Claire Bidwell Smith
Claire Bidwell Smith (born May 21, 1978) is an American therapist and author who specializes in grief. She is known for her memoir, The Rules of Inheritance, as well as her books After This: When Life is Over, Where Do We Go? and Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief. Smith draws on the personal loss of both of her parents and on her profession as a grief counselor to help others navigate grief and healing. Early life and education Claire Bidwell Smith's parents were diagnosed with cancer within months of each other when she was fourteen. Her mother died when she was eighteen and her father when she was twenty-five. Smith speaks often about how the experiences of their illnesses and subsequent deaths inform the work she does today. She is a graduate of The New School in New York, NY and received a master's in clinical psychology from Antioch University in Los Angeles, CA. Writing Smith's first book, The Rules of Inheritance (Penguin, 2012), is a memoir about losing both of her parents to cancer as a young adult. It was published 2012 and has since been published in 19 countries. It was chosen as a Barnes & Noble