The Road Through Grief: Finding Your Way by Ellen Anne Klein releases ahead of the August 30 observance, giving grieving readers permission to move forward without calling it “moving on”
White Bear Lake, MN—Ahead of National Grief Awareness Day on August 30, author Ellen Anne Klein is releasing The Road Through Grief: Finding Your Way, a memoir-in-verse that follows her first year of widowhood and offers a word many grieving spouses have been searching for.
That word isn’t “widow.” It’s “unsupervised.”
“At some point, the word widow felt too heavy to carry,” Klein writes in the book’s opening chapter. “So, I started thinking of myself differently. Not erased. Not finished. Just unsupervised.”
Written in short, unadorned verse, The Road Through Grief moves through the raw, disorienting months after the death of Klein’s husband, Richard — the mail addressed to him that she couldn’t bring herself to open, the side of the bed she still won’t sleep on, the friends who unknowingly started sentences with “and I” instead of “we.” Klein doesn’t offer a five-stage framework or a recovery timeline. Instead, she offers what she calls “one person telling the truth about what this felt like.”
National Grief Awareness Day, observed each August 30 since 2014, was created to push back against the pressure to grieve quietly and on a schedule. Klein’s book arrives at a moment when that message is resonating widely: grief has become one of the most searched, most discussed topics in personal wellness content, even as most grieving people say they still don’t know what to say when someone asks, “How are you doing?”
Klein answers that question too. “I learned to give answers that were true enough and simple enough to let the conversation move on,” she writes. “Those answers weren’t lies. They just weren’t the whole story.”
Faith is woven throughout: every chapter closes with a scripture verse, and a full chapter, “Faith That Carried Me,” recounts the prayers Klein leaned on while caring for her husband during his illness. A companion set of discussion questions at the end of the book makes it suited for grief support groups, church small groups, and one-on-one counseling settings, in addition to private reading.
About the Book
The Road Through Grief: Finding Your Way
By Ellen Anne Klein
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-966596-41-7
eBook ISBN: 978-1-966596-42-4
Available in paperback and Kindle editions
About the Author
Ellen Anne Klein writes from lived experience rather than clinical expertise. The Road Through Grief is dedicated to her late husband, Richard. She is also the author of the Rooted in Faith series, including Rooted in Faith: Discovering What It Really Means to Know God and Grow with Him and Rooted in Faith: A Teen’s Guide to Getting to Know God and Growing Real Faith.
Media Contact
Ellen Anne Klein
Email: ellenanneklein@outlook.com