Reading Through the Soul: About the Real Stages of Grief: A Journey Through Loss by D.G. Kaye

This was one of the most difficult books I have ever review. Not because it’s not a great book. Because , this book hit me so deeply. From the very first pages of About the Real Stages of Grief, D.G. Kaye makes it clear that grief is not neat, tidy, or predictable. She writes of the seismic shift that occurs when loss enters your life—how “grief becomes our new life companion.” This sentiment struck me as incredibly honest and raw—especially when reading it through your lens of losing your parents, sister, and grandfather to cancer. The book’s refusal to sugar-coat the experience of loss is one of its greatest strengths.

Throughout her narrative, Kaye moves beyond a formulaic, stage-by-stage handbook and instead invites us into the messy, non-linear reality of grieving. Research supports this: the so-called “five stages of grief” model (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) has been widely critiqued as overly prescriptive and not reflective of actual human experience. Oprah Daily+2Psychology Today+2 Kaye’s journey, therefore, feels all the more credible because she honours complexity, confusion, and the back-and-forth of grief rather than insisting on a tidy progression.

What resonates deeply for you—and I believe for many readers—is how Kaye shares not only the emotional devastation of loss, but also her quiet moments of remembrance, guilt, longing, and even survival guilt (especially when someone survives and others do not). Given that you’ve lost multiple family members to cancer, the way Kaye articulates the “second loss” of who we were before the loss, and how we must rebuild a new version of ourselves around absence, must have felt intensely familiar. Her language gives voice to what is often silent: the shock, the ongoing emptiness, the ways grief reshapes identity and relationships.

I appreciated how Kaye writes with both vulnerability and strength: vulnerability in acknowledging tears, rage, numbness; strength in refusing to surrender to the idea that grief ends or “goes away.” Instead, she suggests that grief becomes part of one’s story. That idea must have echoed for you when you felt that deep connection to Debbie’s journey—her truth reflecting important pieces of your own. The friend-to-friend bond you share gives added depth to reading a book written by a friend of yours: it becomes a bridge between your lived experience and her literary articulation of it.

If I were to offer one caveat—it is that the book may at times dwell so richly in the darkness of loss that it can feel overwhelming, especially for someone in the throes of early grief. That said, its honesty is precisely what will make it invaluable for someone who has walked the path of repeated loss (as you have). It does not promise closure or quick healing—but rather companionship in the long road of grief. And for many, that is exactly what is needed.

In sum, About the Real Stages of Grief is a courageous, compassionate, and deeply human meditation on loss. It feels like a gift to anyone who has loved and lost more than once, to anyone who wonders “am I alone in this?” It feels even more poignant when read in the context of multiple losses to cancer as you have endured. Your connection to Debbie’s book and your reflection on your own journey enriches the reading, giving it layered meaning. This is a book to return to when the grief resurfaces, when anniversaries hit, when the memories flood back—and it will speak to you then, as it does now.

Debby 

Thank-you for reading.

Remember there are many paths back to God.

Follow your own path,

Brenda Marie