The Trimesters of Grief

Well, we lost our son about a year and nine months ago.

And right before he passed away, I was writing The Boy with the Bear Tattoo, which is out on submission.

And the minute that Nicholas left, I felt like I was in a different world.

And I had never journaled before.

And I just started writing stuff down because I couldn't believe anything that was happening was happening.

And I wanted to remember everything.

Um, and my head was just super foggy.

Uh, and that kind of began the beginning of this book.

I feel like writing helped me figure out what was next.

You know, where do I put my foot next? Um, And so, yeah, that's, and once about nine months had passed, I sat down and looked through it and I realized how much of grief had kind of mirrored pregnancy.

And that was the beginning of the trimesters of grace.

First, I'm so sorry to hear that your son had passed.

It's always hard when it happens.

I do like the way you laid out this book because I did went and looked on your website and checked it out and I was looking through it.

I think it's very interesting how you how you did it because you break it down.

So do you want to break it down for people? Give them a little idea how how you went through the stages of this.

This is I think it's really interesting.

I like the way it's actually laid out here.

Well, you're so sweet.

And before I do, I just wanted to say, when I stumbled across your podcast, I thought about how important the work you're doing is, is because I think most of the reason that Nicholas got involved in opioids and benzodiazepines, so Xanax, was because of anxiety.

And I think the more that people start treating anxiety as kind of normal instead of some abnormal condition, I think the world will be a better place.

Yeah, I think I think mental health in general, it needs to be talked about more as well.

You know, people say we're talking about it.

But if you look at the statistics, it's insane.

The level of suicides are going up.