Opening to Grief
Finding Your Way from Loss to Peace
Claire B. Willis and Marnie Crawford Samuelson’s Opening to Grief is a companion for people facing loss.
Grief is a pressing force that often drives people to isolate or close themselves off to new experiences, but “grief and love are intertwined,” Claire B. Willis and Marnie Crawford Samuelson suggest, and being open makes way for healing and new life. Their book harnesses wisdom from Willis’s years of working with people experiencing grief, suggesting that hope can be found in accepting grief and engaging it, even seeing it as a companion.
The book’s chapters examine entry points for ways forward, including nature, kindness, and art. Their approach is holistic, involving yoga and meditation for inner and outer change. All of the proposed perspectives and practices make room for individual circumstances, paths, and paces. They are contemplative and spiritual, showing that healing happens from the inside out. The text is packed with poetry, too, to further open hearts and minds through evocative imagery and surprising language.
The book’s Questions People Ask section is powerful as it breaks apart myths about grief, such as that grief manifests in a particular order over a set amount of time. It dispels the shame that people feel when it seems like they’re not grieving the way they should, providing in-depth, empathetic answers to questions like “how do I know if I’m grieving or actually depressed?” and “is it normal that I grieved more when my dog died than when my mother died from a stroke?”
Calm and persistent to help with facing grief and widening views beyond it, Opening to Grief suggests a caring path toward healing after loss.
Reviewed by
Melissa Wuske
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
