Grief is love Living with loss

Marisa Renee Lee

Book - 2022

"In Grief is Love, author Marisa Renee Lee reveals that healing does not mean moving on-healing means learning to acknowledge and create space for your grief. She guides you through the pain of early grief and shows you how to to honor your loss. It's common to plow through our feelings in the name of being "OK," but grief is so inextricably tied to love that you don't just "get over it." Grief is Love is about making space for the transformation that this constant state of learning requires. It is about learning to love yourself and the one you lost with the same depth, passion, joy, and commitment you did when they were alive, perhaps even more. Lee shows that there isn't only one way to grieve, and... so your expression of it should be unique. She shepherds you through your grief as it arises and falls again and again. The transformation we each undergo after loss is the indelible imprint of the people we love on our lives, which is the true meaning of legacy. Healing after loss is not about burying pain but about acknowledging it and allowing grief to move through you in order to be whole. How do you manage the holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries? How do you get through the next year or even tomorrow? In beautiful, compassionate prose, Lee elegantly offers wisdom about what it means to authentically and defiantly claim space for these complicated feelings and emotions. And Lee is no stranger to grief herself, after losing her mother, her fertility, a pregnancy, and, most recently, a cousin to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this book, she also explores the unique impact of grief on Black people, Black women in particular, and reveals the key factors that proper healing requires: acknowledgement, rest, community, reflection, support, care and more. At its core, Grief is Love explores what comes after death, and shows us that if we are able to own and honor what we've lost, we can have a beautiful and joyful life in the midst of grief"--

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Location Call Number   Status
2nd Floor 155.937/Lee Due Apr 8, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Self-help publications
Published
New York : Legacy Lit 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Marisa Renee Lee (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xii, 178 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 176-178).
ISBN
9780306926020
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Lee's first book, a blend of memoir, advice, and research, is an anti-blueprint, laying out her argument that those grieving must do so without shame, on their own timelines and in their own ways. Lee shares her own grief experiences; her mother, for whom she was caretaker, died of breast cancer when Lee was 25. She and her husband endured infertility and pregnancy loss. Lee lost a cousin to the COVID-19 pandemic, and witnesses and experiences the daily terror of white supremacy. Lee grieves each of these losses in degrees as profound as the love she has for them, while her willingness to share grief's unexpected lessons is designed to help others get through and access concurrent joy. For example, Lee required therapy to date while grieving her mother, and when the time came for wedding planning, grief intensified and embedded itself into every step, down to purchasing napkins. Clearly written and accessible to many readers, this book adds a leader's personal voice to the growing body of work inviting us to grieve better.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A grief expert explores how loss can gracefully coexist with life. When Lee's mother died of breast cancer in 2008, she was left to carry on "with a permanent hole in my heart." That grief informs her intuitive guide on managing the lingering pain of human loss. A decade later, her research was reenergized after a miscarriage and the discovery of deep-seated anger. With calm, lucid prose, the author gently instructs readers on how to navigate their own experiences by highlighting a series of integral elements to surviving loss. This begins with self-permission to pause life, adapt, and heal while acknowledging that these feelings of bereavement may last throughout life. Lee empathetically addresses grief support, self-care, and post-traumatic intimacy and interweaves her personal story, including anecdotes about her mother's illness and death, courtship with her husband, and trauma caused by traumatic pregnancy difficulties. With great sensitivity, the author chronicles a time in her life when she was juggling a demanding Wall Street job, a cancer charity, and a social life, all while taking care of her dying mother. Unable to cope or sleep, she began heavy self-medication, but rapid weight loss signaled a more drastic lack of control. "You are forced to exist in this tenuous space between life and death," she admits about her mental anguish as her mother declined, "and there is often an ominous undertone to everything." With time, understanding, and therapy, Lee began to make space for her grief and "release all of the hurt that was sitting on my chest." As a Black woman, Lee also discusses racism, injustice, and inequality--all of which are especially palpable "in a country that lacks a real safety net"--and she shares secrets to accepting "the fluidity that love and death require." A humanizing exploration of coping with the life-changing tides of loss. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.