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Bookshelf

Explore Our “Bookshelf”: A Compassionate Collection for Your Journey Through Widowhood

Embarking on the path of widowhood is a profoundly personal and unique experience, yet you’re not alone in traversing its complex landscape. Literature has the power to comfort, enlighten, and guide us through the darkest of times, offering solace in shared stories and wisdom. Among the myriad of resources available, books stand out as beacons of hope and understanding, written by those who have navigated the tumultuous waters of loss themselves and wish to extend a helping hand to others on a similar path.

Understanding that the relevance and impact of these resources can evolve as you move forward, we’ve meticulously selected a range of books that resonate with the varied stages of widowhood. From the rawness of initial loss to the gradual journey towards healing, our “Bookshelf” is a curated collection designed to support, inspire, and accompany you through every phase.

This selection represents our top picks—books that have touched our hearts, challenged our minds, and offered comfort and companionship. These are works we’ve personally read or written by authors we deeply respect and know. Our intention is to provide you with a starting point, a comforting presence on your bedside table or digital device, as you navigate the journey ahead.

We’re continually discovering new voices and perspectives to add to our collection, reflecting the diverse experiences of widowhood. We invite you to visit our “Bookshelf” regularly to find new sources of support and inspiration.

Let these books serve as your companions, offering guidance, empathy, and a reminder that though the path may be difficult, you walk it with a community of understanding and support behind you. Welcome to our “Bookshelf”—may you find the light you need to illuminate your way forward.

'After' Book Sales Soar to Support Wings for Widows

After: Journeys Through Grief,” by Robert Pardi, hit bookshelves December 5th.  After is a poignant exploration of the transformative power of grief. 

Drawing from his own deeply personal experience of loss, Pardi offers readers a compassionate roadmap through the complexities of bereavement. This book delves into the emotional landscape that follows the loss of a loved one, proposing that grief, while profoundly challenging, also holds the potential for immense growth and self-discovery. Through thoughtful reflections and practical advice, Pardi guides readers towards finding a renewed sense of purpose and joy, illustrating that life “after” can be rich with meaning and hope. 

Buy it on Amazon here.

Great Reads for Widows

On Your Own: A Widow’s Passage to Emotional and Financial Well-Being

by Alexandra Armstrong & Mary R. Donahue Ph.D.

In the completely updated and revised edition of this best-selling classic, the authors share the stories of four widows of different ages and circumstances whose road to recovery illustrates how to best achieve emotional and financial well-being. They provide practical tools and knowledge for widows to move forward and emerge stronger—from coping with grief and loss and organizing finances to understanding investments and developing a long-term plan.

Moving Forward on Your Own: A Financial Guidebook for Widows

by Kathleen M. Rehl, Ph.D., CFP

A husband’s death is possibly the most devastating event a woman will experience. She might wonder if she will be able to make it on her own. She may feel overwhelmed and not know what to do next without her partner. Kathleen’s guidebook helps widows be more confident, knowledgeable and secure about their money matters. The book integrates basic financial information with self-reflective exercises that encourage financial self-assurance. Kathleen is honest about her own struggles as a widow, and she holds empathy for others. This unique guidebook is presented in a beautiful format, to help heal a woman’s soul as well as gently focus on money matters. 

The Widow's Financial Survival Guide

by Nancy Dunnan

For recently widowed women, times are hard enough without having to worry about money. Unfortunately, many women are left in financial chaos after a spouse’s death-and become vulnerable to costly mistakes and even outright scams. With this in mind, one of today’s foremost financial experts has put together a step-by-step guide specifically for widows. Thorough and accessible, it addresses a wide range of legal and financial issues, including estates, taxes, IRAs and 401(k)s, government benefits, business, budgeting, re-marriage, investments, scams and frauds, housing and more.

My Husband Died, Now What?: A Widow's Guide to Grief Recovery & Smart Financial Decisions

by Debra Morrison

Are you widowed, or do you know a widow who is fearful about her new-found state—emotionally and financially? Want a thorough guide to follow so you can move through grief emotionally in order to make smart financial decisions? If your answer to these questions is yes, yet you didn’t know who you could trust, look no further. In My Husband Died, Now What? A Widow’s Guide to Grief Recovery & Smart Financial Decisions you’ll get the emotional coaching to help you move through your grief from a Certified Grief Coach, followed up with clear advice on how to choose a financial planner to help you through the major financial decisions you’ll face.

