Yes, really, it’s now 2022 and I’ve re-released this book again! Featuring corrections, improved cover, and better distribution.

It’s hard to believe it’s been twelve years since I wrote it, and five years since I last updated this website. I’m even considering migrating to a new theme, as this one does feel very mid-2010s, doesn’t it?

I do wonder a lot how I would write this book if I started it now. I think it would likely be even more brutal in some places. In the past decade I’ve come to terms with a lot of the anger I suppressed, and while I’m not as angry now due to acknowledging and processing it, I believe that writing about how angry I was back then would be…intense.

The new, updated cover for Grieving Futures!

So, maybe for the best it was written when it was? I don’t know. I listen to Dani Schapiro’s podcast, Family Secrets, and the raw honesty in those stories shames me most of the time. In comparison, Grieving Futures is almost clinical in its recounting of trauma.

Yet, the raw honesty is what draws me to the podcast in the first place, the connection to people like me who have at some point be overwhelmed by trauma and secrets and shame and guilt. So perhaps there is an argument to come back to the topic; I did start a companion book for this years ago, so the idea is there. The question of writing something like that is always: what is the cost? Would it help or harm?

I can’t answer that either way, at this point.

One thing I appreciate with the passage of time is that nowadays there is a lot more acknowledgement of the complexity of grief, something I tried to address in Grieving Futures and got so much pushback on. Yes, you can love AND hate your mother when she’s dead; you can be angry at how your parents failed you both their lives and deaths; you can be absolutely certain that you feel nothing at all.

Anyway, all I have left is gratitude and love for the people who have stayed by my side, literally and figuratively, through the years. You know who you are. <3