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I Can't Stop Crying: It's So Hard When Someone You Love Dies
" I Can't Stop Crying is a down-to-earth book for all those who think they are alone."
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, MD The death of someone close -- a spouse or partner -- can result in overwhelming grief. At the same time, society unrealistically expects people to recover from grief as quickly as possible. I Can't Stop Crying looks at grieving as a painful but necessary process. The authors emphasize the importance of giving yourself permission to grieve and suggest steps for rebuilding your life without your loved one. They also look at how such a loss affects your relationship with family and friends, as well as your lifestyle, work habits, and hopes for the future. A useful appendix lists bereavement groups and other self-help organizations you can contact for assistance. There is no way to lessen or quicken the grieving process. Recovery is possible only by taking the time to work through your pain. This compassionate and sensible book will help you take the first steps down that road. It can, and should, be read by anyone who has experienced a significant loss.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, MD The death of someone close -- a spouse or partner -- can result in overwhelming grief. At the same time, society unrealistically expects people to recover from grief as quickly as possible. I Can't Stop Crying looks at grieving as a painful but necessary process. The authors emphasize the importance of giving yourself permission to grieve and suggest steps for rebuilding your life without your loved one. They also look at how such a loss affects your relationship with family and friends, as well as your lifestyle, work habits, and hopes for the future. A useful appendix lists bereavement groups and other self-help organizations you can contact for assistance. There is no way to lessen or quicken the grieving process. Recovery is possible only by taking the time to work through your pain. This compassionate and sensible book will help you take the first steps down that road. It can, and should, be read by anyone who has experienced a significant loss.
116 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1992
19 people are currently reading
83 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
June 1, 2021
A straightforward and sensitive book that offers support and hope for grieving people. I would definitely recommend it to friends and clients who have experienced a death.
July 29, 2022
This book has a lot of anecdotes of people who are grieving, and it helps to see some of these and recognize that the way I'm grieving isn't so unusual or odd. But outside of the anecdotes, the book doesn't really offer much. The authors say that we need to allow ourselves to grieve and only by actually going through the process can we start to rebuild our lives without the person we're grieving for. And that's about it for the advice. I think I was hoping for something a little more...concrete.
April 28, 2019
Favorite quotes:
"Feelings have no moral value. They are not good or bad, right or wrong; they simply exist and need to be recognized and acknowledged for what they are. How we express our feelings may have moral value, but the feelings themselves do not."
"But a cliche here, a bit of patronization there, all in the name of not knowing what to say, often makes the whole thing worse. We avoid what needs to be spoken of, or at least offered. None of this is difficult to understand, but often adds to the feeling that expressions of grief are somehow "wrong," or to be done only in private."
"Recovery is possible; know, however, that after you have lost a love, your perspective will never be the same. The world and everything in it will look, sound, and feel strangely different."
"I have come to believe that so much of coping with grief is giving yourself permission to feel the deep pain and emptiness that come with losing someone very close to you."
"Your emotions, like toxic food, bubble around inside you and need to be released. Grief and the feelings that go along with it will not go away if you ignore them. You need to find ways to express your hurt. You need to give yourself permission to get rid of your awful feelings of anger, despair, and sadness. The sooner you let them out, the sooner you will begin to heal yourself and move on."
"She had found relief simply by writing her thoughts down."
"Our emotions are often not based in truth, only in feeling."
"Death is one of the most forbidden topics in our society. Most of us have never entered into a 'what if' conversation about death, so when it comes suddenly, we are often left in shock with an unbelievably painful reality."
"She has resigned herself to take comfort in the words and in the feelings that have touched her for years."
"The benefit of writing is that paper will never contradict you. A drawback is that paper will provide no empathy for you."
"I strongly believe that if painful feelings stay bottled up inside you, sooner or later they will come back to haunt you."
"If you have had open-heart surgery, you and everyone around you gives you permission to go slowly, to say ouch, and to take the time you need to heal yourself. In grief, the emotional wounds are even more severe. You must take the time to work at healing them."
"This pain, this terrible roller coaster that you're on, will likely go on for a long time to come, but take heart. As you acknowledge your painful feelings you will work through this terrible time."
"Give yourself permission--permission to feel sad, lonely, empty, angry, and hopeless."
