My Book is Out: Monochromatic Heart

Monochromatic Heart is available now!

My book, Monochromatic Heart: on grief and love and still being here, is OUT TODAY.

This means a couple of things:

I finished writing it.

You can buy it.

You can read it.

We got home late-ish on Saturday night to a suspiciously book-shaped package at our front door. It was already well past my girls’ bedtime and my oldest was particularly grumpy. She kept asking me to open it, but she was no less grumpy in her mannerisms than she had been before she started asking me to open it.

So I said no.

“I’d rather not open my very first book I’ve written while contending with your grumpiness,” I explained.

At which point she was devastated and accused me of never wanting her around (the fact that we homeschool her might prove her theory wrong, but I digress).

I got all my girls to bed, squared my shoulders resolutely, grabbed scissors, and opened the box. (I was nervous I’d be disappointed.) But then I saw it and felt something…good. Like taking a deep breath after holding it. Like things were pretty okay. I kept opening and closing the book. Thinking about how smooth the cover felt, how the pages all had numbers, every chapter started on the right side. I walked over to TJ and handed it to him. He made happy sounds as I watched him explore the book with his hands, oohing and aahing.

We walked down to Charlee’s bed and I silently handed her my book. She smiled really big, her grumpiness forgotten, as she jumped out of bed and sat next to me on the floor. Willa sat on the other side, and TJ sat next to her as we all looked at the book. Charlee read the dedication, saw her name, asked what a muse is. She asked how much her name is in the book. “A lot, actually,” I answered and she smiled again.

“Will you read it?” TJ asked.

“Probably not—it’s too long,” she said honestly.

(Perhaps she will change her mind one day.)

At times, this book has been a lifeline to me. When my grief was just a baby, newly born along with Luca, writing all of this down became a way forward. I don’t mean forward, like “leaving the grief behind”—the kinds of things that people who haven’t shared a bed, meals, a whole heart with grief say. And when grief has gone from the abstract (safely on the other side of theory) to the horribly material and present side of life; when we wake from nightmares to an aching that is actually worse—we wince. These platitudes and vain, shallow, ignorant, pleasant-sounding kinds of words are not helpful. And when one needs help, anything else becomes dust in your mouth.

I know a woman who is suffering from lymes disease. She is currently and voluntarily stung by no less than thirty bees each week. It is a strange handshake with venom-turned-healer. She has decided to drink what she’s avoided forever—still would avoid, if she could help it—but her suffering will not permit it. And she is feeling better (isn’t better such a wonderful part of the story?).

Writing this book is my own agreement with a thousand bees. It is my own handshake with grief. I’d rather not have to at all, but since suffering gave me no choice, then I allowed grief to do its work. And I wrote it down, and it surprised me. It was the venom that helped me after all. And I am better (not, like, unaffected by grief and the loss of my son—but I am living whole heartedly, taking risks, loving people; deciding that it is not altogether terrible to be me, thankful to see life through my eyes, filter my days through my own winding thoughts).

If you buy the book, thank you.

If you spread the word, thank you.

If you do neither of those things, but continue to read my newsletter, thank you.

Okay, okay, now you know. My book is OUT.

Happy Tuesday. Sorry about the taxes (if it makes you feel better, I paid them, too).

Monochromatic Heart: on grief and love and still being here is now on Amazon and most places you buy books online.