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Jane has a Master of Fine Arts from UC Davis, teaches at OLLI, and offers one-on-one coaching in writing craft. She is the author of the art illuminated memoir, The Fine Art of Grieving, published by Linen Press Books, 2024. Her has co-authored books, My Dead, Kelsey Books, 2024, and Prayers for Morning, (to be released November 2024). Jane lives in Moss Landing with her husband and poodle, Oliver (as in Mary Oliver).
Reviewed by Scarlett Jensen for Readers' Favorite
In 1998 Nanda, Jane Edberg's son of 19, was pronounced dead on the railroad tracks. This compelled Jane to write a memoir about her unconventional path through grief using the profound transformative power of art. She mapped Nanda’s life and death, showing the beauty and the unraveling of his life at its end. She used her art techniques to create images with art on subjects suggesting loss, a peek into memory, and metaphoric narratives to illustrate painful stories about a childhood gone wrong. To honor grief is vital to living. With a renewed sense of purpose, she vowed to continue making and sharing the fine art of grieving. Art, the making and unmaking, creating, imagining, and dreaming, helped her to investigate and solve problems while developing, sustaining, and honoring her authentic self. The memoir reveals that understanding, love, and compassion are healing. Art is more powerful than death. Love and art transform and outlast grief.
Jane’s internal dialogue, thoughts, and pages with drawings, which she later tore to shreds, did not stop her from drawing more to express her deepest emotions and efforts to resuscitate life, prepare for change, and embrace acceptance. The Fine Art of Grieving by Jane Edberg is a literary and artistic work that will change your outlook on grief, art, and what it means to be human. Her memoir is a masterful exploration and depiction of her pain and despair in equal balance with the exquisite beauty of the human experience that became an accomplishment for her as a human being. It is a memoir of required reading for professionals in the field of dying, death, and bereavement. More importantly, her book is a must-read for anyone, as we will all, at some point, experience traumatic loss and grief. Jane’s words and images offer us hope as she leads us through a transformative healing process by her example.
