Walking through a used bookstore in Portland showed me something about how people cope

I was browsing the 'grief and loss' shelf at Powell's last Tuesday and noticed almost every single book had handwritten notes in the margins from previous readers. Do you think folks leave those messages because they're looking for connection or just trying to make sense of things on their own?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota4792d ago

Powell's has a whole shelf for grief and loss? That's three aisles down from where I usually browse, and I never noticed it before. Those margin notes sound intense, like people leaving breadcrumbs for each other in the dark. I bet it's a mix of both wanting connection and just needing to get the words out on paper.

jamieburns1d ago

Man I feel this so hard. I actually picked up a used copy of "A Grief Observed" from that very shelf last month and someone had underlined the line "We were just starting to figure out how to be married" and wrote "SAME" in the margin with a little frowny face. It hit me like a truck because here's this stranger basically saying yeah me too, and it's the most honest thing I've read all year. But then there was another copy next to it where someone had just scribbled "help" over and over on the title page, and I wanted to hug whoever that was. It's weird how you can feel less alone by reading some random person's bad handwriting in a book you're probably never gonna finish anyway. Honestly the fact that Powell's even has a designated grief section makes me feel seen in a way that's kind of embarrassing to admit out loud.