Books, Books, Books

When Karyl McKendry, Paisley Project’s founder, became a widow, many of her go-to activities no longer seemed available. Movies were too triggering, as were television shows. Music could bring up a heart-wrenching memory without warning. Many of the familiar pastimes had usually included her husband, Pat, and now felt meaningless without him.

And yet, the hours loomed long and large. In an effort to fill the emptiness, Karyl turned to reading books, something that as a person with life-long struggles with dyslexia, had never been a regular activity. Karyl would often tell me the books she was reading and I would read them as well. It helped us find some common language for her experiences. In addition, it helped me see and more deeply understand what she was going through, a double benefit.

We have included a list of books that Karyl and other Paisley Project members have found to be comforting, informative, practical, fun, or hopeful. We’ve also included some titles that we have used at our L.I.V.E. Intensive experiences. It is by no means a comprehensive list, and we will add to it over time. The categories aren’t hard and fast: many books could fit in multiple categories. But it’s a start.

Next time when the hours loom long and large, see if any of these books become friends.

And if you are the supporter of a widow, volunteer to read them with her.

Here goes . . . .

Memoir

Saturday Night Widows: The Adventures of Six Friends Remaking Their Lives, by Becky Aikman

Aikman’s memoir was one of the first Karyl and I read together after Pat’s death. It was also the source of the idea that eventually became Paisley Project. Aikman also became a widow at a young age and, finding that the existing resources for widows were meager and unfulfilling for her, determines to form a group with five other young widows. Together they learned about the magical things that can happen in spite or, or because of, adversity.

A Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

Just before Christmas in 2003, while her daughter was in the hospital in a coma, Joan Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, were sitting down to dinner. John had a sudden, fatal heart attack. This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.

Karyl read this book and immediately resonated with Didion’s experiences of coming to grips with the impossible fact of her husband’s death. I quickly read it as well and found it gave me a glimpse of what the experience widowhood felt like.

Not for nothing, this book won the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. I continue to be in awe of the truths shared and the achingly beautiful writing.

A Grief Observed, by C. S. Lewis

Lewis, best known for his Chronicles of Narnia, wrote this memoir after the death of his wife, Joy Davidman in 1960. It is compiled from the four notebooks Lewis used to explore his grief in the aftermath of Joy’s death. Originally published in 1961, it continues to be an wife’s tragic death as a way of surviving the “mad midnight moments.”  This memory is an unflinchingly truthful account of how loss can lead even a stalwart believer to lose all sense of meaning in the universe, and how he gradually regained his bearings. Also, this book was the inspiration for the movie, Shadowlands, with Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins.

Lovely Tragic Miracle, by Karyl McKendry, with Barbara Allen Burke

This is the memoir of Paisley Project’s founder, Karyl, and a project she and I worked on together. After Pat’s death, I felt particularly helpless, as I lived in another state. And, if you know Karyl, you know that the events of Pat’s death and its aftermath were particularly challenging for her whole family.

I lived in another state and felt so, so helpless to do anything productive. And so I would call Karyl nearly every day. She’d share with me what her experience felt like, and after a few months of this, I began to realize that Karyl had a particularly rare ability to articulate what was happening. I began to jot down notes from our conversations. Then I started copying and collecting her texts and emails into a Word document. I mailed her a journal and encouraged her to keep writing her thoughts and feelings. Eventually, I convinced her that she could and should write a book. I told her I would help. Lovely Tragic Miracle

The Color of Rain: How Two Families Found Faith, Hope, and Love in the Midst of Tragedy, by Michael and Gina Spehn

One of the first books Karyl read after becoming a widow, it is the story about two people, after the deaths of their respective spouses, reach out to each other for support. The Color of Rain illuminates the stepping stones of loss and healing that ultimately led to a joyful new life for Michael, Gina, and their five children. Their path to becoming a modern-day Brady Bunch was paved with grief, laughter, and the willingness to be restored to a new and even better life despite the inevitable resistance they faced.

Grief

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience, by Brene Brown, Ph.D.

We are big fans of Brene Brown, a researcher who, over the past two decades, has conducted extensive research into the experiences that make us who we are has shaped the cultural conversation and helped define what it means to be courageous with our lives. Although not specifically about the grief of widowhood, this book takes the novel approach of showing us how accurately naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power—it gives us the power of understanding, meaning, and choice.

Brown shares, “I want this book to be an atlas for all of us, because I believe that, with an adventurous heart and the right maps, we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves.”

Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May.

Katherine May is a beautiful writer, and it is a delicious experience to read her prose. I wasn’t sure how to categorize this book. It is her second memoir and, although she does not write about widowhood, she does cover how unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.

