Available worldwide, this dot grid, cream paper, numbered page journal is ready for YOU! It has a 16 page section at the front with resources from me and the School of American Thanatology.

We collect losses as we move through our lives. One after another. If we live a very long time, we’ll probably be able to look back and remember particularly rough years….somewhat brief periods of time that were seasoned with an impossible amount of loss. Sometimes we lose multiple loved ones within months or weeks of each other. Other times we experience multiple life-changing Shadowlosses in succession. Sometimes we define entire decades or chapters of life by our losses, using them as landmarks to find our way across the map of our lives.

Grief isn’t the thing that makes life harder, it’s actually there to help you sort through the pain and the mess. But, we often displace our anger at the loss we have encountered, and direct it towards the grief, instead. Please don’t confuse the grief for the loss. The loss is what hurt you, not the grief.

Grief is not something you are punished with. Grief is not an illness. Grief is not a battle. Grief is not a foreign intruder, taking up space inside you against your will. Grief is something that belongs to you. It is a part of you. It has always been there, and will continue to be there.

It’s my opinion that Americans don’t have a taboo around death at all. The taboo is actually around grief. If America had a taboo around death, it wouldn’t be plastered everywhere.

These things won’t make the grief any easier, but they might make the process feel a little smoother. They’re not classes, treatments, or exercises either. They’re just salt, fat, water and heat. In my years working with death, dying, grief and loss from all the angles that I have, I have found four things that tend to work well for 99% of grieving humans. Grieving people need salt, fat, water and heat.

I’ve made a change—I no longer recommend books directly about grief to people that are actively grieving. I used to reply with a selection of educational grief, death and dying books. But, my mind has been changed. I now recommend reading romance to those that are actively grieving, and suggest saving the more academic or education-type books for when the grief has settled a bit.

Getting to speak at the Exploratorium about food, death and ritual was such a treat. The Exploratorium is a public learning laboratory exploring the world through science, art, and human perception.