What to say to someone grieving
Recommendation
Someone you know has just lost a spouse, a parent, a child? A friend is going through a difficult divorce? Perhaps you know a family member of one of the 550,000+ Americans who have died of Covid-19 since the pandemic upended our lives?
You need this book.
Dana Lacy Amarisa, who spent decades as a marketing writer in the tech world, was long empathetic with fellow humans in all of the above categories. As it happened, in those same years she suffered unimaginable losses herself. It was definitely the hard way to learn, and the long way to edit and rewrite; but Amarisa has just released a book that answers the stumbling- block question encountered by 99% of those listed above: “I just don’t know what to say . . .”
Amarisa’s little book — it measures four by six inches and is less than a half-inch thick — is titled “Condolences Pocket Guide: What to Say and Not to Say to Grievers.” Most of us have, at some point in time, managed to say the abominably wrong thing, or — worse — stayed silently absent because we didn’t know the right words. Now there is a guide to fixing that problem forever.
In spare language throughout the book Amarisa mentions her own losses. An infant daughter. Amarisa’s father’s death soon afterward. An eight-month-old son later lost. Divorce. Emergency…
