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sianmichaela's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.75
Julia Samuels is so soothing to listen to, and so much of this book was a tonic.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief and Death
Minor: Fatphobia and Cursing
girgir81's review
4.0
I picked up this book for an ulterior motive, that of which can be guessed from the title.
My grandma passed away 4 years ago almost to the day and, while I have gotten better at dealing with it, I am definitely not over it. She and I shared a very special relationship; she was my go-to person, my crutch, my companion and just always there for me. Losing her devastated me especially since I live abroad and I didn’t get a chance to see her before she passed on. The last time I had seen her was a year and a half before she had left us and that kills me till today. In a way, I still remember her at her best and not during her deteriorating health but I still wish I had seen her at least one more time.
I was told I “should have gotten used to it by now” and “get over it already, it’s been 4 years” and I felt like I was running behind some schedule that wasn’t even shared with me.
Turns out, this book was exactly what I needed. It was extremely validating. It explained the process of grief and how it’s different for everyone and has no fixed timeline or expiry. The intensity of the grief is directly proportional to the depth of relationship you shared with the deceased and is affected by a lot of other factors including our societal conditional and awkwardness around a grieving person. Besides, there’s always the matter that we all deal with grief differently and the bereavement process looks very different for different people.
In Grief Works, Julia Samuel, a grief psychotherapist based in the UK, shares select stories from a few of her ex-patients – extremely touching stories that are so different and yet somehow all relatable. She organized the chapters according to the relationship with the person lost: loss of a partner, a parent, a sibling, a child and finally facing one’s own death for the terminally ill. At the end of every one of those chapters, she includes a reflections section where she shares her general thoughts on how to deal with that particular kind of loss as well as some facts and statistics that are very essential to understanding grief more.
There is so much I would like to share in my review. It I feel the below quotes sum up the main takeaways…
“Death is the last great taboo; and the consequence of death, grief, is profoundly misunderstood. We seem happy to talk about sex or failure, or to expose our deepest vulnerabilities, but on death we are silent. It is so frightening, even alien, for many of us that we cannot find the words to voice it. This silence leads to an ignorance that can prevent us from responding to grief both in others and in ourselves. We prefer it when the bereaved don’t show their distress, and we say how “amazing” they are by being “so strong.” But, despite the language we use to try to deny death—euphemisms such as “passed over,” “lost,” “gone to a better place”—the harsh truth is that, as a society, we are ill equipped to deal with it. The lack of control and the powerlessness that we are forced to contend with go against our twenty-first-century belief that medical technology can fix us; or, if it can’t, that sufficient quantities of determination can.”
“Grief doesn’t hit us in tidy phases and stages, nor is it something that we forget and move on from; it is an individual process that has a momentum of its own, and the work involves finding ways of coping with our fear and pain, and also adjusting to this new version of ourselves, our “new normal.””
“…grief is an intensely personal, contradictory, chaotic, and unpredictable internal process. If we are to navigate it, we need a way to understand and live with the central paradox: that we must find a way of living with a reality that we don’t want to be true. It forces us to face our own mortality, which we have spent an entire lifetime denying, often through the creation of order – because if we have order, we have predictability and, most importantly, control.”
“It is often the behaviors we use to avoid pain that harm us the most.”
“Death steals the future we anticipated and hoped for, but it can’t take away the relationship we had.”
“According to research, men tend to vent anger, which can lead to violence, and women tend to suppress it, which can lead to depression.”
“People talk about “finding a way of living with” the grief from suicide; as a bereaved mother said to me, “You never ‘get over it,’ you ‘get on with it,’ and you never ‘move on,’ but you ‘move forward.’ You start to absorb the intense pain that such a loss brings in its wake and you begin, very, very slowly, to accept.””
“This does not mean men feel less pain than women, but rather that they instinctively manage their pain differently.”
“Our first breath of life signals the success of birth, and it is our last breath that will signal our death. We all know we will die—it is the only truly predictable fact—yet the incredible power of our minds maintains it as our best-kept secret.”
“We’ve seen in the case studies that the relationship with the person who has died continues, although in a radically altered form. They are loved in absence rather than in presence. Some people may need to do this a great deal, others only occasionally or on special days like anniversaries. A central pillar in the support of our system is finding ways to externalize that relationship.”
“…grief has a momentum of its own, and our work is to find ways to express it and to support ourselves through it, while realizing that over time it changes and we are changed by it.”
hzcyr's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
2.5
The therapist honesty and reflections are good. Feels somewhat non-substantive. The advice is generically good but un-new. Odd focuses on sex and faith at times, feels slightly Christian/hetnorm written
ayeshaasif's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.5
Grief Works is an important book that tackles a very difficult reality i.e. death, yet its very readable. Julia is a grief psychotherapist who shares case studies of her clients who either lost a partner, parent, sibling, child or were facing their own death. She also shares her reflections that she has acquired in the past 25 years while working with bereaved families.
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My maternal grandfather’s death was the first very close death I experienced. I was fortunate to be surrounded by people who were there for me, who listened, acknowledged and let me experience my grief as it came. However, some common statements I heard were ‘time will heal everything’, ‘at least he had a good life’ - I’m sure these came with good intention, but they sounded like abstract concepts to me. I was struggling to understand if these facts were supposed to reduce my grief? Was I supposed to remind myself of these and then expected to be okay?
~
This book explains grief so well. It has answered so many questions for me. It has validated so many thoughts that crossed my mind back then. In the book, Julia says if we are to navigate grief ‘we must find a way of living with a reality that we don’t want to be true’.
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A year later, I find myself going on with routine life and I often feel guilty - have I forgotten my grandfather? How can everything be okay without him? - Julia speaks about this feeling as she says ‘People then assume they must entirely forget their loved one and subsequently suffer guilt for abandoning them; but the relationship does continue, although in a radically different form’.
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A recurring theme in this book is how to deal with death with children and how does one support bereaved children. What we chose to share with them, when we do it and how we do, all these are very important. I’m sure everyone choses to handle grief with kids differently but what I’ve seen mostly is that information is often withheld from them or they’re told incomplete truths. This is usually done as an attempt to protect them.
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Julia however, argues that ‘children experience that protection as an exclusion’. As difficult as it may be she says that ‘children need to be given as much information as adults; and it should be conveyed in age-appropriate and concrete language’. Something that really struck me was how she explains that children start making up stuff when they don’t know the entire truth and their assumptions and imaginations can be worse and limitless. It’s also important to realise that even if one don’t choose to tell the kids the complete truth, kids do see and observe everything happening around them. And not letting them know puts them into distress because they are unable to make sense of their surroundings.
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Julia also sheds light on the long term impact of how death is dealt with kids. Children may grow up unable to trust adults around them or they may resent and regret them not being given a chance to say final goodbye to their loved one.
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Grief Works has been a tough yet, incredible read. So glad I picked it up when I was ready for it.