Recommended Book on Grief

As Long As You Need, by J.S. Park

J.S. Park has long shifts as an interfaith chaplain at a 1,000 bed hospital in Tampa, a health care facility that is also a designated Level 1 Trauma center. Yet, at the end of most shifts, he’ll write down just a few notes. Thank goodness he did…and does…for they led to this gift of a book.

I highly recommend it for the shelves of pastors, parish nurses, Stephen Ministers, chaplains and grief counselors. He has been present hundreds of times when people learn that their loved one has died. He has sat in the room as they said goodbye to their loved one’s physical body, saying, “Take all the time you need.” He has witnessed parents who learn that their children have died by overdose or in accidents.

Park weaves in his own stories of childhood trauma, his wife’s postpartum depression, their struggles to receive help gracefully.

He writes with empathy about how he has helped those in the hospital in all kinds of life situations: the unhoused, those with mental health diagnoses, those facing discrimination. He’s theologically astute, self-aware, and writes with subtlety rather than certainty - keenly acknowledging that grief is intensely personal.