Grief Biography

Sarah Sak's son, Anthony Walgate, was murdered by gay serial killer Stephen Port after they met on dating app Grindr. Stephen Port was sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey in November 2016. The case received extensive press coverage not only because of the horrific nature of the crimes but also because the police refused to investigate Anthony's death despite three more bodies being found in near identical circumstances. It was not until Scotland Yard's crime squad took over that Stephen Port was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

After a near fatal stroke in 1995, Robert McCrum has gained an intimate understanding of his own mortality. Twenty-two years on, his friends have joined him in experiencing Prospero's 'every third thought' of death as a dominating theme of life. McCrum asks: can we make peace with what Freud calls 'the necessity of dying'? Searching for answers leads him to brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients and writers for advice and wisdom.

James Runcie’s wife Marilyn Imrie died in August 2020. Their thirty-five year marriage had been miraculously happy – until, in the last two years of Marilyn’s life, she descended into the pain and humiliation of motor neurone disease. In the wake of her death, Runcie stumbled in the dark. How do you make sense of the decline and death of the most alive person you have ever met? And how do you go about building a life worth living in their absence?

In Permission to Thrive, Susan traces her extraordinary journey, which begins when her healthy 14-year-old daughter dies suddenly from a brain tumor, and the family's decision - on the worst day of their lives - to donate Laura's organs, saving the life of a women with whom the Miller family would eventually cultivate an exceptional relationship.

Susan S. Warner had a storybook marriage of 38 years and two magnificent children. She existed in the comfort of an extraordinary cocoon of family and friends. And then the unimaginable happened—the devastating suicide of her 32-year-old son, followed six months later with the death of her husband to a virulent cancer eight weeks after his diagnosis. How did she survive this catastrophic loss and find happiness again?

British mother Rosie Ayliffe thought her 21-year-old daughter, Mia, would be safe travelling around Australia on a gap year. But Mia wanted to extend her visa and in order to do that needed to find 88 days of work on a farm - a requirement that would lead to catastrophic events. Four short days after Mia moved to a hostel in Queensland to take a job on a sugarcane farm, she was brutally murdered.

At the age of 18, Tré Miller Rodríguez gave her newborn daughter up for adoption. At 19 her only sibling was killed in a car accident. At 34 her husband, Alberto, died of a sudden heart attack. But at 36 her teenage daughter found her on Facebook and began to reshape the course of Tré's life.

I landed in this place six years ago in a welter of panic, pain and instinct. I'd been in fight-or-flight mode for twelve months, wanting only to keep on flying—or fleeing. I brought almost nothing of my previous life. Grief had made me ruthless; I threw and threw. (And yes, I knew how appalled you'd have been, Pete.) My father implored me to stay with the familiar. Constants, he said, would give me scaffolding. Decades ago, when his second wife, my stepmother, died suddenly, habits were his protection and rituals his comfort—along with a packet or two of cigarettes a day.

When Laraine Herring receives an unexpected colon cancer diagnosis, her father, thirty years dead, returns to her as a raven, setting off a magical journey into complicated grief, inherited trauma, and ancestral healing. As she struggles with redefining her expectations for her life, she slips farther and farther underground into the ancestral realm, where she finds herself writing a play directed by her father-as-raven.

I met Amber when I moved across the street from her. As I got to know her, I learned some things about myself. My goal in writing this book is to help anyone that is going through the loss of a loved one or has lost someone. This is not just my own personal journey through grief, but a message of hope and love and a love that survived beyond death. This book is a memoir of personal reflections of the beginning, middle, and end of a soulful relationship between two women and a connection which brought about valuable lessons from love, life, grief, and letting go.

There was a time before his wife got sick when Gonzalo could think about other things. Where humor was more than a coping mechanism. Life wasn't all about treatments and recovery, or the emptiness he felt when she died. They had kids together. Young kids. Less than a year after their youngest was born and suddenly he was strapping them both into their car seats to drive to their mother's funeral. He used to think he was the glue holding the household together. It didn't take long for him to realize how wrong he'd been.

