Children's Book Cover!

Introducing the cover to my new book for grieving children, A Hug from Heaven!

I hope you LOVE IT! The artist, Andrea Alemanno, is from Italy. I picked him from hundreds of illustrators, and am so pleased with how the illustrations throughout the book turned out. In the coming weeks I will be sharing Facebook live videos about how the whole process has been such as:

Deciding to go with a hybrid publisher
Choosing an illustrator
Deciding how to translate the words into pictures (harder than I thought!)

I pray that this book will fill a real need for the "forgotten grievers"-- children. When I managed a church bookstore, I kept searching for good grief books for kids, but kept coming up short. Then, of course, I wished there had been one for my own family when Jack died.

One of the neatest things about A Hug from Heaven is that it is told from the point of view of the person who died, speaking directly to the grieving child! A child experiencing the loss of any loved one, from grandparent, parent, friend, sibling (born or unborn) will be able to find comfort in these pages.

Can't wait to share more with you!

I'll let you know the actual release date as soon as I know it myself. It's looking like mid to late September. There will be opportunities to PRE-ORDER, which is extremely helpful in positioning the book to "find" more people, and to leave reviews. In the meantime, please start thinking about someone in your life who might be helped by this book.

What I've Been Reading: Disaster Falls: A Family Story

The book I've been wanting to tell you about has been released! Disaster Falls: A Family Story chronicles a family's loss of their 8 year old son in a rafting accident. I love how the title doesn’t just represent the name of the accident site, but also that disaster has befallen this small family, and they must figure out a way to make it through. 

There are many parallels to my own family, but I believe this book is an excellent read for ANYONE, regardless of life experience. We will all face loss, whether the shocking, out of order death of a child, or the more expected death of parents, grandparents, and eventually spouses. Told from the father's point of view, with a chronology that takes you back and forth in the family's history, Disaster Falls does an excellent job of showing how each member in a family grieves differently. It also covers the death of the author's father, with whom he had a contentious and complicated relationship. 

There were so many a-ha moments for me in this book, not the least of which is when Gerson details, without judgment, the different ways in which people did/did not reach out to comfort him, and the various ways he and his wife tried to find their footing. The author is a historian, and I love the way he brings the history of the river and waterfall into the story. While my book, Rare Bird, captures the anguish and messy rawness of early grief, Gerson’s book is more restrained in a way that reminds me of Paul Kalinithi’s When Breath Becomes Air.  It is poignant and eloquent, and never goes for shock value. Disaster Falls is not just another sad story, but a beautifully written LIFE story, as a father uses his memories, journals, and experience as a historian and researcher to grapple with his son’s death.

(affiliate links included for your convenience)

You Are Not Alone

Once again, I am excited to have Noelle from NBrynn writing for us today - you'll love her stories and her insights! Noelle, like me, believes in the beauty and power in sharing our stories. She blogs regularly at NBrynn, where you will find everything from delicious, healthy recipes to insight about parenting, spirituality and orphan care. Please welcome Noelle as she shares more of her story with us today. 

~:~

We walked off the plane after over 24 hours of travel, into a crowd of welcoming, if not cautious, arms - a moment I had played out in my imagination dozens of times before. Only in my earlier versions, this moment was defined by sheer joy, dominated by victorious applause, doused with huge smiles and laughter and first meetings. In that version, we walked out even more sleep-deprived, yet even more exuberant, as our first son sat perched on my hip, ready for his grand debut. 

Instead, we walked off the plane with only our carry-ons in hand, and with a mountain of grief inside our hearts that we had not yet had the courage nor the understanding to begin to deal with.

I think few of us get through our twenties and thirties without encountering tragic loss of one form or another. Within my own little circle, parents have died of cancer, brothers have taken their lives, babies have been born blue, friends have fallen or crashed or wandered to their deaths, adoptions have fallen through, marriages have crumbled - all within the past decade. And I know every little circle, in every little corner of the world, is unfortunately familiar with similar tragedies and losses.

After losing a dear friend two summers ago, I found some degree of comfort in educating myself with every piece of literature I could get my hands on regarding grief and the process of recovery after tragic loss. I read book after book after book, and flitted from one blog to the next, not in search of answers, but in great need of camaraderie and guidance. I didn't want concrete steps to follow, but I did need to know what sorts of things I could expect on this road of grief and what things had helped others along the way. More than anything, I wanted a hand to hold as I walked, to know that I was not alone.

I love what Glennon Doyle Melton says about grief in her memoir, Carry On Warrior, "Grief and pain are like joy and peace; they are not things we should try to snatch from each other. They’re sacred. They are part of each person’s journey. All we can do is offer relief from this fear: I am all alone."

Perhaps the saddest part of our tragedies - more wounding and breaking to the human spirit than even the loss itself - is the way we treat one another in the wake of these experiences. How many times has someone in their grief been greeted with overly optimistic smiles and assurances and appeasements of why things happened the way they did? Well-meaning and kind-hearted people rush to provide answers, to wrap the messes of our lives with neat bows like, "At least he's happy in heaven now." or "God always has a plan." or "She's an angel now. The best one up there." Answers and justifications given before the griever has hardly even had time to ask the questions or raise the concerns for themselves.

