Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Yona Levin
Original language
English

GRIEF IS LOVE

Marisa Renee Lee

Living with Loss

A trusted grief expert shares what Kirkus Reviews praises as “calm, lucid prose… [a] humanizing exploration of coping with the life-changing tides of loss.”

In Grief is Love, author Marisa Renee Lee reveals that healing does not mean moving on after losing a loved one—healing means learning to acknowledge and create space for your grief. It is about learning to love the one you lost with the same depth, passion, joy, and commitment you did when they were alive, perhaps even more. She guides you through the pain of grief—whether you’ve lost the person recently or long ago—and shows you what it looks like to honor your loss on your unique terms, and debunks the idea of a grief stages or timelines. Grief is Love is about making space for the transformation that a significant loss requires.

In beautiful, compassionate prose, Lee elegantly offers wisdom about what it means to authentically and defiantly claim space for grief’s complicated feelings and emotions. And Lee is no stranger to grief herself, she shares her journey after losing her mother, a pregnancy, and, most recently, a cousin to the COVID-19 pandemic. These losses transformed her life and led her to question what grief really is and what healing actually looks like. In this book, she also explores the unique impact of grief on Black people and reveals the key factors that proper healing requires: permission, care, feeling, grace and more.

The transformation we each undergo after loss is the indelible imprint of the people we love on our lives, which is the true definition of legacy. At its core, Grief is Love explores what comes after death, and shows us that if we are able to own and honor what we’ve lost, we can experience a beautiful and joyful life in the midst of grief.

Available products
Book Published 2022-04-12 by Legacy Lit/Hachette

Comments

Lee's first book, a blend of memoir, advice, and research, is an anti-blueprint, laying out her argument that those grieving must do so without shame, on their own timelines and in their own ways. Lee shares her own grief experiences; her mother, for whom she was caretaker, died of breast cancer when Lee was 25. She and her husband endured infertility and pregnancy loss. Lee lost a cousin to the COVID-19 pandemic, and witnesses and experiences the daily terror of white supremacy. Lee grieves each of these losses in degrees as profound as the love she has for them, while her willingness to share grief's unexpected lessons is designed to help others get through and access concurrent joy. For example, Lee required therapy to date while grieving her mother, and when the time came for wedding planning, grief intensified and embedded itself into every step, down to purchasing napkins. Clearly written and accessible to many readers, this book adds a leader's personal voice to the growing body of work inviting us to grieve better.

'Grief is a normal part of life': Author explores the impact of loss in new book
Read more...

A grief expert explores how loss can gracefully coexist with life.
When Lee’s mother died of breast cancer in 2008, she was left to carry on “with a permanent hole in my heart.” That grief informs her intuitive guide on managing the lingering pain of human loss. A decade later, her research was reenergized after a miscarriage and the discovery of deep-seated anger. With calm, lucid prose, the author gently instructs readers on how to navigate their own experiences by highlighting a series of integral elements to surviving loss. This begins with self-permission to pause life, adapt, and heal while acknowledging that these feelings of bereavement may last throughout life. Lee empathetically addresses grief support, self-care, and post-traumatic intimacy and interweaves her personal story, including anecdotes about her mother’s illness and death, courtship with her husband, and trauma caused by traumatic pregnancy difficulties. With great sensitivity, the author chronicles a time in her life when she was juggling a demanding Wall Street job, a cancer charity, and a social life, all while taking care of her dying mother. Unable to cope or sleep, she began heavy self-medication, but rapid weight loss signaled a more drastic lack of control. “You are forced to exist in this tenuous space between life and death,” she admits about her mental anguish as her mother declined, “and there is often an ominous undertone to everything.” With time, understanding, and therapy, Lee began to make space for her grief and “release all of the hurt that was sitting on my chest.” As a Black woman, Lee also discusses racism, injustice, and inequality—all of which are especially palpable “in a country that lacks a real safety net”—and she shares secrets to accepting “the fluidity that love and death require.”
A humanizing exploration of coping with the life-changing tides of loss.

"We must not mistake a return to 'normal' life as the end of someone’s pain."
Read more...