Grief Etiquette

When someone we love is grieving, most of us want to help. Most of us are also afraid of saying the wrong thing. So we say nothing. Or we say something worse.

Grief Etiquette is a practical guide for anyone who has ever stood in that silence. It offers clear, compassionate guidance for three audiences at once: the grieving, the people who love them, and the professionals who serve them.

Readers will find language to use and language to avoid. Guidance shaped for specific situations and specific roles: the coworker, the pastor, the neighbor, the first responder. An honest accounting of the myths our culture repeats about loss, and an unflinching look at the forms of grief we still refuse to name.

This is not a book about stages. It is a book about presence, dignity, and connection, and how to offer all three when words fail.

Written by a mother who has learned, twice, that grief does not keep a schedule.