The Anatomy of Grief: How the Brain, Heart, and Body Can Heal after Loss

by Dorothy P Holinger

An original, authoritative guide to the impact of grief on the brain, the heart, and the body of the bereaved
 
"Dorothy Holinger's exploration of the contours of grief is wise, moving, thought-provoking, and, best of all, extraordinarily helpful. Beautifully written and humane, it is a balm for the bereaved."—Barry Bearak, Pulitzer Prize winner for international reporting
 
“What’s central for Holinger is that turning feeling into words, and giving voice to buried emotions, acts to release tension. She is a passionate advocate for language as healer.”—Clair Wills, New York Review of Books 
 
Grief happens to everyone. Universal and enveloping, grief cannot be ignored or denied.
 
This original new book by psychologist Dorothy P. Holinger uses humanistic and physiological approaches to describe grief’s impact on the bereaved. Taking examples from literature, music, poetry, paleoarchaeology, personal experience, memoirs, and patient narratives, Holinger describes what happens in the brain, the heart, and the body of the bereaved.  
 
Readers will learn what grief is like after a loved one how language and clarity of thought become elusive, why life feels empty, why grief surges and ebbs so persistently, and why the bereaved cry. Resting on a scientific foundation, this literary book shows the bereaved how to move through the grieving process and how understanding grief in deeper, more multidimensional ways can help quell this sorrow and allow life to be lived again with joy.
 
Visit the author's companion website for The Anatomy of Grief : dorothypholinger.com

Genres: Grief

328 pages, Paperback

Published May 17, 2022

Reviews

[chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is really helpful in understanding the depth of grief, types of grief, and what it means to be bereaved. could be a good book for those supporting the bereaved, may not be the best book for someone who is in the thick of their grief looking for warmth, comfort, reassurance.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

woof. while affirming the uniqueness of each individual’s experience of and path through grief, i have no idea what this book wanted to be. what it isn’t: an “anatomy of grief,” how grief actually lives in the body or mind or spirit, or any structured exploration of “how the brain, heart, and body can heal after loss.”

in the very first chapter on the “evolutionary origins” of grief, we have pages that read as a rehash of wikipedia articles on all the epochs of the age of mammals, the lead up to “ancient aliens”-style questions standing in for analytical judgment (eg, of the mother of the Taung child whose fossil was found, the author asks, “can we imagine her grief when her child was killed by a large bird of prey? we can’t know for sure, of course, but observations of behaviors in contemporary primate species could serves a model). we have sentences like this: “it is interesting to wonder whether it is more than coincidence that members of the Australopithecus gene could have been making stone tools around 3.3 million years ago, which is approximately when the SRGAP2 duplication in Australopithecus occurred.” i in turn wonder how this is meaningfully related to understanding grief, let alone what the book’s subtitle promises - “how the brain, heart, and body can heal after loss.”

we have a brief “part ii” on the physiology of grief that names things affected, alongside digressions about certain anatomical mechanics (“in 1628, william harvey was the first to describe the heart as a pump as well as a muscle”).

part iii is full of anecdotes and extensive summaries of different literary authors’ takes on the loss of different kinds of immediate family members. it may be reassuring to see your flavor of loss reflected here, but there is little relation to the book’s ostensible purpose.

[Olivia Cochrane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed promising, but it failed on many levels. The author relied too heavily on quoting other sources that it read like a clunky, disjointed essay you might have scrambled to put together in Uni. It wasn’t particularly insightful or meaningful. It was a rehash of other meaningful books and stories about grief and mourning.

[Ciaran McAree · Rating 5 out of 5]

When it comes to emotions, grief is the most complicated. Twists and turns at every corner, high speeds and loop de loops like a rollercoaster. Having a book that explains what can happen to the body during and after experiencing grief as poetically and perfectly as this is wonderful

[Madison · Rating 2 out of 5]

the authors writing is beautiful and they do a great job relating evidence to reality based stories. although, it seem they only had a few things to truly present and said each of them 10 different ways with no new insight ever offered.

[Veda Massanari-Thatcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned some interesting things but overall it felt like a bunch of short passages about types of loss and people who experienced it - not what I was looking for

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I've read & talked about grief too much, but this felt like nothing new was explored here.