Doing Just Fine

(Or how I'm not fine at all but still carrying on and finding moments of joy)

I’m going to lead with joy here (and this event has truly been joyful to plan), and that’s the fact that on Wednesday June 10th at 5pm PT/8pm ET I’ll be doing v2 of Outspoken, the virtual panel series I started in 2024. This time we’re celebrating Pride and talking about the joyful resistance of queer YA fiction. I’d LOVE for you to join us - it’s free, but we’re taking donations, all of which go to The Trevor Project. And I’ll be joined by the most lovely authors: Bori Cser, Isabel Sterling, Julian Winters, and Sonido Reyes. You can register here: https://bit.ly/outspokenv2

Also, an obligatory friendly reminder to consider purchasing Hear Her Howl or requesting it at your library. And if you’d be willing to leave a review on Amazon or Barnes & Noble to help others find it, I’d be forever grateful.

Okay. Now the hard stuff.

I don’t know how to write about the loss of a mother. It feels like there are a million different places I could begin, a million different things I could say. The experience is so complicated and vast and incredibly hard to grasp, even when you’re the one in the middle of said experience.

My mom in her youth

And the death of a mother after running over a year-long marathon filled with monthly cross-country visits, and multiple week-long stays with her at the hospital, and near-death moments where you dropped everything and flew to her side (sometimes after literally scaling a glacier), and efforts to keep everyone in the loop, and efforts to help your overwhelmed dad, and efforts to fill her final moments with beauty and inspiration and joy - be it hiring Christmas carolers in December or arranging a psilocybin journey for the two of you to help her be at peace with death (a story for another time, my friends) - feels especially hard to incapsulate in words. Not impossible, just difficult. And kind of emotionally exhausting. At this point I feel as if I could write an entire book about this past year - everything that led up to it, and the tragedy and beauty of my mom’s very specific journey toward death. And honestly, one day I likely will.

But there’s still so much I don’t feel entitled to share. Or haven’t processed enough to share. I’m someone who definitely wants to write from the scar and not the bloody wound. And right now, things are still raw.

So, I’ll begin with the basic facts. My mom, Sue Ann DeRose, died on Tuesday May 12th in Santa Barbara, CA from stage 4 breast cancer. I was with her at the time, along with my dad, my brother, my niece, my aunt, a dear family friend, and one of my mom’s amazing caregivers. My mom died peacefully (I know people say this, but she really truly was peaceful - and I’ve seen death before so know it isn’t always that way), and she died at home, surrounded by loved ones, just as she wanted.

I’m doing…fine? In that I’m not actually fine at all, but most of the time, on most days, I can walk around seeming fine (both to myself and to others). And then I’ll have these moments where I dip into the grief and feel complete disbelief and sorrow. These moments normally happen when I’m alone, often while walking through nature and listening to music.

Grief is strange. Sometimes it’s completely overwhelming and brings to your knees, and other times it’s just there in the background, like white noise playing consistently as you carry on with your day. Not enough noise to be completely disruptive, but enough to keep you just slightly distracted, or just slightly off your game, or just slightly exhausted.

So that’s me these days. Fine-ish. And also not fine at all. But finding moments of joy - in my kids, my partner, my friends, my pets, and solitary moments in nature.

What I’ve been writing

I have two different YA book proposals that are off with my editor at the moment, both of which I’m super excited about. But while I await her and the team’s feedback, I’m taking a writing hiatus - specifically, because I haven’t felt enough creative energy to work more on either project since my mom died. I know my creative juice will return, but right now feels like a moment to fill the well.

But I have done some non-book writing. Often when I don’t know how to feel, I write. And when my mom’s cremated remains showed up this past week, I absolutely did not know how to feel, so immediately opened my laptop. I shared this on Instagram and wanted to share it here, it case it resonates or is one day useful for you as you navigate your own loss.

MY MOTHERS BONES

I have my mother’s bones in a box.

I do not mean this metaphorically.

I mean this literally.

She arrived without fanfare on a Tuesday. She arrived in a USPS box clearly labeled Cremated Remains. Sent Priority Mail Express, if you must know. My husband carried her upstairs and into our apartment, playing Kenny G on his phone. An inside joke, because my parents loved Kenny G and soft jazz in general, the absolute bain of my teenage existence. And leave it my to my husband to know how to lighten a dark moment.

I was in a zoom work meeting at the time, but when I saw what was in his arms I turned off my camera. My mother’s bones in a box. While people talked in small squares. My mother’s bones in a box. While my son read on the couch. My mother’s bones in a box. While my daughter played at school. My mother’s bones in a box.

Just three weeks ago she was alive. Lying in her hospital bed, skin paled but surprisingly warm as I rubbed oils into her hands and feet. Three weeks to the day, almost to the hour. She died on Tuesday May 12 at 1:40pm, and arrived on my doorstep Tuesday June 2 at 12:30pm. And what does this mean? Is this a sign?

And what does it mean that her bones arrived the same day I lost my voice? Again, I do not mean this metaphorically. I mean this literally.

And yet it is a metaphor, is it not? The ashes of a mother’s bones, sent to her motherless and now voiceless daughter? But a metaphor for what? My inability to fully cry out and grieve? To speak to her again? To speak to her while she was alive? Her own inability to speak for herself all those years?

If this was a story, my voicelessness would be the beginning of a dark curse descending upon me with my mother’s bones. My fate signed and sealed, destined to repeat her past.

But this is not a story.

And in the end, my mother wasn’t voiceless. She found her voice - or, rather, her voice, which was always lying for many, returned.

But the question remains: what does one do with one’s mother’s bones in a box?

And this, I do not mean literally.

Because I know what is to be done. The small vessels that are to be purchased. The places that are to be visited. The ashes that are to be scattered.

But what does one do?

What does one do?

How do I keep my mother’s bones in a box? (I say as I imagine an entire witchy alter).

And equally disturbing, how do I let them go?

What I’ve been recently reading

Here in Avalon by Tara Isabella Burton - I LOVE her books and will read any novel she writes. Highly recommend all her work, including this one.

Rouge by Mona Awad - This book was sooooo good. And so Lynchian. And so made me want to write a cult book.

We Love You Bunny by Mona Awad - As you can see, I’m on a Mona Awad kick. She’s such a freaking badass, and her amazing unhinged feminist stories speak directly to my writer soul.

Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan - This was gifted to me by a friend and is all about what dying people are experiencing in their final days, and how loved ones can help them let go (written by hospice nurses with tons of real world stories). I read it the month before my mom died and it led to a BIG and important conversation that I hope to one day write about.

What’s currently bringing me joy

Our new kitten, Stevie Harrington Nicks! I mean, loooooook at her!!! A tiny floofy joy machine!

Okay, that’s all for me at the moment. Sending all of you love and light, and hoping you’re finding ways to take care of yourselves, and center joy.