Getting Grief Right explores personal ways to cope with one of the most difficult challenges an individual can face - the death of a loved one. Many people have the impression that a "normal" human works through the "stages of grief" and then gets on with life. But Patrick O'Malley gives a different perspective - one that says the loss may be with someone for a lifetime -- and that's okay. He shares from heartfelt personal and professional experience and creates a meaningful foundation for addressing one's own grief and acceptance of it.

I was disappointed in the beginning of this book. I was looking forward to getting some tips on how to deal with my grief. The book seemed to read like a memoir. That was not was I was looking for.

Great read. Gave me some helpful tips on dealing with my grief.

Finding Your Own Path in Grief

“The writer Anne Lamott says it beautifully: ‘You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.’”

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that, over time, the nature of ‘successful’ grieving was redefined in my office by both my clients and me. It wasn’t getting over loss; it was learning to live with it, and to use the grief narrative as a way to preserve a bond with the one who died.”

“This book will not help you ‘get over’ your grief, but will help you experience your sorrow in its most pure form.”

Patrick O’Malley knows a thing or two about loss: not only is he a therapist who specializes in bereavement counseling, but he lost his first-born son, Ryan, before they’d even celebrated his first birthday. As a young husband, new father, and practicing psychotherapist, O’Malley followed the advice of his colleagues – indeed, the same advice he’d given to countless grieving patients – and tried to “get over” Ryan’s death. However, as the prescribed time frame for grieving came and went, O’Malley gradually began to question the wisdom and efficacy of stage-based models of bereavement, perhaps best exemplified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s infamous five stages of grief. (Say it with me: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.)

After much soul searching and years of experience, O’Malley embraced a much kinder and more compassionate framework: one that celebrates the patient’s unique relationship to the deceased; recognizes that we all grieve in our own way, that there is no “one size fits all” model of grief; and uses storytelling to craft a cohesive grief narrative. In this way, grief is not something you “work through” and leave behind you; rather, to love is to grieve, and grieving is one way to keep your loved one alive in your memories. Storytelling – whether through journaling, videotaped recollections, or something else – is a powerful way to do this.

GETTING GRIEF RIGHT consists of three key elements. First, O’Malley briefly explores the history of stage-based models of grief. He then shares the story of his own loss, and in so doing, he illustrates how profoundly his professional wisdom failed him in his greatest time of need. Using his own experiences, as well as those of his patients, as a jumping-off point, O’Malley explores this new approach to dealing with grief.

I picked up this book because I’m having a spectacularly bad decade. In just three and a half years, I lost four dogs, a grandmother, and my husband. This last was what’s called a “traumatic loss” due to an “interruptive death” – my husband died suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. He was only 41 years old. Anyway, that was six months ago, and I’ve been having a hard time dealing; some things have only gotten worse with time. GETTING GRIEF RIGHT sounded like something I needed to read, and the idea of storytelling in particular appealed to me.

O’Malley spends quite a bit of time assuring his readers that there’s nothing wrong with them; that only some people pass through the five stages of grief; that these models are questionable at best; and that most people never truly “get over” a loss, and that’s okay – if you loved someone, why shouldn’t their absence always hurt, if just a little? (The trick is getting to a place where the memories are more likely to warm your heart than break it, imho, but the dance will always be a delicate and shifting one.) I can see how this advice could prove invaluable to those who do feel “broken” by their inability to reach acceptance, or peace, or whatever. However, I already thought of the Kübler-Ross model more as pop culture fodder than a hard and fast rule, so it felt a little redundant on my end. But grain of salt; your needs may differ from mine, and that’s okay too!

For me, the real value is in the storytelling. This is an aspect of grieving that I was already hip to; anyone who reads my blog on the regular can get a glimpse of this in the ridiculously long tributes I wrote to Ralphie and Kaylee after they passed, or in the weekly progress reports I gave as I preemptively grieved Peedee’s death from lung cancer.

