Processing grief can be a significant challenge to those directly experiencing loss and those around them. While no single text can offer a simple answer, we reached out to our followers and families who we have supported and below you will find the books many of them have found helpful.
Featured Book: My Brother, Born Sleeping
“My brother born sleeping is beautifully written and illustrated. In times of grief, young children can sense the changes in their environment and their parents’ emotional state. As well as experiencing a range of emotions, children’s curiosity in understanding loss can make for difficult conversations when parents are experiencing their own pain. This book will go a long way in supporting those conversations.“ – Keren Ludski
Books for Adults
| Book Title | Author(s) |
| Letters of Love- Written for Pregnancy & Infant Loss | Edited by Melissa Desveaux (Receive a 10% discount by using the code REDNOSE10%OFF) |
| Still A Mum | Meagan Donaldson |
| The Birthdays Without You Journal | Lauran Ellis |
| Hard to Bear: Investigating the science and silence or miscarriage | Isabelle Oderberg |
| The Baby Loss Guide | Zoe Clark-Coates |
| You are the Mother of all Mothers | Angela Mille |
| A Grief Observed | C S Lewis |
| Coping with Grief | Mal & Dianne McKissock |
| They were Still Born | by Janel C. Atlas |
| Women Who Run With The Wolves | Clarissa Pinkola Estes |
| Heart Space | Ami McCarthy |
| All I Know – A memoir of love, loss and life | Coustas, Mary |
| Fallen Angel | Falach, Pauline |
| Layla’s Story – A memoir of sex, love, loss and longing | Gorman, Vanessa |
| Changed – Living with Stillbirth | Jankowski, Liza |
| The rules do not apply | Levy, Ariel |
| An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination | McCracken, Elizabeth |
| Inside Out | Moore, Demi |
| Invisible Earthquake – A woman’s journal through Stillbirth | Ndlovu, Malika |
| I AM I AM I AM – Seventeen Brushes with Death | O’Farrell, Maggie |
| Still at Birth | Sugden, Caroline |
| The Chronology of Water | Yuknavitch, Lidia |
| Mackenzie’s Mission – How one family turned tragedy into hope and love | Casella, Rachael |
| Dead Babies and Seaside Towns | Jolly, Alice |
| Any Ordinary Day | Sales, Leigh |
| Your Own Kind of Girl | Bowditch, Clare |
| They Were Still Born – Personal Stories about Stillbirth | Atlas, Janel C. |
| to linger on hot coals – collected poetic works from grieving women writers | Cole Stephanie Paige & Bayly, Catherine |
| Always a part of me – Surviving Childbearing loss | Collinge, Amanda Daniel, Sue & Jones, Heather Grace |
| Three Minus One – Stories of Parents Love and Loss | Hanish, Sean & Warner, Brooke |
| Surviving my first year of Childloss – Personal stories from Grieving Parents | Himmelrich, Nathalie |
| A Silent Love | Ryan, Adrienne |
| Beyond Tears | Ellen Mitchel |
| Miracle Beginnings | Raquel Bosustow |
| Our Babies Have Died | Sands |
| Pregnancy Loss | Zoe Taylor |
| Worse Things Happen at Sea | William McInnes/Sarah Watts |
| The Reality Slap | Ruff Harris |
| Bearing the unbearable: love, loss, and the heartbreaking path of grief | by Joanne Cacciatore |
| The unspeakable loss: how do you live after a child dies? | Nisha Zenoff |
| The Year of Magical Thinking | Joan Didion |
| Young Widow’s Guide to Home Improvement | Virginia Lloyd |
| Getting Back to Life When Grief Won’t Heal | Phyllis Kosminsky McGraw- Hill |
| How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies | Therese Rando Bantam |
| Beyond Words: Grieving when your child has died | Andrew Thompson and Tricia Irving |
| Forever Loved: A Guidebook for Widows and Widowers | Maria Carr and Aisling Pont |
| A Widow’s Story | Joyce Carol Oates |
| Nothing was the Same | Kay Redfield Jamison |
| No Time for Goodbyes | Janice Harris Lord |
| My Mother, My Father – On Losing a Parent | Susan Wyndham |
| When Bad Things Happen to Good People | Harold Kushner |
| The Heart of Grief | Thomas Attig |
| Grief and Remembering | Allan Kellehear |
| Coping with Grief | Mal McKissock |
| The Grief of our Children | Diane McKissock |
| Now that the Funeral is Over: Understanding the Effects of our Grief | Doris Zagdanski |
| Healing Grief – A Guide to Loss and Recovery | Barbara Ward Vermillion |
| A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children | Phyllis Silverman et al |
| The Grieving Teen | Helen Fitzgerald |
| Never the Same | Donna Schurmann |
| The Orphaned Adult: Understanding And Coping With Grief and Change After The Death Of Our Parents | Alexander Levy |
| Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be: Lessons on Change, Loss, and Spiritual Transformation | Surya Das |
| Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart | Mark Epstein |
| An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination | Elizabeth McCracken |
| Bereaved Children and Teens: A Support Guide for Parents and Professionals | Earl Grollman |
| Talking About Death | Earl Grollman |
| Good Mourning | Sally Douglas and Imogen Carn |
| Any Ordinary Day | Leigh Sales |
| Signs | Laura Lynne Jackson |
| Bearing the Unbearable | Joanne Cacciatore, PhD |
| Finding Meaning | David Kessler |
| Life is Tough – But so are you | Briony Benjamin |
Books for Children
| Book Title | Author(s) |
| My Brother, Born Sleeping | Lellie Lopter |
| Born to Fly | Tamara Whittaker |
| The Grief Wave | Tracey Moroney |
| Shelter for Sadness | Anne Booth |
| Waiting for Wolf | Sandra Dieckmann |
| Beginnings and Endings with Lifetimes in between | Bryan Mellonie and Robert Ingpen |
| Something Happened | Cathy Blanford |
| We were gonna have a baby, but we had an angel instead | Pat Schwiebert |
Poems
| Title | Author(s) |
| The other one | Robert Service |
Red Nose is committed to supporting families navigating the complexities of the loss of a baby or child. To access our specialised bereavement support including: counselling, peer support programs, support groups, and resources tailored to individual needs, click here.
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