The Loss Canon
A video series on the books that helped Sue find her way through loss, and might help you too.
How the Loss Canon was born“The stories of others who had gone through grief and loss were my saving grace after my husband died. I didn’t want advice. I wanted companionship. I wanted to know someone else had been when I was… and made it out the other side.”
When Breath Becomes Air
This is Paul Kalanithi's attempt to answer the question most of us spend our lives avoiding: what do you do when you realize how little control you actually have? This is not a story of a hero living his last days epically. Instead, Kalanithi simply sits inside the uncertainty, and then writes about what it's like to make choices and to build a life, when nothing is for sure.
The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion’s forensic, almost clinical examination of how her own mind behaved after suddenly losing her husband. This is a book for the early but not too early days, once your brain comes back online. For when the fog starts to thin and you want language for the thing you’ve been living.
Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen can describe parts about loss and pain that most people can't find words for: The complicated grief of losing a parent you never fully understood. The way you carry people who are gone. The long, unglamorous work of putting yourself back together.
Find all of Sue’s videos on her YouTube channel:
The Complete-ish Loss Canon
(“ish” because Sue will never stop reading and inevitably adding new books)
-
A Grief Observed by CS Lewis
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen
Poetry Pharmacy compiled by William Sieghard
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
-
Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan
Making Toast by Roger Rosenblatt
Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
-
A Beginner’s Guide to Dying by Simon Boas
Bearing the Unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore
Keep Moving by Maggie Smith
Grief and Hamburgers by Stuart Ross
Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley
-
Before and After Loss by Lisa Shulman
The End of Trauma by Dr. George Bonano
Forgetting by Dr. Scott Small