Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

This is a really beautiful book about the power of loss and grief and life. Kessler collaborated with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (she defined the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) and has worked as a professional grief counselor in a variety of roles. His own life has been marked by grief: beyond the ordinary losses, his mother died of kidney disease when he was a child and his son died of an overdose.

He writes with great sensitivity and experience, and beneficially engages with Viktor Frankl, whose fantastic book Man’s Search for Meaning left a lot unsaid about actually searching for meaning.

The core of Kessler’s argument is that loss is inevitable and grief is necessary, natural, and always different. But in general, at some point the pain will transform. Love transcends death. Letting others witness your grief can help that transformation. Letting loss become a source of service to others can help. And feeling the positive presence of those who are gone can help.

The chapters are framed around many of the most common scenarios of loss: parents, partners, children, by sudden accident or slow disease, by fire and water and in sunshine and nighttime.