Learn to grieve out loud, and discover why mourning is the deepest praise we can offer our love.

'Beautifully written and wise … [Prechtel] offers stories that are precious and life-sustaining. Read carefully, and listen deeply.'—Mary Oliver, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner

Our culture treats grief as a problem to manage: private, quiet, and over as quickly as possible. Martín Prechtel spent decades as a shaman and village leader among the Tzutujil Maya of Santiago Atitlán, and shares a different way to relate to and embody our grief: Grief, he writes, is not depression or a disorder. It is an active, sacred art and the natural partner of praise, and it measures how deeply we have loved.

Prechtel draws on Maya village life, Southwestern Pueblo traditions, and stories from his own youth to explore what happens when loss goes unexpressed. It can settle into families for generations, harden into revenge, or feed cycles of war. He also shows how grief that is given its full voice can become generosity, beauty, and a renewed love of being alive. You’ll learn:


- Why a newborn’s first cry is both a song of grief and a song of praise
- How unmourned loss passes through family lines, and why the “troubled” relative often carries it
- A ritual for grieving at the ocean, with a trusted friend as witness
- Reflections on war, money, revenge, animals, and losing a limb, all seen through the lens of grief
- Ways to turn sorrow into craft, creativity, and praise


This book is for anyone carrying a loss with no place to put it, or anyone who has been told to just “get over it.” It is a wise, poetic companion that honors grief as one of the oldest ways we have of loving the world. Grief expressed out loud for someone we have lost, or a country or home we have lost, is in itself the greatest praise we could ever give them. Grief is praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses.