Our reading list for bereaved parents and children
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
Lellie Lopter
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“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, CEO – Red Nose Australia
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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)
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| Still A Mum | Meagan Donaldson |
| 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 (Available to purchase in our store) |
| 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 |
Last reviewed: 3/5/24