Reviews with TLC

When We Were Widows by Annette Chavez Macias hit all the notes with me. The emotional impact felt like being on a merry-go-round and a roller-coaster at the same time. There was a gentleness and a fierceness in the relationships in the book, particularly those between the three generations of women the story focused on. I felt their heartaches, their joys, and their determination. The frustrations of the three women both with their lives, with each other, and with their individual selves bring so much understanding to the interconnectedness of life as well as the desire to detach from the reality of our lives. I found myself fully immersed in When We Were Widows and wanting to sit down for a cup of coffee with Yesica, Ana, and Mama Melda while at the same time thinking about my own relationships and my own journey with grief. When We Were Widows is a beautiful, realistic, inspiring examination of grief, family, secrets, and healing. Currently Reading: Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy ...

The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller came highly recommended from several sources. I'm grateful for those recommendations because I doubt I would have read it otherwise. I have mixed feelings about The Wild Edge of Sorrow . Weller writes well making the material accessible and understandable. There are many beautiful moments in The Wild Edge of Sorrow that urged me to think about my aversion to ritual as a general rule. I enjoyed the reflection on the importance of community and connection as well as the descriptions of myriad cultures' grief rituals and beliefs about grief. Even given those descriptive explorations, there were moments when Weller, like many in this type of work, seems to make assumptions meant to be inclusive that exclude those who might view the suggested ideas from a different perspective. At times, I also felt like the goal was to convince me to enroll in one of the paid grief ritual events. If so, it ...

The Beautiful Little Things by Melissa Hill pulled me in gently but firmly. The characters felt almost too real at every turn. The breakdowns in communications and the assumptions made about each other and situations felt all too familiar. I cheered them on, shook my head at bad decisions, and urged them to just talk to each other. Hill creates the kind of family drama and tension that often accompanies big changes in life with a nuance that felt voyeuristic at times. The Beautiful Little Things tells the story of a family navigating love, relationships, disappointment, guilt, and most of all, grief. As the family tries to navigate through unspoken resentments and unfair assumptions about one another, they are also navigating grief over their beloved matriarch and their perceptions of her perfection leading them to lash out and create havoc for all even while using her last journal as a guide to find their way back to each other. The Beautiful Little Things is all about navigating th...

It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand by Megan Devine explores the way we process grief and the expectations society puts on grief and the grieving.  Devine uses her own experience with grief and people's response to her grief as a foundation for examining how society treats the grieving. She discusses how we often view grief as a problem to be solved and how hurtful that attitude can be.   Devine spends quite a bit of time exploring the idea that everyone's grief is different. She emphasizes that everyone has the right to grieve in the way that best works for them.  I vacillated between finding  It's OK That You're Not OK  very insightful, somewhat short-sighted, and occasionally contradictory.  As I read, I kept wondering why and how we continue to get it so wrong since everyone grieves at some p oint in their life and everyone seems to know we're doing it wrong, at least when experiencing grief them...

  I read quite a few nonfiction books in 2022 over a relatively wide range of topics. I enjoy learning new things, so I tend to read a lot of nonfiction. This was an interesting year of reading for me in that I was working through my to-be-read piles but couldn't resist a few new releases. I found most of the nonfiction I read in 2022 interesting and informative.   The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss  by Mary-Francis O'Connor, PhD offers an interesting perspective on the grieving process. The research O'Connor has done as well as other research she cites offers a glimpse into the functioning of the grieving brain as we move through the process of grief. The idea of the brain needing to relearn habits as part of the grieving process struck me as particularly important and interesting. While much of the research O'Connor discusses is still influx and therefore perhaps not as definitive as some would like, it is still very interest...