Whether reading an article, a book, a podcast, or watching a video, there are any number of ways we can engage with the tougher topics in life. 

The Dinner Party This is a US based non-profit in which people build community around bereavement. I’ve never had the benefit of participating because I am UK based but there are trainings and opportunities to lead your own table, which I am contemplating.

The Power Of Ritual This book by Casper Ter Kuile I think is so hugely helpful in helping us create our own rituals and traditions that helps us make meaning in the day to day of life’s constant changes.

Learning How To Grieve When The World Moves On This article nearly moved me to tears it resonated with me so much.

Six Signs Of Incomplete Grief What I think is interesting about this article is, if you think about it, an individual person’s incomplete grief can have a real ripple effect on their own actions and how their actions behave others. If you think of this on a large-scale, it feels worthwhile (for me) to consider how the behaviour of leaders (of companies or countries) or entire cultures or religions or nations could be behaving from a place of incomplete grief whether their own or from their parents or generations’ past which is where generational trauma comes into play whether experienced in your home or as a member of a marginalised group. This is not to excuse or condone abusive or destructive behaviour, but as an actor that is sort of my job, to understand why a person might be behaving in a certain way and to try to find the humanity in it, even if that behaviour is morally wrong or harmful to whatever extreme. Is it possible that everyone (regardless of how much power or money a person might have) is in pain? And would there be greater equity in the world if we could create space for each other’s incomplete grief and the way it impacts every aspect of a person’s life?

What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind The Atlantic has written several excellent articles about grief in different contexts: the loss of a partner, children, and in this case in a terrorist attack, which I think is a really useful way to think about grief on a large scale and why it’s so necessary to understand that the impact of a loss like this lasts for decades and even generations.

9 Different Types Of Grief I use PsychCentral and PsychologyToday as two reading resources all the time when I feel like I am struggling with something and I would recommend them as a reliable source of information on any number of topics (and it’s also how I’ve discovered many of the books below as articles will often reference many of the authors.)

The Choice This book was recommended to me by my counsellor when I expressed difficulty letting go of anger associated with my grief. This book by Edith Eger (Holocaust & concentration camp survivor) is an incredibly powerful book about our own power over our choices/minds/reactions to life even in the midst of situations that we cannot control and that are completely overwhelming. It touches on trauma and grief.

The Body Keeps The Score I absolutely adore this book. I have experienced chronic pain for all of my adult life and have experienced a major back injury twice with no clear cause that left me almost unable to walk for nearly a year. It was only after I started taking SSRI’s that my pain began to subside and I learned that there is a strong correlation between certain aspects of mental health and chronic pain and this book is one of many that challenges the notion that the mind and body are separate.

When The Body Says No Gabor Maté is someone I would recommend if anyone has ever experienced loss associated with addiction. I think he has some very progressive and compelling things to say about the subject.

Cinema Therapy: Psychology Of A Hero: Batman/Dark Knight Trilogy This is a Youtube channel that I highly recommend. In each episode two best friends (a filmmaker and a therapist) talk about a character and the psychology that character exudes and how it is portrayed in the film. In this video, it discusses Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder. 

Harry Potter & The Sacred Text Regardless of problematic views of JK Rowling, I love this podcast and all of the hosts (and to their credit they acknowledge their issues and their community’s issues with the author and they allow for life’s complexities in doing so). It is hosted by friends & chaplains of very diverse faith backgrounds who met at Harvard Divinity School. In each episode they read a chapter of Harry Potter & they apply sacred reading practices (as applied to religious texts across several different denominations across history) to the text. They set a theme for each chapter “love” or “risk” or “hope” etc. and they examine these big ideas and it has helped me approach several aspects of my life in new ways. For anyone who isn’t into traditional religion but could use some space to contemplate life’s bigger questions, this is for you

All There Is This podcast by Anderson Cooper was created in response to the loss of his mother, and is an audio record of himself going through her belongings, through the memories of her life after her passing, and ruminating on grief and how we move on.

That Good Night I follow this death doula on instagram and I find they always have helpful, funny, and comforting ways of reframing the relationship between life and my death. You don’t have to be dying to engage with your own mortality. When I let my awareness of my own death exist, it helps me make decisions in life.