The Grieving Body
How the Stress of Loss Can Be an Opportunity for Healing
HarperCollins · Print & ebook · February 11, 2025
The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr.
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- Who it’s for
- A spare, thoughtful look at how loss lands in the body—and what healing can mean.
- Genres
- Grief & Loss, Mental Health
- Published
- HarperCollins, February 11, 2025
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Start with this bookAbout this book
The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body. Coping with death and grief is one of the most painful human experiences. While we can speak to the psychological and emotional ramifications of loss and sorrow, we often overlook its impact on our physical bodies.
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Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor specializes in the study of grief, and in The Grieving Body she shares vital scientific research, revealing imperative new insights on its profound physiological impact. As she did in The Grieving Brain, O’Connor combines illuminating studies and personal stories to explore the toll loss takes on our cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems and the larger implications for our long-term well-being. The Grieving Body addresses questions about how bereavement affects us, such as: - Can we die of a broken heart? - What happens in our bodies when we’re grieving? - How do our coping behaviors affect our physical health? - What is the cognitive impact of grief? - Why are we more prone to illness during times of enormous stress? - and more Research-backed, warm, and empathetic, The Grieving Body is an essential, hopeful read for those experiencing loss as well as their supportive friends and family. The Grieving Body is illustrated with black-and-white charts and graphs.
Body and Grief
A spare, thoughtful look at how loss lands in the body—and what healing can mean.
Come here for
- grief and the body, held together
- a health-science lens on healing
Expect
- clear, medically inflected language
- emotion and physiology kept in view
Where it sits
| Grief & Loss | 57% |
|---|---|
| Mental Health | 27% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Grief & Loss
- Caregiving
- Inspiration & Personal Growth
- Social Psychology
Show all 7 publisher categories
- Science & Society
- Neuroscience
- Ethics in Science
- Authors
- Mary-Frances O'Connor, HarperOne
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Published
- February 11, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Grief & Loss