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360 Degrees of Grief: Reflections of Hope
360 Degrees of Grief is a Selah Press Anthology filled with stories, poetry and songs. Sixty-four authors contributed transparent stories written with open hearts reflecting hope to the reader. These authors have lived through the complete spectrum of life—from ecstatic joy to the darkest grief—and share the lessons they learned along the journey. Contributing authors Steve Green, Clay and Renee Crosse, Wayne Watson, Kayla Fioravanti, Melodie Tunney, Joyce Bone, Linda Reinhardt, Bruce Fong, Tom Burgess, Mary Humphrey, Elin Criswell, Drenda Howatt, Lisa LaCross Wethey, Kolinda King Duer, Bethany Learn, Duane Bigoni, Sharon Steffke Caldwell, Beverly Brainard, Marc Whitmore, Jessica Mills Winstead, T.G. Barnes, Kimberly Crumby, Chuck Hagele, Shila Laing, Shirley Logan, Lynn McLeod, Lisa Rodgers, Prevo Rodgers, Maria Gelnett, Cherie Funderburg, Heather Blair, Tammy Lovell Stone, Jacquelyn Bodeutsch, K.A. Croasmun, Paul Dengler, Wendi Fincher, Zachary Fisher, Gary Forsythe, Lona Renee Fraser, Charles Garret, Valerie Geer, Emily Joy, Cathy Koch, Kyle Koch, Dana Lyne, Rebecca Marmolejo, Ric Minch, Ginger Moore, Ellen Peacock, Cheri Perry, Deborah Petersen, Karyn Pugh, Lane Reed, Mandalyn Rey, Debbie Richards, Loral Robben, Rex Paul Schnelle, Sara Shay, Debra Sturdevant, Michelle Titus, Rachel Turner, Dorothy Wagner and Carol Wilson.
322 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 11, 2014
About the author
Kayla Fioravanti
28 books24 followersKayla Fioravanti is living proof that the mind of a scientist can live concurrently with the heart of a poet in one body. Kayla’s first three books are filled with scientific information spoken in plain English for the everyday reader.
Kayla Fioravanti is an award-winning author, aromatherapist, formulator, and hemp CBD expert. In 2011 Kayla her company Essential Wholesale after starting it in 1998 by creating products in her kitchen using essential oils.
The initial $50 investment from their home kitchen, combined with blood, sweat and prayers led to a rewarding thirteen year run in the cosmetic, aromatherapy and skin care industry. But nothing is more exciting to Kayla than the final reward that came with the sale of Essential Wholesale, the ability move onto her next phase in life as a full time wife, mother and author.
In 2011 Kayla wrote and published three books: The Art, Science and Business of Aromatherapy, How to Make Melt & Pour Soap Base from Scratch and DIY Kitchen Chemistry. Currently Kayla is focusing on finishing her poetry book When I was Young I Flew the Sun as a Kite before leaping into her next projects including; Kids Smell Like Dirt and Maple Syrup, Puffy and Blue and Parenting on Bended Knee: Raising the Beyond Strong Willed Child.
Kayla’s articles can be found in dozens of publications including: Dermascope Magazine, Les Nouvelles Esthetique, Global Cosmetic Industry (GCI) Magazine, New York Metro Parent, Saponifier, National Association of Holistic Aromatherapists and Essential Wholesale’s educational arm the Essential U blog. Kayla has been featured and has given expert advice for hundreds of magazines including Real Simple, Self Magazine, Prevention Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Home Business Magazine, Women Entrepreneur, Elle, Private Label Buyer, Redbook, InStyle Magazine, Woman’s World and more. She wrote a chapter in the book Millionaire Mom, The Art of Raising a Business and a Family at the Same Time by Joyce Bone. Kayla has been a guest on Millionaire Moms Radio, Organic Beauty Radio, Indie Radio, Good Day Oregon and more.
Kayla Fioravanti is an award-winning author, aromatherapist, formulator, and hemp CBD expert. In 2011 Kayla her company Essential Wholesale after starting it in 1998 by creating products in her kitchen using essential oils.
The initial $50 investment from their home kitchen, combined with blood, sweat and prayers led to a rewarding thirteen year run in the cosmetic, aromatherapy and skin care industry. But nothing is more exciting to Kayla than the final reward that came with the sale of Essential Wholesale, the ability move onto her next phase in life as a full time wife, mother and author.
In 2011 Kayla wrote and published three books: The Art, Science and Business of Aromatherapy, How to Make Melt & Pour Soap Base from Scratch and DIY Kitchen Chemistry. Currently Kayla is focusing on finishing her poetry book When I was Young I Flew the Sun as a Kite before leaping into her next projects including; Kids Smell Like Dirt and Maple Syrup, Puffy and Blue and Parenting on Bended Knee: Raising the Beyond Strong Willed Child.
