4 minute read
a book like this
“Nobody wants to read a book like this,” one publishing consultant told me before I’d published Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss.
Snarky-like, I wanted to say, “I would’ve preferred never to have written a book like this, and to never read one like it either, but…here we are.”
I knew a book like mine, about the death of a child, wasn’t ever going to be easy to promote or sell.
I was content to just publish my story.
Maybe nobody would turn into one reader at a time. I’d be fine with that.
“Writing a book wasn’t going to bring Sam back, but maybe, in time, the writing would change me.”
(from Willower: Rewriting Life After Unimaginable Loss, Chapter 8. Grieving)
I’d written Willower for myself — to keep my beautiful boy Sam alive, for my family, and, for that one reader who, like me, was trying to rewrite her life after unimaginable loss.
that one reader
When writing a book, it helps to envision who you’re talking to by defining that one reader:
The bereaved mother who feels alone in her grief, and is seeking wisdom from someone who’s been there and will tell her the truth. She needs to know whether her sorrow will ever feel less heavy—and if there’s even a word to name her grief. (She’ll nod, yes, when she comes to it: willower…) She’s reading to find hope, and inspiration, a reason to live, and laugh again. Most of all, she wants to find a way to keep her child’s memory alive. And perhaps, one day, be capable of rewriting her story after….
a spam email
It’s been almost three years now since I published Willower. And recently, I received a spammy-looking email from a “book promoter” in which I read: “For such a well-reviewed book, why isn’t it selling better?”
It wasn’t the artificial-sounding email—with no way to contact the “book promoter” unless I clicked on that suspicious link—that gnawed at me. It was that stinger:
“Nobody wants to read a book like this.”
And then…
an unexpected message
Out of the blue…
Just in the nick of time…
Just when I was feeling extra snarky, I received a counter to that spammy email—an unexpected and heartfelt message from that one reader who wrote:
Deanna,
[A friend] sent me your book in November 2023.
I put it (along with other books I intended to read someday) on my shelf and went about my grief.
My daughter died—car accident—in 2021. She was 19.
I picked up your book today. I started it this AM and just finished it—in one sitting.
So much of our stories are different and yet…so much is familiar.
I was nearly done with your book when I looked at the time: 10:48. I thought how amazing it would be if I finished it at 11:11–a number that had profound significance for me since Emma died. And I thought, “No way. I have too many pages left. But it would be cool.”
When I read the last word I looked back at the clock (that I had not glanced at since making that prediction), I saw that it was exactly 11:11.
Thank you for reminding me that God does speak and miracles—even small ones—are still miraculous.
Your book will stay with me for a long time. I plan to pass it along to a friend who lost her 21 year old son to a heart defect.
I have also written my story. I’ll share the link.
The Mess We Leave Behind: Grief, Faith, Loss, Hope
by Sherry Bullock
I am yours. In sanity and lunacy,
Sherry
I’d hoped when I was envisioning my defined reader that she might find something small and miraculous in the lunacy of my words, but couldn’t have predicted….
Thank you, Sherry.
and so…
Not for nothing, but one reader is not nobody.
Willower,
Wherever you may be in your grief migration, I hope you’ll find my book and/or Sherry’s book helpful, inspiring, hopeful. Take your time, and when you’re ready, seek wisdom from someone who’s been there and will tell you the truth. Read small bites, or the whole story—all the lunacy—in one sitting.
Be back soon,
Please share willower.org with someone you know who may also be trying to rewrite their life after . . .
Willower.org 
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