The Must-Read Memoir of 2014

What if you knew someone whose heart was shattered in one terrible night when her husband unexpectedly died in her arms?  What if you knew she had two little boys whose world crumbled right along with hers, even while they peacefully slept?

Pain like that is a palpable vortex.  It is dark.  It is scary.  It is overwhelming to feel your own heart break and know that the pain you feel is nothing, NOTHING compared to being the one for whom the light has been snuffed.

But what if from the bottom of the vortex your friend sent up a message?  Like a white-hot flare, she shoots up some words, "I'm down here.  It's unimaginable. And this is how it is." And every day, she blogs.  But "blogging" is no verb to describe the raw, jagged, heartwrenching, horrible/beautiful journey that she takes you on.  You read her very heart on the screen, and time after time, there's nothing for it but to cry.  Or sometimes, laugh.  And then cry about that, too.  You, who are not the crying kind.

And then what if, somebody who knows the right people and how to make things happen finds out about your friend's blog and it seems the next thing you know you are watching her sign a book contract under the twinkling lights strung by her dearest friends and a thousand prayers and heaps of love?

And there's nothing for it, but to cry.  But it's joy.  Mixed up with all that pain.  Because a miracle is being born.  One brave word at a time.  And your friend, she just lets you in. Not just you, anybody.  Everybody.  Open arms, open heart, this girl who needs to process it all alone and all together, in words.


Can I invite you to go there?  To go to that dark, scary place with her?

The book will hit bookstores everywhere in 22 days on February 18.  Or today if  you are a preorder kind of person.  And then maybe, like me, you'll find yourself welcoming dawn with this book in hand, feeling gratitude to a person who would lead us all in...to the darkness and out again.

Because the book is called, And Life Comes Back.  
And so it does.

And when it does for her, a little of yours will come back, too.

• 9/26, 4:19am