Bearing the Unbearable: Love, Loss, and the Heartbreaking Path of Grief, by Joanne Cacciatore & Jeffrey Rubin

This one has been one of Karyl’s favorites. 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. Through moving stories of her encounters with grief over decades of supporting individuals, families, and communities—as well as her own experience with loss—Cacciatore opens a space to process, integrate, and deeply honor our grief.

Second Firsts: A Step-by-Step Guide to Life after Loss, by Christina Rasmussen

This book has been passed around among Paisley Project members, who found it so helpful. Rasmussen, a therapist and crisis intervention counselor, thought she understood grief. But it wasn’t until losing her husband to cancer in her early 30s that she truly grasped the depths of sorrow and pain that accompany loss. Using the knowledge she gained while wading through her own grief and reading hundreds of neuroscience books, Rasmussen began to look at experiences in a new way. She realized that grief plunges you into a gap between worlds—the world before loss and the world after loss. She also realized how easy it is to become lost in this gap.

Neuroscience of Grief and Trauma

One of the things that we at Paisley Project focus on is the new research that explores the impact of intense grief and trauma (and becoming a widow can often be very traumatic!) on the human brain and body. It really isn’t “all in your head.” These books go deeper than the typical greeting card advice on how to cope with grief and explain what is happening to your body and brain on a cellular level. Karyl and I regularly “geek out” over this stuff.

The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss, by Mary-Frances O’Connor

In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist and psychologist Mary-Frances O’Connor, PhD, gives us a fascinating new window into one of the hallmark experiences of being human. O’Connor has devoted decades to researching the effects of grief on the brain, and in this book, she makes cutting-edge neuroscience accessible through her contagious enthusiasm, and guides us through how we encode love and grief. With love, our neurons help us form attachments to others; but, with loss, our brain must come to terms with where our loved ones went, or how to imagine a future without them. 

Here’s a teaser. Karyl frequently wondered in those first months why her brain couldn’t accept that her husband was gone forever. This book answers that question.

Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, by Susan Magsamen & Ivy Ross

As a writer and an artist and a teacher of both, I believe to my core that the arts are healing. In fact, Paisley Project considers therapeutic art and writing to be two of the healing modalities we incorporate into all of our programing. This book gives the reasons why they work. The book weaves a tapestry of breakthrough research, insights from multidisciplinary pioneers, and compelling stories from people who are using the arts to enhance their lives.

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

This book is a favorite, and having read it, both Karyl and I believe that our culture is not prepared to understand the traumatic impact that becoming a widow has on a person. In The Body Keeps the Score, Kolk uses recent scientific advances to show how trauma literally reshapes both body and brain, compromising sufferers’ capacities for pleasure, engagement, self-control, and trust. He explores innovative treatments—from neurofeedback and meditation to sports, drama, and yoga—that offer new paths to recovery by activating the brain’s natural neuroplasticity. Fascinating and, ultimately, hopeful stuff.

Love and Resilience

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, and Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown

Karyl read both of these books as part of her training to become an accredited coach. They both tie into Paisley Project’s concept of L.I.V.E., of working through Loss, developing a new Identity, Creating a revised Vision for your life, and a plan to Engage again in life. Both of Brown’s books provide support and inspiration for how to do just that.

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, by James Clear

After reading this book, both Karyl and I started following Clear’s newsletter. If you want to make something different of your life, and you want to do it in a meaningful, accessible way, this book is a great place to start.

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl

I first read this book in graduate school and it became a foundation for my work as a counselor—and a human. Viktor Frankl, a renowned psychiatrist, spent years in Nazi death camps. Between 1942 and 1945 Frankl labored in four different camps, including Auschwitz, while his parents, brother, and pregnant wife perished. Based on his own experience and the experiences of others he treated later in his practice, Frankl argues that we cannot avoid suffering but we can choose how to cope with it, find meaning in it, and move forward with renewed purpose. Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning")-holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.

I just can’t express how much I love this book.

Poetry

And just because art is important, I’m including two of my favorite books of poetry. When we run L.I.V.E. Intensive Experiences, or workshops, we often include readings we think widows will find meaningful. They are usually from one of these two books.

Devotions, by Mary Oliver

If I knew I was going to be marooned on a deserted island, I would want to have this book with me. A Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Mary Oliver curated this collection of 200 poems from her entire body of work. These poems are accessible and life-affirming.

The Way It Is, by William Stafford

William Stafford was a Poet Laureate of the United States, and, it turns out, lived in the same town I lived in for 30 years. And he taught at the college I went to, retiring only months before I arrived. His poetry has always felt uniquely mine for some reason. This collection of poems gathers unpublished works from his last year, including the poem he wrote the day he died, as well as an essential and wide-ranging selection of works from throughout his career.

It includes my favorite poem, which also gave it’s title to the book, and I will share it here in closing:

The Way It Is, by William Stafford

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

Hang on to the thread.