A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
A neuroscientist explains grief as the brain’s difficult relearning of a world in which an attached person is absent.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
It gives travelers a nonjudgmental account of the learning involved in bereavement. The distinction between grief and grieving can reduce fear without turning love and loss into mere circuitry.
Good starting place if…
You want to understand why the brain continues to expect someone who has died and why knowing the fact of loss differs from learning to live inside it.
Know before you begin…
O'Connor translates developing neuroscience and bereavement research for general readers. Brain-based explanation can normalize experience, but it does not exhaust grief's relational, cultural, spiritual, or moral meanings.