An Illustrated Field Guide to Loss
A large-format illustrated hardcover, 250 spreads, an art book, field guide, and ritual companion in one, for remembering, creating, and carrying love with you.
For new grief, old grief, and the love that never left.
Death didn’t end the relationship, it only changed its address.
A limited first printing, numbered, packed, and sealed by one pair of hands.
Be among the first to hold it.
illustrated essays · rituals · playlists · field notes · creative invitations · grief research · botanical folklore · symbolic artwork · journaling space · room to sketch, collage, and create.
It becomes a different book each time you return.
Tap any page to read it.
The same devotion, in four forms. Choose the one that fits how you carry them.
The field guide.
$88
The book and its curated playlist, a large-format illustrated hardcover, 250 illustrated spreads of loss, remembrance, and the life that continues alongside it.
Limited first printing · not print-on-demand · free U.S. shipping.
The complete keepsake experience.
$150
The hardcover book · fine-liner pens · candle · sun catcher · relic cards · wax-sealed letter · velvet ribbon bookmark · notebook, in a wooden keepsake box.
Assembled and sealed by hand · free U.S. shipping.
The heirloom edition.
$240 · numbered
Everything in The Cabinet, plus: signed & numbered first edition · paints and brushes · seeds to plant · sage stick · expanded relic cards · collector’s keepsake object.
Made to order · free U.S. shipping.
The full circle.
$599
Everything in The Reliquary, plus a full prepaid year of the Remembership.
A little less than buying the two apart · free U.S. shipping.
Every edition includes the book’s curated playlist, made to be played alongside it.
Free U.S. shipping, first printing packed and sent by hand, shipping by the end of August.
Sending it as a gift? I’ll include a handwritten card at no extra charge. Choose one of my thoughtfully written messages, personalize it, or write your own. Sometimes the hardest part is finding the words, I’ll help with that.
The art book itself, 250 illustrated spreads of loss, remembrance, and the life that continues alongside it.
For writing, sketching, and making the pages your own.
A prism to catch light and hang where you need it most.
A slow-burning candle for quiet evenings, rituals, or reflection.
A collection of keepsake prints inspired by memory, nature, and the Apothetree.
A sealed letter to open whenever the time feels right.
To mark the pages you’ll return to.
For the words that need their own page.
The home it all arrives in, made to be kept.
My mom died suddenly. On Sunday she was laughing. By Monday morning she was gone.
I was thirty-six, raising a young family, and somehow the world expected life to continue as though nothing essential had changed. The text messages stopped. I kept bumping into ordinary moments that used to belong to us.
As the years passed, people stopped saying her name. I never did. I still talked to her while driving. While painting a room. While planting flowers. While making decisions I wished I could still ask her about. Sometimes her presence felt so close that I stopped telling anyone about it.
I wasn’t looking for answers. I was looking for a place where my love could still exist. So I began making one.
Velvet Grief is part illustrated field guide, part journal, part ritual companion, and part secret garden. It was designed to give grief somewhere to go. These pages invite you to slow down, create, remember, listen, write, wander, and simply feel. Through music, art, science, ritual, philosophy, and creativity, they gently peel back the layers grief asks us to wear.
Every reader will walk a different path. The playlists, rituals, artwork, reflections, and quiet corners become unique to you and the person you love.
This is not a book to finish. It is a place to return to.
If you’ve ever felt like everyone else moved on while you were still carrying someone with you, I hope you find a place to rest here.
With you always, Erica
Payment is handled by Stripe. Your statement will read VELVET GRIEF.
The price shown is the price paid, no fee appears at checkout. First printing ships by the end of August; you’ll hear from me the moment yours is on its way.
Sending it as a gift? Choose one of my messages, personalize it, or write your own at checkout.
For anyone carrying someone they still love. Whether your loss is recent or decades old, expected or sudden, quiet or complicated, Velvet Grief offers a place to remember, create, write, and return whenever you need it. Velvet Grief was made by a woman, for women moving through loss, though it’s been kept close by anyone carrying someone they love.
Both. Velvet Grief is a large-format art book filled with essays, artwork, rituals, reflections, playlists, creative invitations, and generous space to write, sketch, collage, and make it your own.
Velvet Grief is in its limited first printing now. Reserve your copy and it will be on its way to you by the end of August, each order packed, sealed, and sent by hand, with free shipping always. You’ll get a note the moment yours ships.
Every page of Velvet Grief was created by me.
I wrote it, designed it, and independently published it, choosing every word, illustration, playlist, and detail with care. The artwork was created through a collaborative process using AI as one of many creative tools, then refined, edited, and curated page by page until it felt true to the world of the book.
Every order is packed by hand by one real person... me.
There is no warehouse. No fulfillment center. Most days you’ll find scattered pages, ribbon, wax seals, and shipping boxes slowly taking over my guest room, which has quietly become a tiny publishing house.
Sometimes there’s a pressed flower tucked inside. Sometimes a single chocolate. Every package is assembled with the same care I’d give a gift for someone I love.
When you order from Velvet Grief, you’re buying directly from the person who made it. You’re helping one person keep making beautiful things for people who need them.
Yes. Velvet Grief was created to be given as thoughtfully as it is received, and I’ll help you find the words. At checkout you can choose one of my handwritten card messages, personalize it, or write your own.
When someone you love is grieving, you want to fix it, and you can’t. This is the next best thing, and it might be the better thing: you can hand them somewhere to keep loving them, out loud, with people who get it.
Give the book and a full year inside the Remembership, in a single gift. You’re not sending “sorry for your loss.” You’re telling them their person still gets to be spoken about, out loud, all year, and that they never have to do it alone. That is a rare thing to be able to give someone.
$517 · paid once, never billed again
You pay once and you’re done, no recurring charge to you, ever. Your gift includes a redemption link; she activates her year in her own time, on her own card, and nothing bills her until the gifted year ends. After it, her membership continues at $39/month only if she chooses to keep it.
Begin somewhere smaller. Enter The Shore, a free guided journey through one room of Velvet Grief, read aloud. Leave your email and it begins at once.