The internet is terrific, in that it really allows for very accessible storytelling. But a book is different. It’s tactile and weighty in your hands; it feels good to have something meaningful and comforting you can hold. Our first book, Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome came out of that wish to create something physical, and working on it really allowed us to pull in a lot of different contributors for conversations around these themes. We were able to write extensively ourselves and to experiment with art and illustration. Doing that was a huge challenge and, ultimately, an amazing experience. Turn to a friend (either in person or online) who has experienced parental death. For example, the Modern Loss community hosts an international gift swap ahead of trigger holidays like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and National Siblings Day. "People send each other gifts and a card to make the day less crappy," Soffer said. "When you give or create space for a community to form around a painful experience, really amazing things can happen." She said the project has led to many friendships, romances and business ventures. Know that grief isn’t linear In Hamilton, there is a song about grief called “It’s Quiet Uptown,” in which the cast sings about Alexander and his wife Eliza enduring the “unimaginable”—the death of their child. Earlier this week, The Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience , officially published and is available wherever books are sold .

In the book, you encourage readers to be in both the happy memories and the more complicated moments they may have shared with their person. Why was it important for you to emphasize both?Rebecca Soffer’s new book is called T he Modern Loss Handbook: An Interactive Guide to Moving Through Grief and Building Your Resilience, published by Running Press. For more information about Soffer’s work, visit www.modernloss.com. I am a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. I help people deal with life challenges; what they bring to it themselves and what life unfairly drops in their lap. It’s hard to know what to say in the face of all this devastation, but it can be so much worse to say nothing at all. What I’ve witnessed, what I know to be true, is that storytelling is how we bring one another into our loss experiences and offer meaningful, powerful support. This means telling stories about our lost loved ones—that little joke they told so often that the rest of the family would start rolling their eyes upon hearing the first word, that thing they used to cook that somehow made everything OK, that time they messed up big-time and taught us an important lesson because of it, that special way they held us in their gaze. But it also means talking about our own suffering in the wake of that person’s death—the longing we feel when the nightly phone calls we’ve come to expect suddenly stop, the breakdowns in public settings, the moments we are completely focused on something else and then remember. She writes like talking with a friend who really knows you and is having a real conversation that helps you. Especially when you are feeling no one is saying anything really helpful even though they are trying.

I can’t imagine.” Families and individuals who have lost children, siblings, partners, and friends hear it all the time, this confession of an inability to imagine the worst, the unspeakable, the most feared event. I understand why people offer the phrase—as an earnest gesture of solace or a filler in lieu of anything else—but it rarely brings comfort. More often, the recipients are left feeling even more isolated at a time when grief has already banished them to a cold, dark place. If you are undergoing a loss that has shaken you to your core, the last thing you want to do is recount the event to a hundred different people. That is where a designated ‘point person’ can come in: Someone you trust, who can listen to whatever information you want to be known (and what you do not), and then do the disseminating for you. That saves you time, and emotional exhaustion, and helps you focus on the tasks at hand. ADVOCATE FOR YOURSELF AND OTHERS Modern Loss is a global movement and platform of content, resources and community focused on eradicating the stigma around grief while also encouraging people to find meaning and live richly. THE MODERN LOSS HANDBOOK does just that by offering a welcoming space in which to grow thoughts and feelings as they evolve and create a personal roadmap toward resilience. And I can recommend it personally as someone who is grateful to have this book as help for our own loss.

Modern Loss Handbook: Preorder offer reminder

Jennifer Richleris a freelance journalist living in Bloomington, Indiana. She writes about a range of topics, from grief and loss to Israeli culture to autism. You can find her at jrichler.wix.com/jrichler. At the time, she had just earned her graduate degree and was working as a producer for "The Colbert Report" television show. "I was building and losing at the same time and it felt like this very tenuous space to live in," she recalled.

Mathew Rodriguezis a queer, Latino New-York based journalist. He is an editor at TheBody.com and a former staff writer for Mic.com. He is currently working on a memoir about his father, heroin addiction and HIV on New York City’s Lower East Side. I bought this book to read with my son who had lost his wife last year. We had read several others. (Kubler Ross on death and dying Life was never the same, Year of magical thinking. ). But this book is different. It is a handbook, a guidebook. It offers help in bite size pieces which seemed the perfect size for people in pain. No one wants this book but I do recommend it as a professional for other therapists and anyone helping another heal as an incredible resourceIf you have a performative role, like being a professor, maybe you could switch into a more administrative role for a period of time,” Soffer says. “That way you won’t feel so exposed.”

Grief over the loss of our daily lives, our perceived futures, the roles we could no longer easily access and the additional roles we didn’t anticipate taking on, the terrifying news cycles, the coping mechanisms and go-to rituals that now seemed out of reach. And, of course, grief over the deaths of our people, both during the pandemic and resurfaced from older losses. Join writers Rebecca Soffer ( Modern Loss) and Pete Paphides ( Broken Greek) for a candid, warm, and even humorous conversation exploring Rebecca’s new book, “The Modern Loss Handbook”, and the global movement to destigmatize the universal experience of grief while encouraging people to find meaning and live richly. While it is true that 12 to 15% of people dealing with a significant loss will indeed suffer from what’s known as “complicated grief,” many of them will have been predisposed to depression or anxiety to begin with. The newly named PGD diagnosis is specifically for mourners like these, who are having enormous challenges going to work, maintaining relationships, feeling any sort of enjoyment, and even having suicidal ideation after a year. These individuals deserve validation and affordable access to professional treatment. Friends were supportive — Soffer warmly remembers co-workers pulling up to her mom’s funeral in a rented van, a.k.a., the "clown car" — but few people she knew truly could empathize. However, Soffer and her friend Gabrielle Birkner channeled their shared grief into a monthly dinner party titled "Women With Dead Parents" and launched an online support community called Modern Loss. In 2018, the pair published the book " Modern Loss: Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome," which contains personal essays inspired by grief.

The Modern Loss Handbook

I thought it was so good and so useful, I bought two other copies. One for her mother and another for a friend who had lost her husband. Think like a crab. Remember that if something isn’t resonating with you, you can always pivot and see what works better.”