Why We Wrote The First Year After Loss

When life knocks us down, most of us have ways of coping. We lean on the people we trust. We throw ourselves into work for a while. We exercise. We spend time with friends. We distract ourselves with hobbies. We remind ourselves of other difficult things we've survived and draw confidence from knowing we've gotten through hard times before. We rely on routines and familiar structures to create a sense of stability while life feels uncertain.

Then a significant loss occurs, and suddenly, the life we knew how to navigate no longer exists.

The person we would normally call may be the very person who died. Friends and family are often grieving too, leaving them with less capacity to support us in the ways they once did. The hobbies and interests that used to bring comfort can suddenly feel meaningless. Our routines change because the life those routines were built around no longer exists. Even our confidence in ourselves can take a hit as we struggle with forgetfulness, indecision, exhaustion, and a complete lack of motivation.

In other words, loss doesn't simply create pain. It destabilizes many of the systems we would normally rely upon to recover from pain.

We think this is one of the reasons the first year after loss feels so bewildering. People often come into grief believing they are mourning one person, only to discover they are also grieving a future they expected to have, a role they once occupied, a sense of security, familiar routines, important relationships, and even parts of themselves. They find themselves struggling with things that used to come naturally and wondering why they can't seem to "get it together." What they don't realize is that they are trying to adapt to an entirely new reality while many of the supports that would normally help them adapt have changed or disappeared.

This is also why so many grieving people ask the same questions. Why am I so tired? Why can't I concentrate? Why do I feel worse now than I did three months ago? Why don't I enjoy anything anymore? Why do I feel so disconnected from everyone around me? Beneath all of those questions is often a deeper one: Is this normal?

After hearing those questions for years, we began talking about how difficult it can be for grieving people to find straightforward, practical information during the time they need it most. The irony, of course, is that grief itself affects concentration, memory, motivation, and the ability to absorb information. People are desperate to understand what is happening to them at exactly the same time they are least able to read a dense book or sort through complicated explanations.

That realization became the foundation for our GRIEF Brain Reader Series, a collection of books on grief and life after loss designed specifically for people whose worlds have been forever changed. We wanted these books to be practical, accessible, and easy to return to—offering information, reassurance, and guidance without requiring the focus, energy, or emotional bandwidth that grief often takes away.

That conversation eventually became The First Year After Loss: A GRIEF Ladies Guide to Everything You Need to Know. We wanted to create the book we wished every grieving person had during those early months—the book that explains not only what grief is, but why it feels so hard. A book that helps people understand the exhaustion, the fog, the loneliness, the identity changes, the relationship challenges, and the countless secondary losses that often accompany the death of someone important.

No book can remove the pain of grief. No book can tell someone exactly what their experience will look like. But we do believe that understanding matters. There is comfort in learning that what feels frightening is often normal. There is relief in discovering that other people have struggled with the same thoughts, questions, and fears. There is tremendous value in realizing that the exhaustion, confusion, forgetfulness, loneliness, and sense of being completely unlike yourself are experiences shared by many grieving people.

The first year after loss asks an enormous amount of us. It asks us to carry heartbreak while adapting to change. It asks us to learn new routines, navigate unfamiliar emotions, and make sense of a world that no longer looks the way we expected it to. We hope this book helps people feel less confused, less alone, and better equipped to understand what is happening to them as they find their way through one of the most difficult years of their lives.

The First Year of Loss will be available on Amazon on Tuesday, June 16th. Want to hear more about why we are starting with this book, check out: https://youtu.be/Nfz8_vQbWck?si=qkVHy8ivBGEirpnS