For those who don’t know what to say, O’Malley gives a rather detailed list of prompts, encouraging his readers to separate their stories of loss into three chapters: the beginning (your life with your loved one before), the middle (his or her death), and the after (and all the messy, ugly feelings this entails). It’s an excellent starting point, though I’d encourage people to go deeper or get more creative, for example, by incorporating poems, song lyrics, ephemera, multimedia. Whatever you feel comfortable with, and best expresses your unique story.

While reading GETTING GRIEF RIGHT, I was often reminded of a Salon article, written by Jill Filipovic, which I quoted in one of my storytelling projects and has never really left me:

“’Let me tell you about her’ allows the grieving person to explain, in the midst of a familiar ritual, why their loved one was particularly special. The impulse to explain how a person was can feel incredibly urgent in the immediate wake of that person’s death. The telling of stories isn’t just a way to make up for the fact that the dead person can no longer make their own stories; the telling solidifies those things in the memory of the teller, making real again and again the fact that though the person is gone, you’ll remember them.

“There’s a fear behind that, too: What happens when I start to forget?

“To stave off the forgetting, we memorialize. We write funeral announcements and obituaries and headstones. We visit graves. And now, we make Facebook pages, we write blog posts and we tweet. The urgency in “telling you about her” spills over into the Internet and onto social media, and it seems that to many people in pain, nothing feels more natural. Yet looking in, it can feel unseemly.”

GETTING GRIEF RIGHT is an invitation to “tell me about her,” free of judgment or fear, no matter how long it’s been since she last set foot on this earth. You may choose to share your story with others, as O’Malley recommends in some situations; or you may not. The important thing is that it exists for you: it is an outlet for your sadness, tangible evidence of your love, and a continuation of your loved one’s memory. As long as you tell the world – even if it’s just shouting into the void – about her, a part of her lives on.
Definitely recommended for those struggling with grief, particularly those whose friends and family members have “moved on” (e.g., by withdrawing their support) and expect you to do the same.

Why just four stars? The book is co-written by O’Malley and Tim Madigan; consequently, there’s some weird, referring-to-oneself-in-the-third-person narration going on. Granted, I read an early copy, and this could be cleaned up in the final version. That said, this ARC had more errors than unusual.

** Full disclosure: I received a free electronic ARC for review through NetGalley. **

As someone who has been actively grieving for several years…

Wait. Is that how you say it?

Does that even make sense to put it that way?

Actively grieving makes it sound like every minute is spent wearing black and crying. While that isn’t too far off the mark as far as how I dress, I’m not always crying, but I do have momentary feelings of:

Sadness
Loss
Guilt
Anger
Regret

and a host of other emotions that are blends or hybrids of these core ones.

Pre-grieving, I was reading a lot of books on the topic. Dear Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was helpful, but I read her books with the knowledge that her perspective of grieving was one that several leading thinkers in the space have criticized. Given her belief that grief evolves through a series of stages and knowing that there were very few – if any, people I knew out there who were able to brush their hands together and say “OK. I’m done grieving. I’m all better, and I’ve accepted my loved one’s death,” it’s not as cut and dry as Ross believed.

So in my quest to continue to develop my death positivity and my personal work with grief, I found a book that completely gets it right. Getting Grief Right: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss by Dr. Patrick O’Malley. Many of you may know Dr. O’Malley an article of his that received quite a bit of attention in the New York Times. It is a snapshot of the wisdom that he shares within the pages of this book.

The author provides many helpful tips on how to cope in an effective manner. He offers many practical self-care suggestions and recognizes the value in ensuring that people take good care of themselves during this time of their lives. The concept of self-knowledge and one’s individual psychology and historical background is also paramount in Getting Grief Right.

The book breaks many of the misperceptions surrounding grief as well as the unique nature of the grief experience for each person, rather than the universal stages we may be shoehorned into. Beyond this, the idea of closure is attached to our notion of what successful grieving – and an end goal for this process. Society has perpetuated many harmful myths –

“Give it six months then you’ll feel better.”

“It’s time to move on.”

“It really isn’t healthy for you to be talking about your loved one still.”

