The Sum of Grief: A Daughter's Memoir

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.______________________________PRAISE FOR THE SUM OF GRIEF“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 Edleman, Author of 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 and 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 companionfor 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 Read more