Grief and Loss Resources

In short: grief is our varied reactions to loss—often described as the experiences of sorrow, distress, or suffering—but that’s limiting because grief can show up in so many different ways, including numbness and outrage. Grief and mourning can also be seen as opportunities, as processes, a part of being human. To move through grief instead of avoiding it (which is ultimately harmful), we usually need to know we will survive and how to do so—this is where better framing can help, as well as personal stories, and information about what happens to our bodies when we are grieving. 

Three helpful quotes I keep coming back to are the following:

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” ― Jamie Anderson

“I look at grief as an opportunity for us to, in a way that is not easy,  have our hearts break open, not simply break. And I also look at grief as an opportunity for us to touch into feelings that are calling to be explored in a way that is tender and courageous.” ― Roshi Joan Halifax

“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.” — Earl Grollman

Below, we share both general resources as well as some specifically tied to the grief of specific losses, like death, pregnancy loss, relationship breakups, and more. We’ll update later with expanded resources, so stay tuned or let us know if you have resources to contribute!

You can easily share this resource page with the following shortlink: https://bit.ly/AMgrief (make sure to capitalize accordingly).

General Grief, Ritual, and Healing

A note on ritual: As Francis Weller describes it, a ritual is “any gesture done with emotion and intention by an individual or a group that attempts to connect the individual or community to trans personal energies for the purposes of healing and transformation.” Grief rituals of some kind are often extremely important and valuable for processing grief, and many peoples have cultural traditions and rituals for these purposes. It is important to not appropriate another group’s rituals or use them outside of the correct context, so please be mindful as you uncover options for processing grief and that you do so respectfully.

Task Ideas (in progress)

  • Take the Professional Quality of Life Measure survey. This self-administered test looks at compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary trauma. Grief is often tied to traumatic situations and loss so it can be useful to peek at and measure.
  • Journal Prompts shared by my colleague Ana Vidina Hernández:
    • Do I know my body’s cues? Can I listen to them?
    • What types of trauma might I be living with?
    • How does my work environment support/not support my wellbeing?
    • What “fills my cup”?
    • Who do I go to for support?
    • What healing practices have been passed down to me from my ancestors?
    • What brings me peace?
    • Where and when do I feel rooted? What does that feel like?
    • How and when do I ask for help? How hard is it?
    • What gets me up in the morning?
    • What brings me energy? How does energy feel in my body?

Books

Essays, Articles, and Websites

Music 

Podcasts / Talks

Webinars

Interactive Tools:

  • The Artist’s Grief Deck, (available in English and Spanish!), “a set of 60 medium format ‘flashcards’ that are individually designed by artists, sometimes in collaboration with grief workers. One side displays an original artwork, created by artists from around the world responding to our open call, and on the reverse is a ‘grieving prompt.’  These are memorial and processual actions that give the individual something to do – a gesture, a tiny performance, a movement, an act of mindfulness – in memoriam for someone or something whose loss they are grieving. As a toolkit, the decks have been disbursed for free to grief workers and community organizations, and can be purchased here.”
  • The GEN (Global Environments Network) Grief Toolkit: a slew of embodiment tools and rituals to support griefwork in community, with appropriate context and attention to the lineages these come from.

Breakups / Heartbreak

Film and Video

Poetry Collections

Poems

Books

Essays, Articles, & Websites

Music

Podcasts / Talks

Death (section in progress)

Books

Essays, Articles, & Websites

Pregnancy Loss (section in progress)

Task Ideas

  • Get a tattoo, jewelry, or some other physical form of memorial 
  • Host a funeral or type of service to include community in the grieving process
  • Find other friends or contacts who have also experienced this type of loss 

Books

Essays, Articles, & Websites

School Shootings (section in progress)

Essays, Articles, & Websites

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Bonnie Calderwood Aspinwall and Lui Ramírez for helping me organize and find the correct links for chunks of this resource list.


Header image by johnhain via Pixabay.