Practical Advice on Living through a Devastating Loss
Resilient Grieving: How to find your way through devastating loss (2nd ed.)
Lucy Hone
The Experiment (NY), 2024
Softcover, 252 pp.
ISBN: 9781891011160
MSRP: $17.95 USD
Also available: Ebook (Kindle)
This is a beautiful and heartfelt book. Part personal experience, part academic wisdom, it links two subjects—the bereavement experienced after a major loss and the science of resilience. The timeline of the author is important here. Lucy Hone completed a PhD in Resilience Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, then returned to her native New Zealand. In 2010, Christchurch, the city in which she lived, suffered a major earthquake. Sudden, unpredictable aftershocks hit the city for the next two years. Using her professional skills, she advised organizations on resilience in the face of tragedy. To do this best, she deliberately converted the scientific language of her training into “understandable, practical and adoptable strategies.” In 2014, Abi, her 12-year-old daughter died in a motor vehicle accident.
Abi's death had the most profound effect on Lucy and her family. She describes the overwhelming feelings of loss and heartache she shared with her husband and sons. Reaching into the literature of bereavement, she was struck by the fact that much of it concerned the experience of grief and less on strategies to deal with it. Experiencing the emotions of grief, what Hone sought were practical steps to help her cope. Inevitably, she turned to the wisdom of resilience, her own area of expertise. She began asking a basic question: To what extent could resilience literature inform the experience of bereavement?
Hone published the book in 2016; this is its second edition. She also gave a TED talk titled “Three Secrets of Resilient People” that, over the years, has been viewed by close to 3 million people. Her book examines the types of resources—internal and external—that have been shown to predict good outcomes in resilience studies and applies those to bereavement. Deliberately, Hone sets aside the classic approach of working through the stages of grief as unhelpful to the grieving, pitched as they are to achieving a series of tasks. Similarly, she rejects the “historical psychological view that successful grieving requires us to sever the bonds with the deceased.” The approach of resilience is to cultivate ways of responding to grief by drawing on resources—your own strengths; not abandoning what is important to you; consciously turning toward things and people who help rather than worsen the situation; realizing that grief will come in unexpected bursts; informing others about what you need and guiding them in their response; being comfortable using rituals, formal and informal, to honor the loved person; the great benefit of the reliable presence of at least one supportive relationship and not pushing yourself to resume normal activities too soon.
Hone is realistic enough to know that not every suggestion she makes will apply to every person. Conscious of the sheer complexity of human grief and bereavement, she does not pretend to have every answer. She reassures the reader that “I’m not a servant to resilience; I hope I’m not a painfully positive fool.” That honesty of approach shines through this book, the product of profound personal loss and deep reflection.
Dr. Frank Brennan is a palliative care physician; past president of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Palliative Medicine; a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine, University of New South Wales; and a lawyer.
New on the Shelf: Palliative Medicine and Hospice Care for Physician Associates Specialty Review, edited by Nadya Dimitrov & Rebekah Halpern. Paperback. MSRP $95 USD. ISBN: 9780197794241.