Everyone grieves differently. There's no right way and there's no wrong way. However, what I learned while putting together our new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Grieving, Loss and Healing, is that there are ways to help manage grief and the loneliness that follows.

This new collection of inspirational and compassionate stories will help you cope with loss, regain your strength, and yes, find joy in life again. These stories provide powerful messages of resilience and hope.

Here are previews of two of my favorite stories from the book that offer advice on how to take one step at a time on the never-ending journey of managing grief:

Sometimes a good chat with a stranger is just what you need.
In Jamie Korf’s story, I Was Somebody's Sister, Jamie's Uber driver asked if she had any siblings, she was hit once again with her grief and her confusion as well: Was she an only child now that her brother was gone? Could she still say she had a sibling?

Jamie decided to answer with a full explanation—her brother had died a few months ago. There was a stunned silence and then the driver started talking. He had lost his son and his wife. Jamie and the driver cried and gave each other advice, doing their best to comfort each other.

Jamie says, “This special stranger sat in my pain with me, as I sat in his for twenty whole minutes.”

Look for the simple, social pleasures.
In her story, The Presence of Absence, Barbara Rady Kazdan tells us after her husband died the "quiet" that engulfed her house had become an unsettling daily companion. She hadn't realized her marriage shielded her from silence.

Barbara says, "My husband and I were a tiny community unto ourselves. In his absence, quiet descended."

Barbara soon realized she was going to need to escape the silence of solitude, now made worse with the pandemic. Eventually, she pushed herself out of the house, emerging from the darkness of solitude, and found joy with simple social pleasures—lunching with friends, chatting with neighbors, and joining book clubs and writing workshops! Barbara closes her story with: "And, once again, taking to the sky, melting into the arms of family, and savoring the sounds of lively households before returning to the silence at home."