MSI Press Blog

  In observance of poetry month, MSI Press would like to share with its readers and fans books from two authors worth reading: One will bring a comforting smile to an unbidden tear. The other will bring an outright laugh page after page. Time spent with comforting and/or happy thoughts is time well spent indeed. Marti Wells-Smith's  Lamentations of the Heart Mingled with Peace and Joy  combines prose and poetry in a comforting missive for bereaved parents. Through its pages, one finds not only the resilience of the author but sources for anyone to develop needed resilience in the face of devastating life circumstances. When it came out, it quickly became one of Amazon's "hot, new releases." Lamentations of the Heart soulfully combines contemporary free verse poetry and nonfictional prose to tell the story of one mother's grief following the death of her only child. The author interweaves scriptural passages with the inevitable struggles to accept and make sense of...

    Today's book excerpt comes from   Widow: A Survival Guide for the First Year  by Joanna Romer. Nurture Yourself Nurturing Yourself   Grieving effectively is about finding a balance between two worlds. On the one hand, there is the life you had with your husband; you miss it, and him; you wish he were still with you. Often there is pain involved in your memories. On the other hand, you know you have to go on---there are a million details to take care of in connection with his passing. Your current job (if you have one, or maybe now you have to find one), your children, other relatives, friends and other individuals in your life will expect you to carry on. No one wants you to go to pieces---and you don’t really want to either, do you? One of the best ways to handle both the emotions and the sense of unreality that grieving brings, along with the responsibilities of carrying on, is to nurture yourself. Get in the habit of this, early and often---fr...

  This week's blog post is the next in the series of book back stories and is the story behind Life after Losing a Child (Young & Romer). From the author -  A former editor of mine, as well as a good friend, lost her son. When she called to tell me, I walked around my house for an hour before I wrote her a poem. It is the first page in a book I co-authored with another good friend, my late friend Joanna Romer. We agreed, before writing the book, that a loss such as that was even more painful – and different – than the loss we both shared as widows.  We set forth to interview parents who had lost children and followed each chapter on loss with a healing chapter, depicting ways each parent dealt with the loss in a positive way to help with healing. Several of the interview chapters were friends of ours, which made it all the more real, and painful. I hope this book has helped a parent who lost a child in a good way. Paperback copies of this book can be purchased at the...

  Today would have been the 54th anniversary for Carl  and me. Last year, I spent it in the cemetery with Carl, as I did the year before. This year I cannot because I am in Bandung, Indonesia, but perhaps that is just as well.  On our 51st, he was alive, but not well. Three weeks earlier, he had fallen, been xrayed, and found to be in the advanced stage of cancer of unknown primary , with liver, lungs, bones, and stomach completely riddled with cancer cells, blood clots in his lungs, and his bones throwing off cells to create hypercalcemia, the reason he had fallen. It was a difficult time. We were just coming out of the covid months. We brought our CHARGE Syndrome son CB who had been living in group homes for 20 years home when they were not careful with protection from covid. At the same time, our spina bifida daughter, who lives about 30 miles to the south of us, independently, with a county-provided part-time aide lost her caregiver to surgery and no one wanted to tak...