Death's Red Tape: Your Guide for Navigating Legal, Financial, and Personal Transitions When a Partner Dies

by Mark Colgan

A week before 9/11, Mark Colgan lost his wife to heart disease. In the span of a single day, he went from waking up next to her to planning her burial. Even for a Certified Financial Planner™, the mountain of financial and legal details that spanned the next year of his life was overwhelming. Whether you’re a surviving spouse, partner, child, or friend, Death’s Red Tape guides you gently through the financial and administrative process following the death of a loved one.

Great Reads for Widowers

Keep Those Feet Moving: A Widower’s 8-Step Guide to Coping with Grief and Thriving Against All Odds

by AJ Coleman

AJ Coleman was devastated when he lost his wife to cancer, leaving him alone to raise their baby daughter. He felt an almost debilitating mourning as he faced this and other challenges—becoming a single father, accepting his hearing impairment, learning to deal with anxiety and panic attacks, and recovering from job losses. Keep Those Feet Moving is his gift to other widowers and people suffering losses and challenges to encourage you with his heartfelt advice gleaned from his journey. He offers actions you can take to move beyond difficulties and toward happiness.

Surviving: Finding Your Way from Grief to Healing

by Gary Sturgis

The death of a spouse or close loved one is one of the most devastating experiences an individual suffers. Whether it is sudden or after a prolonged illness, the death and subsequent grief are life-changing. One day you’re together, and the next day you’re not. You feel like life will never be “normal” again.

The Ultimate Dating Guide for Widowers

by Abel Keogh

Men and women grieve differently. Though both feel the pain and sorrow that come with losing a spouse, widowers start dating much sooner than widows—usually within the first year of their wife’s passing. While there’s nothing wrong with dating again that quickly, widowers often get into relationships before they’re emotionally ready to take that step. That causes problems for them and the women they’re with. That’s where The Ultimate Dating Guide for Widowers comes in. Drawing on the success stories and learning experiences of Joe Biden, Thomas Edison, Peirce Brosnan, and Paul McCartney, this book specifically addresses questions, concerns, and needs of widowers.

The Widower’s Journey: Helping Men Rebuild After Their Loss

by Herb Knoll

As a bank executive, Herb Knoll was known as a man who could get the job done. But when Knoll lost his wife to cancer he found few resources that could help him recover. And the more he learned about the plight of widowers, from high suicide rates to physical and emotional problems, the more he became motivated to write a book with fellow widowers, for fellow widowers.

The Widower's Toolbox: Repairing Your Life After Losing Your Spouse

by G. J. Schaefer

There are distinct differences in the manners in which men and women grieve. Men in particular keep grief to themselves, maintain emotional control, and refrain from asking for help. Divided into three parts, “Picking up the Pieces,” “Healing from Within,” and “Giving Back to Others,” The Widower’s Tool Box offers men who have lost their partners a guide to helping identify and resolve the issues overwhelming them and to repairing their lives and moving forward.

When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi, MD

Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we help others who have endured tragedy.

Widower to Widower: Surviving the End of Your Most Important Relationship

by Fred Colby

In Widower to Widower, I’ve compiled the most vital information I could find on the widower experience into one book, so the reader does not have to search as hard as I had to do. I include many critical issues not addressed in other publications. This can be raw and brutal at times, much like the grieving process itself. This second edition includes 60 additional pages of research, insights, resources, and a men’s grief group guide.

Great Reads for Widows

A Widow's Guide to Healing: Gentle Support and Advice for the First 5 Years

by Kristin Meekhof and James Windell M.A.

An inspiring, accessible, and empowering grief book for widows on how to navigate the unique challenges of widow grief and create a hopeful future. When Kristin Meekhof lost her husband to cancer, she discovered what all widows learn: the moment you experience the death of a spouse, you must make crucial decisions that will impact the rest of your life. But where do you begin when your world is suddenly turned upside down?

