Guide to Grief

Learning to Grieve: Through the Tunnel, with Barthes’ Mourning Diary

By Arpita Das Joan Didion writes that grieving is an experience, but mourning is work, and she could not have said it better. Grieving is certainly something one goes through, one experiences, one gives in to, one has to submit…

Mental Health and Books

Learning to Grieve with Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking

By Arpita Das Grief lives in the body, someone said. After my father’s death I began to understand what that insightful set of words meant. At inopportune moments, especially in a closed room with several people, I would feel my…

Grief Photo

Covid-19 and You: Grief, Mental Health and Julian Barnes’ Nothing to Be Frightened Of

By Arpita Das We are being told by mental health practitioners and armchair experts time and again as the pandemic rages that what we are feeling right now, this heaviness, the lassitude, the pain in our gut, is grief. As…