Grief. It's a feeling that puts a stop to one's routine and may change his or her life forever. No one understands this feeling like someone who has experienced it firsthand having lost a dear loved one. Ayodele Alabi, the author of Happiest Girl in the Room, pours out the feeling and loads of advice for the bereaved as well as their friends and associates in her candid book.
A difficult experience to define, grief varies from one person to another. Despite the wide range of emotions that characterise grief, it is not far-fetched to find a bereaved person depressed, angry, confused, lost, or even suicidal. Meanwhile, the author also points to a different kind--a high-functioning grief. With this type of grief, the bereaved performs daily tasks with heightened efficiency, having buried the feeling of sadness, albeit prematurely. She explains the danger of self-restraint against grieving and the impact of therapy on fast-tracking the long, winding road to recovery.
The 206-page book has great readability with its great spacing, bold font, and the author's use of simple language. A faith-based literary effort, the author recounts in the book her personal journey into recovery from the grief of losing her husband just after five years of marriage and as a nursing mother of two. Despite facing challenges on her grief journey, she showed uncommon understanding of a variety of people and how their behaviours towards a bereaved person. Copying copiously from some biblical verses, Alabi finds the scriptural basis for her viewpoint on grief. In details, she explains what she learnt through therapy in an effort to show that even in the presence of faith, a grieved person can still seek the right medical attention while negotiating a life of grief, especially from a sudden loss of a loved one.
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She analyses the feeling of grief even from the post-funeral perspective. Leaning on her past experience of grief, she offers powerful lessons to any reader who is willing to work his or her way from the process of grief to a state of acceptance.
Happiest Girl in the Room may be classified as a self-help book, raising awareness about the complexity of grief and possible ways of overcoming it. Of course, reading with an open mind may be more beneficial than using a critical lens to evaluate it. To be sure, the writing style oscillates from prose to poetry with the infusion of songs and poetic verses. In a non-judgemental tone, the author dissects the human mind in assessing the reaction of others to grief. This is perhaps the greatest expression of a generously forgiving spirit. Possibly, writing about her grief experience may well be a self-employed therapy to distil the pain of the loss of her husband. She encourages others to write about their loss to achieve some measure of healing, which is the ultimate goal of this self-help book. A digestible read, Happiest Girl in the Room is a piece that will appeal to a wide range of readers.
