Grief and Loss

The books, in order

1. 1

   Health · 16 min

   Death Is a Day Worth Living

   Ana Claudia Quintana Arantes

   According to the accounts the author gathered, the most common regret at the end of life tends to be about what a person didn't do, not about what they did.

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2. 2

   Mental Health · 15 min

   Staring at the Sun

   Irvin D. Yalom

   For Yalom, awareness of death can act as a wake-up call: a diagnosis or a loss often reorganizes our priorities.

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3. 3

   Health · 15 min

   By a Thread

   Drauzio Varella

   Hiding how serious a diagnosis is in order to protect someone you love usually costs a lot in trust when the truth comes out later.

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4. 4

   Health · 16 min

   Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

   Atul Gawande

   Aging isn't a single event. It's a slow process of small losses that accumulate, and conventional medicine trains doctors to treat acute crises, not this ongoing decline.

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5. 5

   Health · 19 min

   How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter

   Sherwin B. Nuland

   Seeking a serene death in purely biological terms creates unnecessary guilt, because the human body rarely shuts down its functions in a gentle, poetic way.

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6. 6

   Health · 18 min

   The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

   Siddhartha Mukherjee

   A broken genetic brake inside the cell itself explains cancer better than any idea of an invader coming from outside the body.

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7. 7

   Spirituality · 17 min

   When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

   Pema Chödrön

   The desperate search for immediate certainties in the face of a crisis usually prolongs the anguish more than the loss itself.

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8. 8

   Spirituality · 16 min

   The Problem of Pain

   C.S. Lewis

   According to Lewis, real love wants the loved one to grow and become better, not just to be comfortable and satisfied right now.

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9. 9

   Psychology · 15 min

   Man's Search for Meaning

   Viktor E. Frankl

   People who know why they're doing something hard can endure far more than people who just follow a method that means nothing to them.

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10. 10

    Spirituality · 16 min

    The Prophet

    Kahlil Gibran

    For the author, raising a child to fulfill the dream you never fulfilled is mistaking a parent's love for a personal project you put off.

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