You Are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd. No Advance Reader Copy included. No affiliate links used. Read my full disclosure policy here.
“...WAIT A GRIEVING MINUTE — WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH GRIEF?
Yeah, exactly my bloody thought. This theory has nothing to do with grieving. It is about the dying.”
This book! I want to press a copy of You Are Not Alone into the hands of everyone, whether you are grieving or not. For griefsters (as grievers are affectionately called on the Griefcast), it’s a comforting hug from someone who is, as Cariad Lloyd describes herself, “a long-term member of ‘the club’.” For people who are not grieving, it’s an insightful examination of grief and all its messiness, the “grief-mess”, to use Lloyd’s words.
As with her podcast Griefcast, Lloyd has created a space to hold people’s grief stories and experiences. A space full of warmth, grace, and humour. Cariad is a comedian, so I mean it when I say they are funnier than you’d expect discussions of grief to be! It is also a brilliantly written memoir meets grief manifesto.
I loved hearing about Peter, Cariad’s dad, who died when she was fifteen. The snippets of conversations with people Lloyd interviewed on the Griefcast show the many ways people mourn and remember their loved ones.
I read parts of it out loud to P, telling him this is my favourite grief book. This sounds weird, but I have read a lot of grief books, so I stand by my assessment! I shouted, “fucking yes!” so forcefully while reading the sections on how grieving isn’t linear and the five stages of grief are lying to us that I startled Arwen (the dog!)
Given the grief-mess it is understandable that we, as a society, want grief to come with rules, but as Lloyd emphasises, you are not doing grief wrong because there is no correct way to grieve.
Grief is shit, and it changes you, but you will learn to live alongside it. Lloyd’s grief is different from mine, and my grief will be different from yours. In sharing our experiences, we remind each other that “you are not alone”.
You Are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd is published by Bloomsbury Tonic and is available in hardback, ebook, and audiobook format.
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