Book List: Death & Grief

From Here to Eternity - Caitlin Doughty

“Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it’s a cultural one.”

Doughty’s book explores cultural practices around death and mourning, while navigating themes of embodiment, feminism, and spirituality. She explores how our Western culture's physical and emotional distancing from death, as well as our expectations of subdued performances of grief, have taken us away from open and honest grieving.

We don't "move on" from grief. We move forward with it. - Nora McInerny

Nora McInerny confronts our culture’s impatience with grief and offers a more compassionate perspective—that healing doesn’t mean forgetting, and that love and loss can coexist. She emphasizes that grief isn’t a stage to complete, but a constant companion. McInerny shifts the idea of ‘moving on from grief’ to ‘moving forward with grief’: acknowledging we can move forward with our losses, rather than leaving them behind.

No Death, No Fear - Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh writes a deeply compassionate exploration of life, death, and the nature of being. Drawing from Buddhist wisdom and his own spiritual insight, he offers the perspective that we are not separate from the universe—we are waves on the ocean of existence, never truly born, never truly dying. The book is both a comfort and a call to live mindfully in the present.

The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion

In this raw and powerful memoir, Joan Didion chronicles the year following the sudden death of her husband and the simultaneous hospitalization of their daughter. With her unique voice, Didion navigates the surreal, disorienting terrain of grief. The result is an intimate exploration of love, memory, loss, and the fragile architecture of life as we know it.