A book is coming on February 21!
Grief, love + poetry
As I navigated this weird year of job transition, unexpected loss, a surprise ADHD diagnosis and several other twists and turns, I’ve been quietly writing poems about journeying with grief. Specifically the grief of losing a beloved. A couple months ago, I put them together and realized this is a book. An actual book I could put in people’s hands.
So that’s what we’ll do!
I’m profoundly giddy to send this into the world next month. Today, I’d love to tell you a bit about this book and why it means so much to me.
Why write a book about grief?
I used to be someone who avoided grief, hard conversations, and painful feelings as if my life depended on it. Those things felt horrible. Why would someone willingly inhabit those spaces? It made zero sense to me.
Everyone else seemed to avoid those things too. So I joined the crew. I figured out how to act like it didn’t exist. That strategy “worked” for awhile. Until it didn’t. My inner world bubbled to the surface like a volcano about to erupt. Through mental, physical, and emotional challenges, my body sent me a message I could no longer ignore.
There is pain in here and I need you to pay attention. Now.
So I did. I learned that the hardest parts of being human — the fear, the powerlessness, the pain, the anger — just wanted my attention. They needed a listening ear. When they sensed I believed them, they unraveled.
Now I’m that person who makes space every single day to listen to my inner world. To my emotions, the anxious thoughts, the fear, the curiosity, and the joy. I listen to my body and she tells me where it hurts and why. She tells me what she needs and I do my best to respond out of deep love for all the years I ignored her.
It’s been quite a love story.
When 2022 hand delivered me several stories of deep grief, I responded the only way I knew how. I went gently and courageously into the heart of it. Looked it square in the eyes, felt it all, and rode the waves until they set me on firm ground again.
The more I trusted the process, the deeper I could go. There were days my fingers tapped out five or six poems, trying to put this experience into words. Weeks went by without a single new word, just tears and numbness. I learned to accept and honor it. One of my writing intentions is “no violence.” I don’t want to force stories when they’re not ready to be told. No getting angry at words that won’t appear. No violence. I trust the words. They arrive when they’re ready.
In some ways, this body of work swirled around me and came to life through the grief. There was no outline or plan, really. Just a knowing that writing poems about grief, especially in the first year, might be a way for me to meet my pain and my brother in such a beautiful way.
And that happened.
Which is why compiling the poems into a manuscript, inviting friends to edit, read, and illustrate it, and then publishing it so it can arrive in your hands is ridiculous grace. It might sound cheesy, but this body of work feels like my brother’s gift to me. It saved me this year. It gave me somewhere to express the heartbreaking terror of this story. Crafting these images took me deeper into the pain I still wanted to avoid sometimes. Writing it helped me honor my family and they’re tremendous courage. Feeling my way around the words helped me see other stories at play. That somehow, death cannot actually kill love. And the most shocking surprise to me of all — he’s still here.
That’s why I wanted to offer a book about grief.
Why poetry instead of non-fiction?
I thought about writing more of a “how to” book about grief. Honestly, that sounded terrible. Other brilliant people have done and will do that well.
Instead, I knew I could offer one thing that poetry does beautifully. It captures the mundane and magic of daily life. I write about tears in the Costco cheese aisle and putting off the dishes. There are poems about swimming with ashes and learning to smile again. It’s the every-day-ness of grief that feels so relatable. It’s not the high holy milestone days where everyone remembers that you’re going through a thing. It’s the quiet Friday evenings when grief hits all over again while you’re eating pizza. It’s the changing of the seasons and the calendar. It’s the way grief is a tectonic shift underneath it all. It’s seeing their picture and losing your breath for a minute. Poetry captures those moments in ways a “how to” book never quite matches.
Poetry feels accessible in the early months and years of grief, when our brains shut down a bit. I lost my ability to read anything longer than a paragraph for months. Our family passed around grief books and took turns reading a paragraph at a time in our zoom calls because that’s all our brains could absorb. A poem has a way of bypassing our thinking brain and creaking open the door of our heart. Especially when we could use a little nudge. I’m always amazed at the power four lines of words can have in my heart. It touches something I didn’t know was hurting.
It’s a collaborative project
As I compiled the book this fall, I invited people who loved my brother to be illustrators for this project. I’m delighted to share that four of Jeremy’s dear friends and many family members created illustrations for the poems. I trust their love for Jeremy will bring extra magic to this book.
A dear friend of mine served as the editor for this project. She graciously received this body of work and offered helpful feedback. Her love for our family made this project stronger.
Another soul friend of mine wrote the foreward. We’ve walked a road of grief together and her ability to describe that journey is perfect. She sets up this book in such a gentle and gracious way.
Just yesterday, I sent the manuscript to my reading and review team. Fifty plus friends and colleagues who will sit with this project and put into words what they see in the pages. I trust their reviews will help future readers find this project.
I hope this book feels like a love letter to your heart. Especially the places that ache with unshed tears and heavy grief. The places of pain tucked away for years, maybe decades, that long to see the light of day. May these pages feel like a soft place to land.
The details
The book officially launches on Tuesday, February 21! Next week I’ll share the title and reveal the cover. So fun!
I’ll share an exciting update about a book tour and how you can spread the word in your communities. Let’s host some beautiful and brave conversations about grief and love.
There you have it, friends. We are people who keep showing up to this life and the story in front of us. Sometimes, it’s a thing of beautiful joy. Other times, it’s full of chapters we’d rather skip. But we know love lives inside the pain too. We continue to untangle the threads that make us who we are so we can show up to our lives with spacious presence, brave honesty, radical love & wild curiosity.
Here’s to this next chapter together. Let’s launch a book into the world!
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