About

my book

some nutshells

• Finalist in the 18th Annual National Indie Excellence® Awards and winner of a Literary Titan Gold Book Award, Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss is about using the power of story and imagination to survive the unimaginable.
• The story of a bereaved mother’s urgent quest to find a way to stay connected with her beautiful boy.
• A memoir that takes you into an unfathomable world of the most profound and permanently disorienting experiences: the sudden death of a child.
• A search for meaning—and purpose, and perhaps messages—in the details of the lives we live.
• Showing us how sometimes it is our lunacy that pulls us through grief back to living again.
• Written with stunning honesty, intensity, and eloquence, Willower is an unforgettable and heartbreaking demonstration of the endurance it takes to grieve and the courage it takes to live.
• This extremely sad but beautifully told story is a rare treasure that will change you and stay with you forever.

who am I?

I’m a bereaved mother who knows the worst loss, the insanity of grief, and the silence and aloneness that follows the death of a child. I’m also a creative problem solver, a communicator, and a teacher at heart.

Over the years, I’ve come to realize that being a writer is more than what I do. It’s who I am. The process of writing (which involves constant rewriting) has taught me to trust in myself, my intuition, and inner wisdom. After my son’s death, writing helped me to process what I was experiencing; it gave me a reason to not give up but to keep going.

what happened?

On Monday, April 30, 2007, my nine-year-old son Sam collapsed on the playground at school and died from sudden cardiac arrest caused by hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. (In rare cases, without warning, the first symptom of HCM, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy—an excessive thickening of the heart muscle without an obvious cause—is sudden cardiac death.)

In an attempt to accept the unacceptable, learn to live again, and move forward through grief, I started writing, needing to do something to stay connected with and keep my beautiful boy, his memory, alive. Since Sam’s death, I’ve spent the years learning how to write. Practicing, reading, taking classes, hiring editing help, writing, and rewriting. And because Sam loved writing stories, I keep going, learning and writing for him.

from an author interview with Literary Titan (Oct 2024)

Q. Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss is a heartfelt memoir that delves into the complexities of loss, grief, and resilience, sharing the emotional journey surrounding the tragic death of your son and the toll this unimaginable loss takes on you and the family. Why was this an important book for you to write?

Writing this book was something I needed to do to stay connected to Sam and keep his memory alive. And, writing was a necessary distraction for me, which I later learned. For hours at a time, while concentrating on writing how I was processing and reshaping my loss and grief I was finding some relief from it. I know it seems counterintuitive to write about loss and grief as a way of escaping it, but I came to realize that’s what I was doing. Day after day, year after year, trying to grasp reality, searching for answers and meaning—even if I had to construct my own, creating and crafting this book, then finishing and publishing it is what gave me a focus, a purpose, a reason to live.

Q. What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?

One idea was that grieving the death of your child, and relearning to live without them, is an unpredictable and lifelong readjustment process.

Another key idea I wanted to get across was that eventually, in time, you do learn to live with the weight of your loss.

But I think the most important idea I wanted to share was that as we migrate through our grief, all we can do is learn how to rewrite our lives, and reimagine our stories, the ones we tell ourselves so that we can keep going. As Sam told me in my book’s last chapter: “Imagine the rest, Mommy. And remember, the letters are magic.”

Q. What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir and what was the most rewarding?

The most challenging part of writing this memoir was learning how to write—and then how to write a memoir. After five years of work, I’d sent my “finished draft” to an editor who told me it was a good “first draft.” I was devastated, but learned so much from that experience. I kept at it, the rewriting. Like I said earlier, focusing on this book, on finishing it, is what gave me a purpose, a reason to live. Eleven years later, after taking writing classes, working with a writing coach, hiring an editor again, my “finished draft” turned out to be my “final draft.”

The most rewarding part of writing this memoir was the magic I experienced while writing the dialogue with Sam. For anyone who’s grieving, I’d recommend—after enough time has passed, and you feel up to it—writing dialogue, a back-and-forth, with your deceased loved one.

Q. What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?

After experiencing my story, I hope the reader feels more hopeful and less alone in their grief.

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