Resources
Essays by Lukas Naugle
“Grief isn’t a journey to finish. It’s a language we learn.”
John Onwuchekwa
A friend who has spent a decade putting words to this.
A talk, a podcast, a book, and the writing
The library
Books
32- Levels of LifeJulian BarnesThree linked pieces: two about early ballooning and a 19th-century love affair, and a third about his grief after his wife died of a brain tumor 37 days after her diagnosis.
- A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing DeathBJ Miller and Shoshana BergerA palliative care doctor and an editor on the practical side of a serious illness and a death: medical decisions, paperwork, caregiving, the last days, and what comes after.
- Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in ChristJ. Todd BillingsA theologian diagnosed with incurable cancer at 39 on how the psalms of lament make room to grieve honestly and still trust God.
- The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After LossGeorge BonannoA psychologist’s research showing that most bereaved people are more resilient than the stage models suggest, and what that resilience looks like in ordinary days.
- No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear)Kate BowlerA Duke historian diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at 35 on letting go of the promise that life can be optimized, and living within limits.
- The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and CareAnne BoyerA poet’s account of treatment for triple-negative breast cancer and of the medical and financial systems around it. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
- The Grief Cure: Looking for the End of LossCody DelistratyA journalist, years after his mother’s death, tries treatments for prolonged grief, from psilocybin therapy to laughter therapy, and reports what each one did.
- It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn’t UnderstandMegan DevineA therapist whose partner drowned on grief that cannot be fixed, and how friends and family can support someone without trying to fix it.
- Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of LossHope EdelmanEdelman, whose mother died when she was 17, draws on interviews with hundreds of women about how losing a mother young shapes a daughter’s life at each stage.
- The AfterGrief: Finding Your Way Along the Long Arc of LossHope EdelmanEdelman on how a major loss keeps shaping a life for decades, well after the first years of grief.
- Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the EndAtul GawandeA surgeon on aging, dying, and the conversations families and doctors need to have about what a patient wants when medicine can no longer cure.
- Grief Undone: A Journey with God and CancerElizabeth W. D. GrovesLibbie Groves’s account of her husband Al’s cancer and death, told through the prayers, Scripture and blog posts she wrote at the time.
- What Grieving People Wish You Knew About What Really Helps (and What Really Hurts)Nancy GuthrieGuthrie, who lost two infant children, gathered what grieving people said about the words and actions from friends that helped and the ones that hurt.
- Resilient Grieving: How to Find Your Way Through Devastating LossLucy HoneA resilience researcher whose 12-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash sets out the practical strategies she used to cope.
- When Breath Becomes AirPaul KalanithiA neurosurgeon diagnosed with stage four lung cancer at 36 on medicine, meaning and his last two years; his wife wrote the epilogue after his death.
- On DeathTim KellerA short book by a New York pastor on how Christian hope changes the way a person faces death and grieves.
- Walking with God through Pain and SufferingTim KellerKeller’s longer book on why suffering happens and how people have walked through it, drawing on philosophy, theology and the stories of people he knew.
- A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving ChildrenPhyllis Silverman and Madelyn KellyA practical guide for a surviving parent, drawn from the Harvard Child Bereavement Study, with guidance for children of different ages.
- Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of GriefDavid KesslerKessler, who co-wrote On Grief and Grieving with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, wrote this after the death of his 21-year-old son.
- A Grief ObservedC.S. LewisLewis’s notebooks from the weeks after his wife, Joy Davidman, died of cancer, including his anger and doubt.
- Where the Waves Turn Back: A PilgrimageTyson MotsenbockerA singer and songwriter walks 600 miles over 40 days on the old mission road from San Diego to San Francisco after his mother’s death.
- A Monster CallsPatrick NessA novel for young readers and teenagers about a 13-year-old boy whose mother is being treated for cancer, and the anger and fear he can’t say out loud.
- How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final ChapterSherwin B. NulandA surgeon describes in clinical detail what happens to the body in the most common ways people die. Winner of the National Book Award.
- The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and LossMary-Frances O’ConnorA neuroscientist who studies grief explains what happens in the brain after a loss and why adapting to it takes time.
- The Grieving Body: How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for HealingMary-Frances O’ConnorO’Connor on how grief affects the body through stress, and what helps the body recover.
- The Long Goodbye: A MemoirMeghan O’RourkeA poet and critic on the first year after her mother died of colon cancer.
- A Grief Sanctified: Through Sorrow to Eternal HopeRichard Baxter, edited by J. I. PackerA 17th-century Puritan pastor’s memoir of his wife Margaret, written after her death, with an introduction on grief by J. I. Packer.
- The Bright Hour: A Memoir of Living and DyingNina RiggsA poet diagnosed with breast cancer at 37 writes about daily life with her husband and two young sons while the cancer spreads.
- A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through LossJerry SittserAfter a drunk driver killed his mother, his wife and his young daughter in one crash, a professor writes about living with that loss in the years that followed.
- Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of LamentMark VroegopA pastor whose daughter was stillborn walks through the lament psalms as words for grief, with guidance for praying them.
- Lament for a SonNicholas WolterstorffA philosopher’s short entries written after his son Eric, 25, died in a climbing accident.
- The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes AfterJulie Yip-WilliamsA lawyer born nearly blind in Vietnam, diagnosed with stage four colon cancer at 37, writes for her husband and two young daughters.
Podcasts
5- Everything Happens with Kate BowlerKate BowlerKate Bowler’s conversations with people living through illness, loss and other hard things that have no easy answers.
- Healing 2.0: Life After LossHidden BrainA Hidden Brain episode with resilience researcher Lucy Hone on coping after a loss and why grief rarely follows the five stages.
- All There Is with Anderson CooperAnderson CooperAnderson Cooper’s conversations about grief, begun while he was going through his late mother’s belongings.
- The Science & Process of Healing from GriefAndrew HubermanA neuroscientist’s solo episode on how the brain processes grief, how grief differs from depression, and tools for adapting to a loss.
- Grief Is A LanguageJohn OnwuchekwaJohn Onwuchekwa’s podcast of conversations about grief and learning to live with it.