Review by Kirkus Book Review
An examination of how to heal from great loss. Journalist Delistraty makes his book debut with a touching memoir of his experience of prolonged, profound grief over the death of his mother. Rejecting the idea of closure or grieving through five stages that ends with acceptance, the author has found, instead, that "some grief doesn't relent. Some grief does not evolve. Some grief is daily, acute, life-changing." In 2022, its prevalence led the American Psychiatric Association to add "prolonged grief disorder," or PGD, as an official diagnosis to its directory of disorders, spurring research and various treatments. As Delistraty recounts, he has been open to a wide variety of treatment options, including laughter therapy, psilocybin, and yoga. As he struggled to cope with his acute grief, he discovered that "reading, writing, and looking at art" offer "new entry points into one's grief." He tracked down a neuroscientist to investigate the possibility of deleting painful memories of his mother's illness; from talking with the scientist, though, he realized that it's better to learn new ways to see those memories and cope with them. Furthermore, while loneliness and isolation only intensify grief, friends find it difficult to connect with another's loss. "To not be over your grief after a period of time," he writes, "is to break a social contract." Delistraty also discovered that grief had become his "sole spiritual nutrition, from which I derived meaning, pleasure, and reward." It had taken over his sense of who he was, "shifting not only how I saw the world but also how I saw myself: as a griever, a person whose fundamental personality is rooted in trauma and loss." His search for relief led to understanding: "to not become your loss, to alchemize it into wisdom." A candid recounting of a fraught psychological and emotional journey. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
