Resources

We understand that navigating the journey of grief can be incredibly challenging, and finding the right support is crucial. To assist you during this difficult time, we have curated a list of grief resources that we believe could be immensely helpful. These resources include support groups, counseling services, informative articles, and other tools designed to offer comfort and guidance. We hope you find these resources beneficial as you work through your grief and begin to heal.

It All Belongs: Love, Loss & Learning to Live Again

Book by Judy & Roy Smoot

For Judy Smoot, a devastating Glioblastoma Multiforme diagnosis means putting the spiritual practices she has taught so many others to the ultimate, personal test. As an artist, spiritual director, expressive arts teacher, retreat facilitator, and innovator of a non-profit organization supporting people with chronic disease, Judy shows us what it looks like to live fully into our own mortality by living fully into hers. It All Belongs invites its readers to journey with Judy as she first confronts her life’s biggest challenge head-on and then travels through the end of her earthly existence with grace, humor, humility, courage, and the ultimate hope of our being. Family and friends said, “Judy showed us how to live ... and how to die.”

But that’s only half the story.

Following Judy’s death, It All Belongs invites its readers to journey with Roy, Judy’s husband of nearly 40 years, as he struggles to embrace the twin realities of love and grief. With extraordinary vulnerability, Roy offers a rare window into his struggle to learn the rhythms of this bittersweet dance. From the raw angst of navigating immediate day-to-day realities, to deep introspection during a long road trip out west, to culminating awareness on a spiritual quest in Iona, Scotland, Roy models the journey through unthinkable darkness to emerging triumphant into a full and abundant life.

Woven into both sides of this honest, beautiful, heartbreaking, and awe-inspiring narrative, readers will discover spiritual tools and practices to equip them and their loved ones for their own inevitable end-of-life realities. In this unique pairing of perspectives laced with exquisite art and poetry, It All Belongs brings hands-on help for navi gating any unwanted life journey to embrace the amazing love, beauty, light, and joy tucked within even our most tragic experiences

Empty Shoes By The Door: Living After My Son's Suicide

Book by Judi Merriam

On the afternoon of December 23, 2011, Judi Merriam’s eighteen-year-old son, Jenson, took his own life—an act that blindsided everyone who knew him—changing her life and those of her family forever.

This is the story of Jenson’s life and death—and of Judi’s path to surviving without the physical presence of the kind, intelligent, and endlessly creative young man she never imagined she would outlive.

The suicide of a loved one can be devastating for those left behind and bring deep despair and seemingly endless grief. Judi was forced to confront profound feelings of loss and guilt and a future so very different from what she thought it would be. In this honest and soul-searching memoir, Judi reflects with grace and courage on the fragile and amazing, terrifying and broken, and glorious and painful experience of living life after an unfathomable loss.

Your Grief, Your Way: A Year of Practical Guidance and Comfort After Loss

Book by Shelby Forsythia

Comforting words and practical ideas for living with loss.

"You can read this book day by day, or several pages at a time. It's perfect for anyone who's struggling to regain their footing and needs to proceed gently and with care."
--Hope Edelman, author of The Aftergrief and Motherless Daughters

Everyone experiences grief differently after the loss of a loved one. Some people find solace in comforting quotes and warm words, while others feel a need to take action--to do something to memorialize their loss. And some benefit from both approaches. Here's a path forward for you, no matter how you process your grief.
Your Grief, Your Way features:

• Multiple ways to process grief: Find relief through short meditations, mindful reframings, journaling prompts, concrete actions, and more.
  
• A year of daily messages of comfort: Each page includes a quote and a short paragraph about grief along with a practical tip--something you can do to tend to your grief.
• Comfort and practicality in short spurts: Discover strength and support in these bite-size nuggets, since grief reduces the ability to focus.
  
• Quotes from a wide range of grievers: Tend to your grief with thoughtful words of people who have been in your shoes.

Whether you're looking for inspiration, a practical way to honor your loved one, or both, Your Grief, Your Way helps you navigate life after loss.

Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

Book by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, Foreword by Jeffrey Rubin

When a loved one dies, the pain of loss can feel unbearable—especially in the case of a traumatizing death that leaves us shouting, “NO!” with every fiber of our body. The process of grieving can feel wild and nonlinear—and often lasts for much longer than other people, the nonbereaved, tell us it should.

Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore—bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and leading counselor in the field—accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love, loss, and grief. Through moving stories of her encounters with grief over decades of supporting individuals, families, and communities—as well as her own experience with loss—Cacciatore opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honor our grief.

Not just for the bereaved, Bearing the Unbearable will be required reading for grief counselors, therapists and social workers, clergy of all varieties, educators, academics, and medical professionals. Organized into fifty-two accessible and stand-alone chapters, this book is also perfect for being read aloud in support groups.

Grief Day By Day: Simple Practices and Daily Guidance for Living with Loss

Book by Jan Warner, Foreword  by Amanda Bearse

Grief is complex; it may present itself differently on any given day. This grief recovery handbook offers daily reflections and practices that address the day-to-day emotions and experiences that accompany the grieving process so you can create a life in which peace―and even gratitude―can coexist with your grief.

Explore the stages of grief with a collection of quotes, musings, meditations, and more that are tied together by a weekly theme, allowing you to reflect on each concept in depth. Work through topics like loneliness, grief attacks, exhaustion, hope, love, and creating meaning. You'll find opportunities to write, draw, meditate, do breathing exercises, and more as you learn to live fully with your grief.

This grief recovery handbook helps facilitate healing with:

• 365 Daily reflections―Find a year's worth of readings that can be revisited as many times as you like as you move through the grieving process.
  
• Weekly themes―Explore feelings and experiences common to grief, including things left unsaid, unhealthy coping mechanisms, guilt, intimacy, and faith.
  
• 52 Healing exercises―Discover activities that help you process your feelings at the end of each week and develop skills for coping with grief as it arises.

Make peace with your grief one day at a time with the daily readings and exercises in this standout among grief books.