Books For When Grief Becomes Your Language & You’re Learning To Speak It Softly
I hope one of these books finds you where you are and gently reminds you that you’re still becoming
When you’re little, death feels like something that lives far away, like a story adults whisper about in another room. It feels distant, almost unreal, something that happens much later, when people are old and ready. But then you grow up and lose someone close, and suddenly it’s no longer a faraway story. It’s here, sitting beside you, rearranging everything you thought you knew about life. You start to realize it could be anyone. It could even be you. This has been my story. I still struggle with the death of my school mother, Feyisayo, and my godfather, Mr Jetawo. It doesn’t make sense that they are no longer here.
Grief comes at the strangest of times in the middle of laughter, while you’re washing dishes, or scrolling through old photos. It doesn’t care about age, or timing, or whether you’re ready. It just comes, quietly but completely, changing the way you see the world forever.
And I feel like the world right now is one big graveyard of dark emotions, from mourning the ones we’ve lost, to grieving the dreams that didn’t come to fruition, to letting go of the person we once believed was our forever. Everyone seems to be carrying a version of loss. And it’s heavy.
Grief, in all its forms, is a quiet kind of ache. But in the midst of that weight, books can sometimes hold us, reminding us we’re not alone in the dark. If you’re grieving someone you loved, here are five books that might not fix the ache, but will help you sit with it a little softer.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
A haunting yet tender story about a family unraveling after the sudden death of their daughter, Lydia. This book teaches that grief is never one thing; it’s love, guilt, memory, and the quiet desire to be understood.
How to Make Friends With the Dark by Kathleen Glasgow
This one hits especially hard if you’ve ever lost the person who made the world make sense. When Tiger’s mother dies unexpectedly, she’s thrust into a new world of loneliness and survival. Kathleen Glasgow writes grief like it’s a living thing, unpredictable, raw, and painfully human.
Sunbathing by Isobel Beech
For readers who find healing in silence, this is a gentle companion. A quiet, meditative book about a woman who retreats to Italy after losing a close friend. As she sits with her grief under the Italian sun, Beech writes about loss with stunning restraint, how grief can exist alongside beauty, and how even in the stillness, life keeps blooming.
Everything Good Will Come by Sefi Atta
Set in Lagos, this novel follows Enitan and Sheri as they grow up navigating friendship, politics, and womanhood amid personal and societal loss. Sefi Atta doesn’t write grief in the traditional sense, she writes it through the lens of identity, lost innocence, and what it means to find yourself in a chaotic world.
This story feels close to home: grief as resilience, as rebirth, as the courage to keep showing up.
An Ordinary Wonder by Buki Papillon
A breathtaking coming-of-age story about Oto, an intersex child growing up in a world that demands conformity. Papillon writes about identity, loss, and belonging in a way that mirrors the grief of being unseen and the quiet joy of self-acceptance.
This one reminds us that sometimes grief isn’t just about who we lose, but the parts of ourselves we bury to survive.
So if you’re sitting in the quiet today, missing someone or something that used to anchor you, I hope one of these books finds you where you are and gently reminds you that you’re still becoming.
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