The Other side of sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss. George A Bonanno

Implicit within its content is the desire to dispel the “folk wisdom” that

grief should involve “grief work” and exclusively involve negative

emotions. Drawing upon a lifetime’s of work, Bonanno expertly weaves

the evidence to shed new light on commonly held misconceptions to

show that we can experience positivity in grief and that this is perfectly

natural. Evidence demonstrates that grieving most commonly involves

“oscillations”- movement between moments of retrospective sadness

and anger to other more positive and forward-looking perspectives.

However, it is not Bonnano’s intellect and comprehensive professional

experience that makes this book stand out. It is how the dynamic shifts;

from all the trappings of science, experience, empiricism and

rationalism, the book suddenly flips to the consideration of the afterlife

and how we honour the dead. A continual motif emerges: “rituals

change people”. It’s a remarkable change in dynamic and gave me

goose pumps. In Bonanno’s case this involved going to a temple in

Hong Kong, burning and an offering and speaking to his deceased

father. We learn there is so much to grief and how we can experience

loss healthily.