Renegade Grief: A Guide to the Wild Ride of Life after Loss

From grief quests to altar-making, to dinner parties to Dungeons & Dragons, Renegade Grief is an “offering to the struggle and art of being human” (Krista Tippett, New York Times bestselling author) and a profound, vulnerable exploration of care practices and rituals that empower grievers in a culture that expects us to simply “give it time.”

So, you’ve lost someone. At first, there is an outpour of support and phone calls and care packages. But after the services are done and the phone stops ringing, there is a quiet in the air and an expectation to get on with your life. The problem is that death has a way of making all plans go out the window. Renegade Grief offers the support in this next stage of grieving—when you feel isolated in your loss and are figuring out how to navigate it.

Shaped by her own experience with the death of her father and her time cofounding The Dinner Party, a leading peer-support organization for people who’ve experienced a major loss, Carla Fernandez pushes back on the death-denying culture we live in. For too long, grief has been treated as something pitiable, simply sad, to be gotten over as soon as possible. But after fifteen years of being in a community with fellow grievers, Carla has witnessed a different side of the story. Grieving a significant loss is hardcore, hardly something to be swept under the rug, but an experience to be held with respect, a creative spirit, and with friends. Through inspiring stories of real grievers, patterns from across history, and fresh science, Renegade Grief enlivens you with the permission and possibility to explore your grief in your own unique way and reminds you that you’re not alone in doing it.

Renegade Grief is an indispensable resource for people at any stage of the grieving process and with Carla’s candid and compassionate guidance, you learn that life after loss isn’t about the futile attempt of arriving at some other side. Rather, it’s about building your community, adjusting to change, and finding the way for your grief to become a pathway into your own version of a soulful life.

Carla Fernandez is a writer, facilitator, and community builder who brings people together to navigate challenges and reimagine what comes next. After experiencing social isolation following her father’s death, she cofounded The Dinner Party, a national network of peer-support circles for young adult grievers that brought together over 20,000 participants, featured in The New York Times, NPR, and Oprah Daily, and cited in multiple books. Beyond her work in grief, she is a strategist supporting communities working on issues related to democracy, climate change, and the arts. She is a senior fellow with USC’s Annenberg School Innovation Lab and a Catherine B. Reynolds Scholar in Social Entrepreneurship at NYU. She divides her time between the Hudson Valley and New York City.