, Bill was forced to confront a question of ultimate consequence: How does a person find the strength to start over and live again after confronting the darkest of nightmares?

"Congratulations on the resurrection of your life", a colleague wrote to Emily Rapp Black when she announced the birth of her second child. The line made Rapp Black pause. Her first child, a boy named Ronan, had died from Tay-Sachs disease before he turned three years old, an experience she wrote about in her second book, The Still Point of the Turning World. Since that time, her life had changed utterly.

In this empowering memoir "Strong and Soulful: Graced by Grief," Denise Olsen shares her transformative journey through the depths of devastating loss to a place of unexpected strength and profound self-discovery. After the heart-shattering loss of her husband, a firefighter in the World Trade Center attacks, Denise was enveloped in a grief so intense, it threatened to consume her. But within this dark chapter of her life, she found a surprising truth: grief, while altering us irrevocably, does not have to be our undoing.

A luminous, true story, Name All the Animals is an unparalleled account of grief and secret love: the tale of a family clinging to the memory of a lost child, and a young woman struggling to define herself in the wake of his loss.

In what was to become the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, the Oklahoma City bombing was one in a long line of violent attacks that have left communities across the nation searching for healing and hope. With the soaring message of the power of love to conquer evil, Grace from the Rubble tells the intertwining stories of four captivating individuals

She charmed America with her smart, likable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards. She inspired millions as she valiantly fought advanced breast cancer after being diagnosed only days before the 2004 election. She touched hundreds of similarly grieving families when her own son, Wade, died tragically at age 16 in 1996.

This is the story of a life with and the loss of a very special dog. It's a journey through unbounded joy, crushing grief, and the path forward. Woody was a very special animal, and he made abrupt and profound changes to me while he was alive, and those changes continue today. While this journey has been one of the most painful of my life, I am full of gratitude for what he taught me and what he continues to teach me today. While some of this book may seem unbelievable and quite magical, every word is true.

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.

Rebecca Spiegel is working as a teacher in New Orleans when she learns of her sister’s suicide. Only after the funeral does shock give way to grief—and to many questions. How could Emily do this to herself? How could she have abandoned all those who loved her? And what could have been done differently to prevent this devastating loss?

Marise was nine when she first realised there was trouble, 14 when her dad tried to end it all, and 23 when he finally succeeded. In a turmoil of conflicting emotions, Marise runs - from Dublin to Amsterdam to Los Angeles, leaving a trail of sex and self-destruction in her wake. Until finally, she finds herself facing what she's become in a California psych ward, a girl imploding through trying to make sense of her father's suicide.