Kayla’s articles can be found in dozens of publications including: Dermascope Magazine, Les Nouvelles Esthetique, Global Cosmetic Industry (GCI) Magazine, New York Metro Parent, Saponifier, National Association of Holistic Aromatherapists and Essential Wholesale’s educational arm the Essential U blog. Kayla has been featured and has given expert advice for hundreds of magazines including Real Simple, Self Magazine, Prevention Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Home Business Magazine, Women Entrepreneur, Elle, Private Label Buyer, Redbook, InStyle Magazine, Woman’s World and more. She wrote a chapter in the book Millionaire Mom, The Art of Raising a Business and a Family at the Same Time by Joyce Bone. Kayla has been a guest on Millionaire Moms Radio, Organic Beauty Radio, Indie Radio, Good Day Oregon and more.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 30, 2026
Anthologies of grief are difficult to review, and 360 Degrees of Grief is more difficult than most, because the thing it's doing is not really a literary thing. It's a witness thing. Sixty-four people — pastors, songwriters, mothers, widows, a few professional writers, mostly not — sat down and wrote about the worst things that have happened to them. Then they put the pieces in a book together. The point isn't craft. The point is the chorus.
That's worth saying up front, because if you come to this book expecting Joan Didion or C.S. Lewis or even the polished memoiristic essays of Modern Loss, you will be frustrated. The prose ranges widely. Some pieces are tightly written and devastating. Others read like blog posts or eulogies, which is essentially what they are. The editing has a light hand. A stronger editor would have cut the book in half and made it sharper, but I think she'd also have killed something the book is trying to do — which is to refuse the hierarchy of who gets to speak about loss.
The framing is explicitly Christian. Most contributors locate their grief inside a faith narrative; the subtitle is Reflections of Hope, and the hope on offer is, specifically, the hope of heaven and reunion. Readers who don't share that frame should know that going in. It isn't a book that translates its language for outsiders. But — and this surprised me — the faith content didn't function the way I expected. It's less doctrinal than I anticipated and more confessional. Several of the strongest pieces are about the failure of easy faith answers in the wake of catastrophic loss, and the slow, ugly work of building something less tidy in their place. The chapter on losing a twin to cancer, the chapter on the long aftermath of a child's death, the pieces on miscarriage and infant loss — these don't reach for tidy theology. They sit in the wreckage and describe what it looks like.
What the book does best is what no single-author memoir can do: it shows you that grief has, as the title insists, three hundred and sixty degrees. The widow and the mother who lost a baby and the man who lost his brother in 9/11 and the woman who lost her dog are all in the same room here, and the proximity of their voices to each other does something. It dismantles the unspoken ranking we all carry around about whose grief counts more. Everyone in this book lost something they couldn't replace. Everyone is still here.
I'd recommend it for a specific reader: someone in fresh grief who has felt unseen by tidier grief literature, who shares or is at least open to a Christian frame, and who needs the reassurance that comes from a chorus rather than a single eloquent voice. For that reader, this is exactly the right book. For a general reader looking for the best literary writing on loss, there are sharper books. But sharpness isn't always what grief needs. Sometimes you need the room full of people who know.
I marked four pieces to come back to. That's a lot for an anthology of this size.
That's worth saying up front, because if you come to this book expecting Joan Didion or C.S. Lewis or even the polished memoiristic essays of Modern Loss, you will be frustrated. The prose ranges widely. Some pieces are tightly written and devastating. Others read like blog posts or eulogies, which is essentially what they are. The editing has a light hand. A stronger editor would have cut the book in half and made it sharper, but I think she'd also have killed something the book is trying to do — which is to refuse the hierarchy of who gets to speak about loss.
The framing is explicitly Christian. Most contributors locate their grief inside a faith narrative; the subtitle is Reflections of Hope, and the hope on offer is, specifically, the hope of heaven and reunion. Readers who don't share that frame should know that going in. It isn't a book that translates its language for outsiders. But — and this surprised me — the faith content didn't function the way I expected. It's less doctrinal than I anticipated and more confessional. Several of the strongest pieces are about the failure of easy faith answers in the wake of catastrophic loss, and the slow, ugly work of building something less tidy in their place. The chapter on losing a twin to cancer, the chapter on the long aftermath of a child's death, the pieces on miscarriage and infant loss — these don't reach for tidy theology. They sit in the wreckage and describe what it looks like.
What the book does best is what no single-author memoir can do: it shows you that grief has, as the title insists, three hundred and sixty degrees. The widow and the mother who lost a baby and the man who lost his brother in 9/11 and the woman who lost her dog are all in the same room here, and the proximity of their voices to each other does something. It dismantles the unspoken ranking we all carry around about whose grief counts more. Everyone in this book lost something they couldn't replace. Everyone is still here.
I'd recommend it for a specific reader: someone in fresh grief who has felt unseen by tidier grief literature, who shares or is at least open to a Christian frame, and who needs the reassurance that comes from a chorus rather than a single eloquent voice. For that reader, this is exactly the right book. For a general reader looking for the best literary writing on loss, there are sharper books. But sharpness isn't always what grief needs. Sometimes you need the room full of people who know.
I marked four pieces to come back to. That's a lot for an anthology of this size.
July 16, 2014
This is a beautiful book telling of grief that many different people have went through. I found it sad and uplifting.
I still have a lot of grief over losing people close to me in my family and my dog, who was my son.
Reading about the different people and their own grief, in some cases similiar to mine was bitter sweet.
I liked reading about the people at the back of the book as well.
Very well written and I am glad I won this book in a GOODREADS giveaway.
I still have a lot of grief over losing people close to me in my family and my dog, who was my son.
Reading about the different people and their own grief, in some cases similiar to mine was bitter sweet.
I liked reading about the people at the back of the book as well.
Very well written and I am glad I won this book in a GOODREADS giveaway.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews