The founders of Modern Loss – friends Rebecca Soffer and Gabrielle Birkner – separately experienced sudden and terrible losses early in their adult lives. Now they have come together to create a forum where stories of personal loss benefit both writers and readers. Under the header My Loss, short-form personal essays give a glimpse of unique and universal expressions of the shock, pain, humor and grief that loss provokes.

Modern Loss also provides practical advice on topics that don’t usually find their way into daily conversation such as “How to: Get Dead Relatives #Offline,” “How to: Sort Through What’s Left Behind” and what foods to bring to someone in mourning. Soffer and Birkner’s clear and unsentimental sensibilities leave us a little wiser and less alone in our loss.