5 Books (and Why) I Recommend for Women Walking Through Grief

This list was easy to make.

When I pause for a second to re-read that sentence, I wish it wasn’t true. But if I know one thing to be true of grief, it’s that those of us who’ve walked its halls are always looking for the library. And while we wouldn’t wish it on our worst enemy, we hope the library is curated by the voices who know from experience.

I submit to you my favorites (in no particular order) from voices you can trust to speak both the hope that sustained them and the gut-wrenching honesty that carried them to the other side of whatever their experience. These are the words I needed—still need most days—and I pray you’ll find them useful to you and to those you love.

Photo by Drew Coffman on Unsplash

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#1 Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by NT Wright

If you’ve never read or listened to NT Wright, can I please implore you to put his works at the top of your stack? There may be no other scholar who has been more influential in the deepening and solidifying of my theology and I am hardly the first person to say this. He somehow weaves both academic scholarship with lightheartedness—a feat that leaves you feeling adequately challenged, yet somehow less anxious than when you first showed up to the text.

While this book isn’t specifically about grief, it engaged my imagination for Scripture’s vision of heaven coming to earth and the life I live now post-loss. It gave me a theological spot to put my grief that felt sturdier and more robust than the platitude of “you’ll see her again one day.”

“Belief in the bodily resurrection includes the belief that what is done in the present in the body, by the power of the Spirit, will be reaffirmed in the eventual future, in ways at which we can presently only guess.” (NT Wright)

#2 A Hole in the World: Finding Hope in Rituals of Grief and Healing by Amanda Held Opelt

There’s a strange sense of camaraderie that comes with grief—a sense that oh, you get it—and no one captures that more for me than

Amanda Held Opelt

. Her writing welcomes you into her experience as a friend and as someone who has simultaneously done their research. What I love about this particular book is the way she blends the history of how we grieve, how we’ve traded wearing black and sitting shiva for a more death-denying culture. It helped me see how my cultural background impacted my grieving and also gave me permission to try on some old practices if they felt right. I’ll never deliver a casserole again without thinking of her work.

I had the privilege of chatting with her on the podcast last year. You can find that episode right HERE.

“Grief is like water. It follows gravity. It finds the lowest part of you and hollows it out even more. It exploits your weaknesses. Grief goes where it wants with or without an invitation. It seeps into the empty spaces. It cannot be harnessed or redirected, at least not easily. It branches out from the headwaters of the main event into hundreds of tributaries. Few areas of your life remain untouched.” (Amanda Held Opelt)

#3 Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep By Tish Harrison Warren

The new-ish Anglican in me loves that this book follows the nighttime prayer of Compline. Until a few years ago I had spent almost no time exploring the Book of Common Prayer or other liturgical practices as a means of connecting with God, but in the wake of loss, I found them to be a stabilizing force. There’s something beautiful and communal about echoing words that have been prayed for centuries.

In her book, Warren blends her own story around the structure of this ancient prayer. I loved every page and if you saw me around the time I was reading it, I probably choked up and tried to get you to buy it.

“I face things every day, big and small, that are difficult but have not killed me. And I’m finding that what does not kill me actually makes me weaker, and maybe that’s the point—that the way of glory is discovered through, and only through, the cross.” (Tish Harrison Warren)

#4 Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler

Oh how I love Kate Bowler and her brutal honesty. I also love her good, good questions. I happened to see the title of this book while at the library with my kids a few years back and something about it immediately resonated with my deep aches. She’s written it memoir-style around her experience with cancer, but you’ll connect with the story no matter the details of your own.

Kate also hosts a beautiful podcast called Everything Happens where you’ll find her chatting with the aforementioned NT Wright, my girl Beth (Moore), and basically anyone who thinks well about complicated things. You’ll laugh, cry, be slightly taken aback, and then laugh and cry again.

“At a time when I should have felt abandoned by God, I was not reduced to ashes. I felt like I was floating, floating on the love and prayers of all those who hummed around me like worker bees, bringing notes and flowers and warm socks and quilts embroidered with words of encouragement. They came in like priests and mirrored back to me the face of Jesus.” (Kate Bowler)

#5 We Shall All Be Changed: How Facing Death with Loved Ones Transforms Us by Whitney K. Pipkin

This one is a gift for those who have walked alongside someone over the course of a long season of illness, for those who have given care and experienced a thousand little deaths along the way.

Whitney K. Pipkin

uses scripture, theology, and experience to articulate how the process of birth and death are so wildly similar and how they both leave us changed forever. She is another author who I’ve had the privilege of actually talking to for the podcast—you can find our conversation here.

“But death, it turns out, is a lot like birth. There is a cadence to the way we leave the world that echoes the rhythm with which we arrive.” (Whitney K. Pipkin)

This list is not exhaustive by any means. In fact, as I’m typing this and glancing at the shelves behind me, I have more to say about the resources that have been a safe place to land in my own journey. Those will be the contents of a future newsletter, but in the meantime, would you share with me what’s on your list? What works have sustained you, challenged you, shaped you in seasons of grief?

Comment below so I can put it on my TBR list and then text the link to my husband before he finishes ordering me Christmas gifts. :)

I have some lovely things coming to your inboxes before the end of the year—a conversation and an excerpt from my most recent read—and just in time for Advent. I hope you’ll stay connected and share with a friend!