At the Helm: The Young Widow’s Journey from Struggle to Strength

by Audra O’Neil

At the Helm: The Young Widow’s Journey from Struggle to Strength is a balance between stories of real-life widows, research, and practicality. It focuses on what young widows worry about, feel, and do after the death of a partner, by sharing relatable strategies to help with healing and feeling whole again. Ultimately, this book is a lighthouse on the shore, showing us that wisdom and growth can emerge from struggle, sadness, and the loss of a spouse.

Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief

by Joanne Cacciatore, PhD

Organized into fifty-two short chapters, Bearing the Unbearable is a companion for life’s most difficult times, revealing how grief can open our hearts to connection, compassion, and the very essence of our shared humanity. Dr. Joanne Cacciatore—bereavement educator, researcher, Zen priest, and leading counselor in the field—accompanies us along the heartbreaking path of love, loss, and grief.

Before All Is Said and Done: Practical Advice on Living and Dying Well

by Pat Miles and Suzanne Watson

The notion of planning for one’s death is intrinsically at odds with our human instinct to avoid considering our own mortality. Although we may contemplate the grief that our life’s impermanence would cause to our loved ones, we seldom consider the myriad of emotional and legal issues that can arise afterward. Before All Is Said and Done begins with the experience of author Pat Miles Zimmerman and her husband, Charles Bucky Zimmerman. Pat and Bucky were fully set for life but, regrettably, not set for death. After Bucky’s death from an abrupt and short illness, Pat found herself with a plate full of unanticipated emotions, decisions, and legal problems.

Bitter or Better: Grappling With Life on the Op-Ed Page

by Caryn Sullivan

Are you widowed, or do you know a widow who is fearful about her new-found state—emotionally and financially? Want a thorough guide to follow so you can move through grief emotionally in order to make smart financial decisions? If your answer to these questions is yes, yet you didn’t know who you could trust, look no further. In My Husband Died, Now What? A Widow’s Guide to Grief Recovery & Smart Financial Decisions you’ll get the emotional coaching to help you move through your grief from a Certified Grief Coach, followed up with clear advice on how to choose a financial planner to help you through the major financial decisions you’ll face.

Happily Even After: A Guide to Getting Through and Beyond the Grief of Widowhood

by Carole Brody Fleet

Happily Even After answers the most common questions that the widowed generally have both immediately following a spouse’s death as well as months and even years thereafter. These questions are excerpted from thousands of actual letters received by the author and the responses are from the author’s own perspective; based upon considerable personal and professional experience and insight.

Healing After Loss: Daily Meditations for Working Through Grief

by Martha W. Hickman

Daily meditations for people who grieve.

Healthy Healing: A Guide to Working Out Grief Using the Power of Exercise and Endorphins

by Michelle Steinke-Baumgard

Healthy Healing addresses the physical, mental, and emotional effects of grief in a way that no other book in the category has ever done, offering a 12-week plan that empowers you to work through loss by using the power of exercise and endorphins, and rediscovering happiness by strengthening body, mind and spirit through fitness.

How to Go on Living When Someone You Love Dies

by Therese Rando, Ph.D.

A bereavement specialist and author of Loss and Anticipatory Grief leads you gently through the painful but necessary process of grieving and helps you find the best way for yourself.

It’s OK That You’re Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture that Doesn't Understand

by Megan Devine

Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we help others who have endured tragedy.

Life After Breath: After Her Husband Takes His Last Breath, and After She Tries to Catch Hers

by Susan VandePol

“During those last few months, the pressure was something of another world and as earthly life wept, the bleeding of our hearts began to mingle with eternity and hovered in a strange vapor. There was no song to be heard; just the rhythm of waiting; and life held its breath.” “The truth of what is ahead for you must be found in God’s Word. You will see there that you are meant to be one of His greatest allies in these times of faint hearts and tribulation. As a widow, you have been called for a great and unique purpose.” 

Life Worth Living

by Michelle Hoffman

Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we help others who have endured tragedy.

Widow To Widow: Thoughtful, Practical Ideas For Rebuilding Your Life

by Genevieve Ginsburg

In this remarkably useful guide, widow, author, and therapist Genevieve Davis Ginsburg offers fellow widows — as well as their family and friends — sage advice for coping with the loss of a husband.