And how many times has someone in their grief suddenly realized that nobody in the room is willing to make eye contact with them? Instead of bright smiles, they receive awkward glances and downcast eyes; instead of confident answers, they experience complete avoidance. Perhaps meals are dropped off for a week or condolence cards trickle in for a month, but all too often when the going gets really hard - when the reality of a lifetime without the loved one starts to sink in or the questions finally start taking form - the griever finds herself alone, left to feel as though she now and forevermore wears a Scarlet Letter, that her pain is too big or her healing is taking too long.

Anna speaks to this in her beautiful book, Rare Bird, when she writes, "It dawns on my that I’ve never walked beside someone in deep pain. I’ve been more of a drive-by friend, the kind who reaches out once or twice and hopes the situation will be resolved quickly. I care. I cry. I pray. But I don’t stick around long. I’m the type of friend you would want around for a broken ankle but not for chronic depression."

I understand Anna's words far too well - both as the giver of such shallow comfort and as the receiver. Grief is messy and scary and quite unpredictable - just the opposite of the neat, controlled lives most of us strive toward. We get lost in that unpredictability and rather than sitting in silence and patience with ourselves or others, we rush ahead with answers and will for life to go on as we once knew it. We hurry the griever into clean black and whites - answers that may in fact satisfy our own souls - without allowing them space to wrestle and cry and wander and just not know, perhaps ever. 

Anne Lamott offers this insight on grief in her book, Stitches, "I’d given talks for years about how when it comes to grieving, the culture lies - you really do not get over the biggest losses, you don’t pass through grief in any organized way, and it takes years and infinitely more tears than people want to allot you. Yet the gift of grief is incalculable, in giving you back to yourself." 

I have fumbled on my words and overcompensated the discomfort of a situation with chatter and cheek-numbing smiles. I have wrestled through the muck of my own grief, not knowing how to ask for help or what help it was that I even needed. I have been quick to anger, quick to judge, quick to tears. 

Through it all, I have learned that there are guideposts gleaned from others' experiences to help mark our way and myths about grief and loss that we need to uncover. I have learned that there are stories that we need to hear and stories that we need to tell. That there is courage to be mustered for that painful but necessary task of staring our loss straight in the face. That there are questions that need to be asked and space - within a loving arms' reach - that needs to be given. 

I have learned that we still need to laugh. We still need to cry. And always, we need to know we are not alone. 

When is the Best Time to Give the Gift of a Grief Book?

A dear friend contacted me this morning for some book recommendations for a mom who recently lost her son in a car accident. She was interested in what books were most helpful to me in the throes of early grief.

I gave her some suggestions that I have shared before, like the incomparable A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sittser, Lament for a Son, and To Heaven and Back.





I have heard from many, many people who have benefited from my books, Rare Bird and A Hug from Heaven, and for that I am grateful.

People often ask me what the best time to give a book is.

I think it's not necessary to worry about the BEST time to give a friend a book about grief. If you feel moved to share a book, go ahead and do it. That said, I would encourage us all to do it without any expectations. For instance, it was really important that people were here to love and support me but never to try to "fix me." I did not want people to follow-up and ASK if I'd read the books they gave me. Too much pressure!

I was grateful that books were there when and if I was ready to dip into them. No friend ever said, "This is THE book you need to read," and I appreciated that. A helpful approach might be, "I thought of you when I read this book," or "I'd like to give you this book in case you ever want to read it." There are so many fabulous books out there, and people will have very personal responses to them. My husband and I have turned to very different books in our grief; while I want to read memoirs and all I can about heaven, he is more interested in Bible studies and fiction.

Speaking of books, I read one in its entirety last night and it spoke to my heart simply, deeply, and eloquently. It is by Tom Zuba, an author/speaker/life coach I was privileged to meet at a local bookstore this week. His book is spare and appears simple, with the look of poetry on the page. Tom lost his 18 month old daughter. Years later, his 43 year old wife died. Finally, his 13 year old son died from brain cancer. I definitely wanted to hear what Tom had to say about grief!

This book is the one he wished he had read when he experienced his first loss, but instead he had to live it first, and then write it. I don't know if I would have been ready to read this immediately after Jack's death, because it really does offer a perspective quite different than the one I was living at the time. Had someone given it to me then, I might have left it on my bedside table for many months before I'd be able to consider reading the simple words of a man who had suffered such great loss yet was thriving and joyful!

But had a friend had given it to me, I most certainly would have benefited from it at some point, as I did last night, staying up late, soaking in every word, nodding along. Tom writes about how we need to give ourselves permission to mourn and really feel our feelings. He writes how we can indeed, find joy again, and he stresses that our relationships with those who have died are still very real indeed.



For other grief book recommendations, here's an article I wrote for The Daily Beast and an excellent list from What's Your Grief.

Books can be a balm to a grieving heart. When you share one, you often share hope and possibility to someone in the pit. And as I tell those who read Rare Bird: hold onto it loosely and pay attention-- because before you know it, there will be the opportunity to share it with someone else!

This post contains affiliate links.