The Shape of Grief is a poetic narrative of widowhood. It begins with a definition of widowhood and goes on to expresses its spiral shape: deep grief, initial lessening, sinking back, rising and sinking over and over. But each stage widens one's perception of all reality even as it increases one's compassion for all suffering. This is a book conceived during intense suffering after the death of a spouse, charting the course of grief through its varied shadows into the kind of peace that acceptance ultimately brings. It has brought comfort to people captured by that kind of grief and a source of information to those who see it on the horizon.