Review by Susan Hamme, LSW, CHP-SW
Alicia King’s Sorry For Your Loss: What People Who are Grieving Wish You Knew is a simple and breathtakingly honest look at how the response people have to loss can affect the grieving person. King gathers the information from her own experience as well as from others who have lived with losses. She describes those things that people who are grieving often think but feel they cannot say. And she describes the efforts made to provide comfort which have helped, as well as those which have hurt.
In this easy-to-read book, the author offers many useful tips to make us feel less helpless and uncomfortable when trying to support those we love who are grieving. For instance, often people just don’t know what to do or say. That can lead to avoiding our showing that we care, or to making some well-intentioned mistakes. Nearly all of the individuals interviewed mentioned that when they were grieving they simply wanted someone to be there and someone to listen. For the person trying to help, it is comforting to know that those who grieve are not looking to us to “fix” anything.
