As we continue The Healing Shelf, we return to the quiet power of stories that meet grief where it lives. This series was created to hold space for books that acknowledge the depth and tenderness of loss. Through shared reflections and lived experiences, we hope these pages offer comfort, understanding, and moments of connection, gentle reminders that grief does not have to be carried alone.
We are grateful to Lisa Reit, a writer who has become an integral part of ourGive Grief a Voice program, for sharing her time and heart to write the second book review in The Healing Shelf series. Below, she offers her reflections on Things in Nature Merely Growby Yiyun Li.
“There is no good way to say this,” Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book.
“There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged … My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.”
There is no good way to say this—because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, “a single point in a time line.” Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: doing “things that work,” including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death.
Li lost both of her teenage sons to suicide. In the face of this, she adopted what she calls “radical acceptance.” In an interview on NPR, Li defined this philosophy as: “Radical acceptance to me means this is. This is it. I accept I lost my children in this manner, and nothing I say or do or don’t say or don’t do will change that fact.”
I deeply admired this unique take on child loss. So often, we use words like “unimaginable” and “incomprehensible” to describe it. Li purports a different way of continuing to live after the death of her children.
Li’s tone is academic and cerebral which does not mean it lacks heart. This book concerns itself with the highest stakes: life and death.
My favorite quote from this book is “My garden is not a metaphor for hope or regeneration, the flowers are never tasked to be the heralds for brightness and optimism. Things in nature merely grow. There is no suicidal or angry rose, there is no depressed or rebellious lily. Plants have but one goal: to live. In order to live they grow where they can, and go into dormancy if needed. They live until they die – and either they die as destined by nature or are cut down by other elements in nature. A garden is a placeholder. Flowers are placeholders.”
The ideal reader for this book would be those affected by child loss and/or suicide or anyone affected by the death of someone they love.
Star Rating: 
If you would like to purchase this book, please consider doing so through our Bookshop.org profile. Buzzy’s will receive a small portion of the proceeds. https://bookshop.org/a/112552/9780374617318