"Don't try to suppress your pain, or it will only go deep inside and rattle around, causing you harm."
"Feelings have no moral value. They are not good or bad, right or wrong; they simply exist and need to be recognized and acknowledged for what they are. How we express our feelings may have moral value, but the feelings themselves do not."
"But a cliche here, a bit of patronization there, all in the name of not knowing what to say, often makes the whole thing worse. We avoid what needs to be spoken of, or at least offered. None of this is difficult to understand, but often adds to the feeling that expressions of grief are somehow "wrong," or to be done only in private."
"Recovery is possible; know, however, that after you have lost a love, your perspective will never be the same. The world and everything in it will look, sound, and feel strangely different."
"I have come to believe that so much of coping with grief is giving yourself permission to feel the deep pain and emptiness that come with losing someone very close to you."
"Your emotions, like toxic food, bubble around inside you and need to be released. Grief and the feelings that go along with it will not go away if you ignore them. You need to find ways to express your hurt. You need to give yourself permission to get rid of your awful feelings of anger, despair, and sadness. The sooner you let them out, the sooner you will begin to heal yourself and move on."
"She had found relief simply by writing her thoughts down."
"Our emotions are often not based in truth, only in feeling."
"Death is one of the most forbidden topics in our society. Most of us have never entered into a 'what if' conversation about death, so when it comes suddenly, we are often left in shock with an unbelievably painful reality."
"She has resigned herself to take comfort in the words and in the feelings that have touched her for years."
"The benefit of writing is that paper will never contradict you. A drawback is that paper will provide no empathy for you."
"I strongly believe that if painful feelings stay bottled up inside you, sooner or later they will come back to haunt you."
"If you have had open-heart surgery, you and everyone around you gives you permission to go slowly, to say ouch, and to take the time you need to heal yourself. In grief, the emotional wounds are even more severe. You must take the time to work at healing them."
"This pain, this terrible roller coaster that you're on, will likely go on for a long time to come, but take heart. As you acknowledge your painful feelings you will work through this terrible time."
"Give yourself permission--permission to feel sad, lonely, empty, angry, and hopeless."
"Don't try to suppress your pain, or it will only go deep inside and rattle around, causing you harm."
August 2, 2019
This book is excellent for anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one, I think. Grief is work, and this author gets that, and highlights it. In a tender, compassionate way — without preaching. It also, importantly, recognizes that horrible, paralyzing grief doesn't always have to be associated with the death of someone you love; someone experiencing a painful separation from their spouse can feel grief every bit as horrible — there is no hierarchy when it comes to grief. This book underscores that on a lovely way. It's helped me a great deal, and I continue to read through it as research for my own book on similar matters. Five stars, indeed.
August 10, 2016
I don't think there was anything very profound in this book, but it did give me comfort to know that other people were thinking the same things I was thinking, and feeling the same things I was feeling.
March 8, 2022
I read this the week after I lost my mother last year. It read like a Buzzfeed article to me. It provided nothing to me in terms of help or wisdom about the next chapter. Perhaps my grief was too fresh, and I should give it another chance.
June 8, 2022
I read this today, having lost my fiancé a week ago and now facing the rest of my life without him. This book didn’t make it all better of course, but it did show me that what I am feeling now is valid, normal, and that things will never be ‘normal’ again. Will likely reread it in the near future.
December 4, 2018
It said what it meant, and it meant what it said.
Martin has chosen what is, quite possibly, the best title ever for his book: it grabs the attention of its target audience and virtually guarantees high circ. The patron will probably use self-check, though, if you have it. Or maybe they'll just curl up in the stacks and read it. Either way, this is another one of those books that you absolutely need to have somewhere in your collection, even if you and your patrons nevver talk about it.
Martin's handbook could also be called "Grieving 101," due to its brevity. That's not a complaint; in fact, it's awfully useful to grieving folks, who frequently cannot concentrate on books and reading for a while after the event (did you know that? I did not!). The whole first section, in fact, is a good thing to have handy in the immediate aftershock of a loss, as it provides a makeshift care plan for the reader, and allows them to hear the things they need to hear, the things other people around them might not be able to say.
The second section is devoted to feelings the grieving person might be experiencing, giving plenty of examples from actual hurting people. These direct quotes from personal experience will comfort the reader because the sheer mass of them means that other people have hurt like this before, and got through it, so the reader will, too.
