Overview

What does it mean to live without the person you loved most? In The Sum of Grief, chaplain and grief counselor Jessica Shannon explores the quiet arithmetic of loss-the calculations we make when we measure our days against the absence of someone who shaped them. Drawing from her own experience of losing her mother at seventeen and years of walking alongside the grieving, Shannon offers a framework that validates what so many feel but rarely hear spoken aloud: grief isn't a problem to solve. It's the proof of how deeply we loved.

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9781972806005

Table of Contents

Reviews

""The Sum of Grief perfectly captures all of the love, longing, loss, and confusion that comes with losing a mother during the teenage years. Jessica Shannon's exploration of Grief Math is one of the best I've encountered, showing us how the loss of a mother when you're young can radiate forward in consistently new and unexpected ways. This is a beautiful book."" - Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters ""Grief bends time in the most curious way. As a fellow member of ""the worst club you never want to join,"" I met Jessica at a chaplain's conference less than a year after my own mother, a fellow Deborah, died far too soon. In The Sum of Grief, Shannon, a pediatric chaplain spiritual play expert, explores the sacred and unsettling moment when the living reach the age their parent never passed. Drawing on her own loss and years of compassionate ministry with children and families, she names the existential questions that surface for the bereaved at this threshold. This book is a wise and tender companion for anyone learning to live with this peculiar arithmetic. As one who has benefited from her companionship along this journey, I am deeply grateful and delighted to see her insight shared with the wider world."" - Carrie Nettles, M.Div., BCC, Motherless Daughter and Chaplain at the Julie Valentine Center

Author Information

Jessica is a board-certified chaplain and writer from Houston, TX, and now resides in Magnolia, one of Houston's suburbs. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Sweet Briar College and her Master of Divinity from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Jessica is passionate about grief education, family-centered bereavement support, and spiritual play. She has written articles for condolence sites and equestrian magazines. Jessica has a chapter in an upcoming anthology of pediatric chaplaincy case studies in which she demonstrates the use of bibliotherapy in caring for terminally ill childhood cancer patients. Jessica believes that her calling in chaplaincy and writing is to find hope in a mess, whatever that mess may be. She finds hope in exploring with her Boston Terrier, Stewie, seeing life between the ears of her thoroughbred, Gunner, and supporting Arsenal FC. Follow along with Jessica's writing on grief at hopeinamess.substack.com. She also has an Instagram account dedicated to grief education and support, and she can be followed there @hopeinamess.

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