Fifteen Years Without my Mother

Reflecting on surviving parental suicide and a book that helped me make it through

This post, which has a CW for suicide and addiction, is from the archives (but revised). All paying subscribers have full access to over four years of archives. Please consider subscribing and diving in.

I wonder if every reader has a list of lifesaving books.

Do you? Which books have saved your life or helped you feel seen and affirmed as a person? Which essays and stories?

My list is long– from those books I read as a child whose stories sustained me and helped me escape reality to the memoirs and novels I read after my mother’s suicide in 2010, like Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. There’s one book that spans the time before and after my mom’s suicide and has remained a touchstone.

When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön

It was April 2010 when I moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, and I was twenty-nine, reeling from the four excruciating months I had spe…