Section three talks about the behaviors that are normal after grief, and makes some judgment calls about when specific actions become excessive. Wearing a spouse's favorite shirt, for example, is perfectly normal; wearing that same shirt every day for the rest of your life is.....excessive. However, Martin is careful not to blame readers for being wherever they are at: he simply suggests that if a behavior goes on too long, it might help to talk to a trained third party for advice. This delicate way of warning you when you're going completely around the bend is very compassionate, and readers will appreciate it, especially if they are second-guessing themselves about whether their feelings are, indeed, excessive. Spoiler: they probably aren't - if you're self-aware enough to ask, you're probably okay.
The only real disappointment here is the "resources" section, which is one page long, front and back, and contains mostly Canadian sources. Super helpful in Canada, if in-person assistance is needed. Not so much down here in the states, but a website is a website after all. It's JUST websites, though, and not a whole lot of them. A more accurate descriptor would have been "web starter pack." That aside, this is a great little book, recommended for most collections, Canada stuff notwithstanding.
Martin has chosen what is, quite possibly, the best title ever for his book: it grabs the attention of its target audience and virtually guarantees high circ. The patron will probably use self-check, though, if you have it. Or maybe they'll just curl up in the stacks and read it. Either way, this is another one of those books that you absolutely need to have somewhere in your collection, even if you and your patrons nevver talk about it.
Martin's handbook could also be called "Grieving 101," due to its brevity. That's not a complaint; in fact, it's awfully useful to grieving folks, who frequently cannot concentrate on books and reading for a while after the event (did you know that? I did not!). The whole first section, in fact, is a good thing to have handy in the immediate aftershock of a loss, as it provides a makeshift care plan for the reader, and allows them to hear the things they need to hear, the things other people around them might not be able to say.
The second section is devoted to feelings the grieving person might be experiencing, giving plenty of examples from actual hurting people. These direct quotes from personal experience will comfort the reader because the sheer mass of them means that other people have hurt like this before, and got through it, so the reader will, too.
Section three talks about the behaviors that are normal after grief, and makes some judgment calls about when specific actions become excessive. Wearing a spouse's favorite shirt, for example, is perfectly normal; wearing that same shirt every day for the rest of your life is.....excessive. However, Martin is careful not to blame readers for being wherever they are at: he simply suggests that if a behavior goes on too long, it might help to talk to a trained third party for advice. This delicate way of warning you when you're going completely around the bend is very compassionate, and readers will appreciate it, especially if they are second-guessing themselves about whether their feelings are, indeed, excessive. Spoiler: they probably aren't - if you're self-aware enough to ask, you're probably okay.
The only real disappointment here is the "resources" section, which is one page long, front and back, and contains mostly Canadian sources. Super helpful in Canada, if in-person assistance is needed. Not so much down here in the states, but a website is a website after all. It's JUST websites, though, and not a whole lot of them. A more accurate descriptor would have been "web starter pack." That aside, this is a great little book, recommended for most collections, Canada stuff notwithstanding.
October 24, 2019
Simply written so it is easy for anyone to read and process the message, yet in my opinion, powerful to help find closure and a future again.
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone, whether you lost someone or not.
I lost my grandma over 3 years ago, and I felt defeated that I was still bawling2 years later. I couldn’t stand the long 2-3 hour car rides to her grave with only my thoughts, but I get guilty when I couldn’t go. I didn’t understand why I felt the need to be there when I believed she was always with me. It’s not until I stopped going every month that I started to see progress in my life.
It also hit me going back to what you know to grieve. I used to journal a lot, and as I got overwhelmed often, I switched it to google docs and stopped feeling the need to write. It didn’t help as much as paper and pen, so after reading this book I’m deciding to go back to journaling, directing the posts in letters to God or my grandma, if anyone else I may lose in the future and feel the need to write to. Sometimes, the hardest thing is not having my grandma to call up and tel the good or bad. When she was alive, she didn’t respond to my letters anyways, so maybe it will help me.
I recommend this book to anyone and everyone, whether you lost someone or not.
