Title: Self-Care for Grief
100 Practices for Healing During Times of Loss
Written by: Nneka M. Okona
Pub Date: 03 Aug 2021
Publisher: Adams Media
Genre: Self-Help


In this short work Okona manages to word the feelings of those who are dealing with a loss and trauma. Not only this but Okona also shows us how to accept these losses, appreciate our feelings and eventually how to move on. The book tells us it is ok to morn and that it does not come with a schedule. How to begin to set boundaries again, to self advocate and more importantly how to love our selves again.

Okona manages to show complete understanding and care in only a few pages. They deal with a wide range of areas in that small amount of space. From fear, guilt to family, friends and healing. By using food, space, sounds and releasing emotions Okona helps her readers with their grief.

I am blown away firstly by the fact that Okona didn't make a book just about death. Yes it does seem to primarily focus on death but at several intervals Okona makes it clear that she wrote this book with all grief in mind. And as someone who has been through many types of grief I can appreciate that.

Not a lot of people would consider the death of a pet the same as the death of a family member. Or see the loss of a job as grief. Though I did pick this book as I continue to grieve a loss of a family member two years on, I actually think that Okona made me realize that I am carrying a lot of other kinds of grief too. Grief that I have never truly dealt with my whole life, because I was never thought how to or even allowed to. In away this book let me acknowledge the fact that in a big way I am still grieving for a childhood I missed out on.

I would recommend this book to EVERYONE, because to some degree we are all grieving something. I have a few friends who's grief is fresh and when they are open to it I will be suggesting this book. It makes so much sense. One of the big things to start off with it the allowing yourself to grieve. I hadn't realized but I grew up not being allowed to truly grieve in case I overshadowed the grief of others. That is step one of grief and I never got that, it is no wonder I carry a life worth of grief around with me.

Though I loved the cover, plain yet elegant, I do wish how ever that there were some drawing or illustrations inside the book. Even just some elegant, gold outlines of cushions or pink petals, just something to make the pages less like a textbook. More of a criticism on the publisher rather than the writer.

As someone who is not religious I am glad Okona did not start her book with that section or she may have lost me. I still do not think attending a religious venue is for me but I did like some of the other suggestions.

The only other criticism I have is that some times there seemed to be quiet a bit of repetition in parts. Even something mentioned only a page earlier is now stretched out over another page. One of my teachers in school called it "waffle." Something that may have only taken a few sentences or a couple of paragraphs now takes two pages. I understand this was probably due to word or page count but it was usually where I took a break and put the book down.

Still definitely a book I could see my self rereading again and again during hard times.

I found Self-Care for Grief: 100 Practices for Healing During Times of Loss to be quite useful even nine months after the loss of my husband. Five stars.

I will not be giving feedback on this title. I will not be giving feedback to this title as it was archived prior to my ability to download the text.

I've received an e-arc via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a tough cookie because there were parts of it that I liked and appreciated and there were things that I quite disliked. The parts I disliked took away from the parts I liked.

This book reminded me of Zen:The Art of Simple Living, but it did not live up to it. The structure and small one page (on average) practices were definitely a similar vibe.

The best way to describe this book is that it is random. It honestly felt as if practices and chapters were put together on a whim, without any deeper thought into the proccess and steps of grief. There were practices that could've been in multiple chapters because there was no sharp distinction between mental- and emotional self-care.
I also did not understand the numbering of chapters and parts, while the practices themselves weren't numbered, so you didn't really know how many you've completed out of the 100.

The most annoying thing was that the practices themselves were good and easily readable and accomplishable, but their order took away from the experience. For example stretching and screaming after one another, talking about health stuff such as digestive system and planting something. The order of practices made zero sense. Also why would planting something be part of physical health rather than mental or emotional, when even the description of it sounds more like the latter?

I would suggest a reorder of the 100 practices with a more thoughtout division and also adding a couple of illustrations to help envision them and make it more positive and less dry.

My ratig is 3 stars.

I found this beautiful book to be very, very helpful in my own grief journey this year. The author gives excellent background information about what grief is exactly and how it affects us in many different ways, and most importantly she gives us permission to make the journey our own. Also included are many, many good and useful suggestions for caring for ourselves during a grief journey, and these include activities for our physical, mental,emotional, and spiritual health.

I found the Resources section at the back of the book useful as well as the thorough index.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.