A writer friend once pointed out that whenever Stuart Ross got close to something heavy and “real” in a poem, a hamburger would inevitably appear for comic relief. In this hybrid essay/memoir/poetic meditation, Ross shoves aside the heaping plate of burgers to wrestle with what it means to grieve the people one loves and what it means to go on living in the face of an enormous accumulation of loss.

The Magic of Life explores how he overcame tragedy, grief, and depression throughout his life. Even though he lost his mother, he and his brother were raised by his father and an incredible Jamaican woman who stepped in to fill the mother’s role. Michael shares his unique life about loss and how he finally addressed his grief with a blend of humor and inspiration that will have you crying and laughing throughout the book.

When Moire O'Sullivan's husband, Pete, took his own life, she was left with a stark choice: to weep forever over the glass of milk that had just spilt or get on with the quarter that was still remaining. As Moire charts the first harrowing year after Pete’s death – the shock, the loneliness and the difficulties of single parenting two young children – she also experiences glimpses of hope and acceptance as she trains to become a mountain leader.

Learn strategies and skills firsthand as you travel with Amy on her quest for happiness as she recovers from living a self-sacrificing life that ultimately depleted her and brought her to her knees. Be encouraged as Amy navigates her way to happiness by learning how to lean into the discomfort that comes with fearing vulnerability, maintaining a non-wavering resiliency, and committing to long-term therapy.

In the powerful memoir, Navigating the Stormy Seas: My Journey of Triumph, Dr. Hilary Adams invites listeners on a transformative odyssey that resonates with the power of human resilience, unwavering faith, and the enduring spirit. The storm struck unannounced. With three harrowing words, "You have cancer," Dr. Adams found herself plunged into a tempest of fear, uncertainty, and despair. Yet, instead of succumbing, she anchored herself in her deep-rooted faith, turning her story from one of impending tragedy to a tale of hope and triumph.

On the very day that Nancy Sharp delivered premature twins, she learned that her husband's brain cancer had returned after 18 months in remission. Less than three years later, at the age of 37, she became a widow. But while many in that situation would crumble, Nancy had an innate ability to hold life and death in the same moment. She learned to "see beyond the frame's edge". In Both Sides Now: A True Story of Love, Loss, and Bold Living, Nancy shares her unforgettable journey - one that offers enlightened understanding for living life to the fullest.

A stunning blend of the personal and professional, The Archaeology of Loss is Sarah Tarlow’s first memoir. An accomplished archaeologist, much of Sarah’s work is concerned with the ritual and belief behind the practice of grief. In 2012, she was awarded the Chair in Archaeology at the University of Leicester. But in the years that followed this appointment, Sarah’s husband, Mark, would begin to suffer from a progressive but undiagnosed illness, finally resulting in his inability to drive, to walk, to taste or to care for himself.

Sympathisch, kompetent, menschlich nah und humorvoll - so kennt man Dr. Johannes Wimmer aus Internet und TV. Ein schwerer Schicksalsschlag stellt das Leben des beliebten TV-Mediziners von einem Moment auf den anderen auf den Kopf. Nur wenige Monate nach der Geburt erkrankt seine kleine Tochter schwer. Die Familie verliert den Kampf um das Leben des Kindes. Hautnah und sehr persönlich teilt Dr. Wimmer nun, wie er und seine Familie es schaffen, sich von der Faust des Universums nicht erdrücken zu lassen, auch wenn ihnen im Schmerz manchmal die Luft zum Atmen fehlt.

A bright light was extinguished in the universe on January 13, 2004, when 21-year old Rebekah Swanson, a college senior, died in a car accident. In More Than Can Be Measured, author Rona Swanson, Rebekah’s mother, shares her thoughts, feelings, and emotions as she and the family deal with their grief in the aftermath of Rebekah’s sudden death. Weaving in entries from Rebekah’s journal and photos, this memoir shares the wisdom and understanding Swanson gained as she felt the stark pain of the loss of her daughter.