Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown: A book about navigating our emotions

At Suicide&Co we’re huge fans of Brené Brown and her work to understand shame, vulnerability and how we can harness difficult emotions for the better. This book is the full monty in that it goes through every emotion commenting on how they can manifest with the belief that the more we understand our emotions and the correct language, the better we can navigate our own emotions and others. 

There is a small section specific to grief but as we know losing a loved one to suicide can trigger a multitude of emotions so we believe that lots of parts of this book are useful to our community, the way Brown writes also makes it a very easy read - taking scientific analysis and making it interesting! 

Brown talks about three foundational elements of grief; loss, longing and feeling lost. She goes on to focus on The Center for Complicated Grief’s definitions of the different types of griefs one can experience; acute, integrate and complicated. Brown also includes the powerful quote below from a conversation she had with David Kessler on her podcast Unlocking Us. 

"Each person's grief is as unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn't mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be fully present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining."

You can dip in and out of reading this as each chapter is focused on a different cluster of emotions, it can also be used as a reference if you’re struggling to navigate your emotions as it can provide clarity and a different perspective.