First, I want to thank the author for the work that he does and his openness and vulnerability in writing this book. In late 2020/early 2021, I lost 3 of my grandparents within a 3 month span. At the time, I had no idea how to process that loss within such a short time span and to this day it is difficult to grasp. I found comfort during this book reading the many different experiences of loss and how there is no one way to grieve. I love that the author encourages us as a society to be more open about death and grief and stop treating it like it is a topic to dance around. I also strongly agree with being open and honest with children about death instead of using euphemisms. It certainly does not serve children in the long run to shelter them from the realities of life which includes death.

Sadly, I have to say this book did become quite repetitive at times. Some variation of the phrase "holding space" or "creating space" appeared over 100 times throughout the book. The takeaways after the different stories of loss also became repetitive as there are really only so many ways of saying "support people in the way that they need." I also really wish the author had delved more deeply into the topic of the Black community and grief. It felt extremely surface level and didn't examine the ways that systemic racism, generational trauma, and disparities in health care has impacted the Black community and their relationship with death/grief. It stated that those things affect the Black community, but didn't delve any further than that. I expected it to factor much more into the book as the description on GoodReads strongly focuses on this as the driving theme. In reality, only one chapter in the book really addressed this issue and cited only one fact relating to black patients receiving less effective pain management than white patients. I think further examination of these issues would have led to a more compelling read.

That being said, I'm very appreciative of the work the author does to be with people during some of the hardest moments of their life. It is certainly not something a lot of people would be handle over and over again. Thank you very much for early access to this book.