“It’s not looking like you’re getting over this are you?”

“Well at least they aren’t suffering any longer. And they wouldn’t want you to suffer either so stop crying.”

“You should look on the bright side. They had a long life.”

So many of these reactions from others to what are our natural emotions can make us feel ashamed, weak and generally weird. Many of us are used to taking a goal-oriented approach to healing, and this simply doesn’t work for the grief process. It’s a giant let-down to realize that it’s always going to be around. You can’t do much to change the fact that your loved one is dead. You can’t let the opinions of others influence your personal experience of what’s occurring during this incredibly charged area of your life.

This book is dedicated to examining your story as much as reviewing the stories you recall about the deceased. It also provides advice to support those who are grieving and offers suggestions for how you can encourage them to express their emotions and memories of their loved ones.

Within the pages of this book, you’ll feel both understood and validated. Dr. O’Malley shares a great deal that relates to his personal experience of grief. Being a grief counselor who has direct connection with deep loss has helped him to help others. He offers the knowledge he’s gained from working with his clients and the personal work he’s done both with his own story, as well as in understanding the various concepts behind grief therapy.

The author notes that “Our stories are pathways to living with loss” and this quote best exemplifies the approach he has taken with his patients. Getting Grief Right is for those who are looking to explore and write about the story of their loved one – and all of the emotions that surround the loss of this person in your life. It’s a way to unearth all of the memories and feelings around your relationship with those who have died and to unpack this information in written form.

Writing may help you get the words out that you’ve struggled to find a way to express. Dr. O’Malley believes that having a safe space for allow you to tell your story is what helps people better understand their experience. It’s a tool to work towards making space for yourself and limiting your self-judgment. In addition, it helps you continue to honor your bond with the person who died – something that isn’t lost despite their physical absence. It’s a way to remember your experience of that person – the details of your relationship. It can help you construct meaning.

This book is not going to erase your grief. It’s designed to help you examine it and develop the wisdom and compassion to relate to it in a different way that what we have been taught to as a society. Now you may be suffering from traumatic or complicated grief and I really wouldn’t encourage you to dive into this book without having a strong support system or giving some thought to speaking to a mental health professional before you really engage with the writing and contemplative exercises that are detailed in the book.

I’m really looking forward to completing the writing exercises and actually starting a virtual group who wish to engage in a study group around the subjects covered within Getting Grief Right: Finding Your Story of Love in the Sorrow of Loss. While I greatly appreciated the knowledge that I gained from reading this book, I’m now anticipating the second phase of the brilliance of this work and doing the work to see where this kind of exploration takes me.

This book is a must-own for anyone who is either currently grieving or supporting someone who has experienced the death of a loved on. I can’t recommend it highly enough and I am grateful for the work that Dr. Patrick O’Malley put into the development of this essential read.

*An ARC of this book was provided to me by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.*

I really appreciate this book. I would recommend it to anyone who has experienced a loss or knows someone who has (so, yes, literally everyone). Not only does it help to dispel the myth of the set, linear "stages of grief," it gives the reader the tools to allow themselves to experience their own grief, to tell their own story, and to make their own peace (without feeling forced into "acceptance"). It also has a few hugely important sections on responding to others' grief, something I have found many people could use a primer on. The author's advice on responding to someone's loss with kindness and compassion and without harmful clichés and meaningless platitudes is great, and I think this book would help everyone to better deal with grief, whether it is their own or that of someone else.

I really liked the prompts the author gives to get the reader thinking about their "grief story," and I appreciated that he encouraged journaling but also allowed that some people may just want to consider the answers in their heads. The only aspect that kept me from giving this 5 stars was the study guide at the end - it is designed for people who want to start their own support group which I guess is good if you have the wherewithal to do that but, for me, the idea of trying to organize other grieving people while navigating my own grief is anxiety-inducing and exhausting. I would have liked it if the study guide included more tips and prompts for the individual, although the group ideas are still adaptable for solo readers. Overall, a wonderful, comforting book.