I lost my grandma over 3 years ago, and I felt defeated that I was still bawling2 years later. I couldn’t stand the long 2-3 hour car rides to her grave with only my thoughts, but I get guilty when I couldn’t go. I didn’t understand why I felt the need to be there when I believed she was always with me. It’s not until I stopped going every month that I started to see progress in my life.
It also hit me going back to what you know to grieve. I used to journal a lot, and as I got overwhelmed often, I switched it to google docs and stopped feeling the need to write. It didn’t help as much as paper and pen, so after reading this book I’m deciding to go back to journaling, directing the posts in letters to God or my grandma, if anyone else I may lose in the future and feel the need to write to. Sometimes, the hardest thing is not having my grandma to call up and tel the good or bad. When she was alive, she didn’t respond to my letters anyways, so maybe it will help me.
October 22, 2020
I read this book after my dad died
It’s more intended for/focused towards the loss of a partner or spouse, but was helpful nonetheless. Some good thoughts on managing grief, and words from patients as they struggle to process their losses were helpful in making me feel less alone in my own process. I will be gifting this book to someone who lost her husband a few years back but is still struggling, and handling the loss in a very toxic way instead of allowing herself to go through some of the process outlined here to acknowledge the loss, allowing yourself to grieve, yet finding a way to move forward (without denial, pent up anger, or trying to numb the pain with drugs/alcohol). I think this book could help her realize she has never really dealt with the loss, and help her through the process of grieving her husband in a healthier way.
It’s more intended for/focused towards the loss of a partner or spouse, but was helpful nonetheless. Some good thoughts on managing grief, and words from patients as they struggle to process their losses were helpful in making me feel less alone in my own process. I will be gifting this book to someone who lost her husband a few years back but is still struggling, and handling the loss in a very toxic way instead of allowing herself to go through some of the process outlined here to acknowledge the loss, allowing yourself to grieve, yet finding a way to move forward (without denial, pent up anger, or trying to numb the pain with drugs/alcohol). I think this book could help her realize she has never really dealt with the loss, and help her through the process of grieving her husband in a healthier way.
February 17, 2021
Good down to earth advice for grieving people.
March 25, 2025
Great short book about grief. I'd say it's perfect for someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with grief and needs someone to tell them they are not going crazy and the pain is normal.
September 2, 2013
Great book for someone that is dealing w/grief and needs answers. Needs to know that their feelings are not bad, not to feel guilty. Everyone should read if you are grieving or want to help those who are grieving.
48% done reading on my kindle and I give it a 5 star so far.
Highly recommend it!!! Has helped me see things better. Won't let people tell me how I should feel or when I need to move on. It is not their place to tell people how to deal w/the loss of a loved one. We all deal w/it in our own timing.
48% done reading on my kindle and I give it a 5 star so far.
Highly recommend it!!! Has helped me see things better. Won't let people tell me how I should feel or when I need to move on. It is not their place to tell people how to deal w/the loss of a loved one. We all deal w/it in our own timing.
July 15, 2016
I found this book helpful in dealing with my own loss. It's an easy read, which was important for me as a first step in learning to confront these difficult feelings. The book suggests different things but doesn't push readers to adopt any specific road towards recovery. Most of all, the authors shows readers through compassion and understanding that it's ok to be a "mess", but there are also healthy and unhealthy forms of grief.
May 2, 2017
This was another book that I read during the time of grief following a loved one's death. It helps you to remember that we all grieve and mourn differently. That we often must give ourselves permission to grieve. To take as long as is necessary to grieve. I recommend it to anyone who has lost someone they love.
January 11, 2017
If you need permission to feel what you're feeling, read this maybe it will help. If you've already given yourself permission to have your feelings regardless of those around you, you've got the gist of the book.
It does let you know the stupid shit people say to people. How about "I'm sorry for your loss" and then just listening?
It does let you know the stupid shit people say to people. How about "I'm sorry for your loss" and then just listening?
May 9, 2025
Great book to help recognize what is normal for grief
Well written with examples and to the point. Gives 3 Rs to get someone through the process without rushing or fixing but to trust the process.
Well written with examples and to the point. Gives 3 Rs to get someone through the process without rushing or fixing but to trust the process.
March 28, 2013
Good book about the grieving process. I wish the author had provided more specific examples about how people recovered from their grief.
June 14, 2015
Great resource book when your grieving the loss of a loved one.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews