Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourner's Guide to Grief

A practical, compassionate guide to sibling loss, with research, stories, and strategies for “forgotten mourners” as they move through the stages of grief towards finding meaning.

"Orenstein shares with us a powerful, universal, and uplifting truth: that death is not the end of our story, nor does it sever the connection and love we feel with the most important people in our life.” -Kate Spencer, author of The Dead Moms Club and Co-Host of the Forever35 podcast

After her brother was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, Annie Sklaver Orenstein was heartbroken and unmoored. Standing in the grief section of her local bookstore, she searched for guides on how to work through her grief as a mourning sibling―and found nothing. More than 4 million American adults each year will lose a sibling, yet there isn't a modern resource guide available that speaks directly to this type of grief that at times can be overshadowed by grieving parents and spouses and made even more difficult by the complexities of sibling dynamics.

In Always a Sibling, Annie uses her own story and those of others to create the empathic, thoughtful, practical resource that she sought. Divided into three sections: With, Without, and Within, it creates a framework that enables the reader to ground themselves in order to process and validate this often overlooked grief. Annie guides readers to capture the memories and emotions of life with their now deceased sibling, then moves to addressing the grieving process in detail as they navigate life without them. Ultimately, readers will find ways to experience their sibling's presence within themselves and acknowledge their legacy.

With practical strategies rooted in proven grief processing techniques, trauma recovery, and psychoanalysis, Always A Sibling truly supports mourners through the unique experience of sibling loss.

Annie Sklaver Orenstein is a qualitative researcher, oral historian, and storyteller who has spent over a decade collecting stories from people around the world on behalf of companies including Google, Viacom, Mattel, Instagram, Facebook, Pfizer, Netflix, Johnson & Johnson, and more. Her work has been featured on NBC Nightly News, Comedy Central, Huffington Post, Politico, TIME and Mother.ly. In 2020, driven by a desire to share these stories beyond the walls of corporate America, Annie founded Dispatch from Daybreak, a collection of letters written by womxn to their earlier selves. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, children, dog, and chickens.