MSI Press Blog

  The following post is from Pat Young, co-author of Life after Losing a Child . The holidays conjure up visions of families enjoying the festive atmosphere of Christmas. But it’s not so festive for everyone. One woman I interviewed while working on a book lost her son a few months before Christmas. The family kept him with them during the holidays by putting his photograph under the Christmas tree.                 “We had him with us for Christmas,” the grieving mother said.                 Another family kept their son’s memory alive by including his beloved dog in festivities. The dog had acquired many mannerisms from its late companion. Even questionable “dog manners” like begging at the dinner table were accepted with a smile and fond memories of the boy who would slip treats to the dog while eating dinner.    ...

Name: Patricia Young Book: Life after Losing a Child   Date of Interview: August 5, 2018 Who are you? What do you want readers to know about you? Pat Young has written for the Daytona Beach News Journal, South Bend Tribune, Flint (Michigan) Journal, Clarkston (Michigan) News, New Mexico Magazine, Silver City (New Mexico) Life Magazine, and other publications. She earned numerous awards for her writing, including National Newspaper Association and Michigan Press Association awards. She earned two media awards while at the South Bend Tribune. One of her stories (Giant Wind Harp in Tune with Nature) in New Mexico Magazine was chosen for inclusion in SIRS Discoverer data bases. Why are you qualified to write this book? Pat, and her late co-author Joanna Romer, are both widows. Though neither has lost a child, both women understood the painful bereavement process one goes through after the loss of a loved one.   What is th...

Congratulations to Pat Young, co-author with Joanna Romer of Life after Losing a Child , for the front-page article on their book in the Volusia News (Daytona Beach, Florida). Pat was interviewed earlier by MSI Blog. Check out her interview to learn more about her. Pat and Joanna's book is available in the MSI Press webstore; use FF25 for 25% dsicount. Click here to get to the book fast.  The book also available at all online retailers and some brick-and-mortar stores. A reasonable number of free review copies can be made available in exchange for writing and posting reviews. Contact editor@msipress.com to express your interest. Truly a helpful book for anyone who has experienced the tragedy of losing a child.

  excerpt from Life after L RIVER CHILD   Our children are like rivers Flowing with the seasons of our lives. Some meander gently Through pockets of humanity. Some flow quietly into oceans, While others encounter Deep gorges and tumbling waterfalls. It is this “challenged river” Which carves the deepest banks, Leaving the greatest mark upon the earth. While some of our river children Flow on through many sunsets, Others make a briefer splash. But when the river child Who flowed through many challenges Disappears, It leaves behind those beautiful carvings, Etched deeply into the banks Of our memories. -Pat Young osing a Child For more posts about the late Joanna Romer and her works, click HERE . For more posts about Pat Young and her works, click HERE . 25% discount on paperback with code FF25 at www.msipress.com/shop Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .

  The second MSI book by Pat Young and the eleventh in our pandemic series, Exercising in a Pandemic , was released today.  See information about Pat's other book, Life after Losing a Child , HERE . 

  Pat Young has written for the  Daytona Beach News Journal ,   South Bend Tribune ,   Flint (MI) Journal ,   Clarkston (MI) News ,   Hometown News   in Daytona Beach, Florida,   New Mexico Magazine ,   Silver City Life Magazine   and other publications. She also worked in public relations and advertising for several real estate companies in Michigan, New Mexico and Florida. She earned awards for her writing, including National Newspaper Association and Michigan Press Association awards. She earned two media awards while at the   South Bend Tribune . One of her stories in   New Mexico Magazine   (“Giant Wind Harp in Tune with Nature”) was chosen for inclusion in the SIRS Discoverer data base. She has an associate degree in liberal arts. She has written stories, articles and poetry since she was a kid, but the book she is co-authoring with Joanna Romer,   Life after Losing a Child , is her first book. When she isn’t wr...

  Excerpt from Life after Losing a Child by Pat Young and Romer - Losing a Second Child Cristy got her transplant and seemed to be doing very well. She enrolled in college and went on with her life, but then her lungs failed again. She had a double lung transplant at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida. Then, she needed a kidney transplant because the anti-rejection medicine caused her kidneys to fail. Kathleen was relieved when she was able to donate one of hers to her daughter. If nothing else, it would buy them more time.            The day before she was to receive her bachelor’s degree, the doctors told Cristy her lungs were failing and there was nothing else they could do. “Mom,” Cristy had said to Kathleen in tears, “I’m dying, and I don’t want to die.” Cristy moved back home where her mom could take care of her. Kathleen made her car into “a little ambulance” and took her daughter to Pittsburgh, hoping to get another t...

  After losing a child, the world often grows strangely opaque. People avert their eyes, conversations shift, and the ordinary rhythm of life resumes around you as if nothing has changed. You walk through grocery aisles, attend meetings, answer emails—but inside, you’re transparent. You exist, yet you feel unseen. 1. The Silence Around Loss Grief makes others uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. That silence can feel like erasure—as if your child’s life, and your love, have vanished from the collective memory. You begin to wonder whether your pain is visible at all. 2. The Disconnection of Identity Before loss, you were a parent with a living child. After loss, that identity becomes invisible too. You still feel like a mother or father, but the world no longer recognizes that role. Self‑compassion becomes the act of affirming your identity even when others cannot see it. 3. The Need to Be Witnessed Being seen is part of healing. When someone listens with...

Grief makes people uncomfortable. They don’t know what to say, so they say nothing. That silence can feel like erasure — as if your child’s life, and your love, have vanished from the collective memory. You begin to wonder whether your pain is visible at all. When a child dies, the world tilts. The ordinary rhythms of conversation — the polite “How are you?” or the cheerful “How’s the family?” — become impossible questions. You learn to answer in fragments, to protect others from the depth of your sorrow. And in doing so, you start to disappear inside your own story. Silence surrounds loss not because people don’t care, but because they fear saying the wrong thing. They worry that words will reopen wounds, not realizing that the wound never closes. What hurts most is not the awkwardness of others — it’s the absence of acknowledgment. The quiet feels like the world has moved on, leaving you behind with memories that no one else mentions. But grief needs language. It needs witnesses. Whe...

  Before loss, you were a parent with a living child. You knew your role by heart — the rhythms of care, the language of reassurance, the small rituals that defined your days. Then, in a moment that divides time into before and after , that identity fractures. You are still a mother or father, but the world no longer recognizes that role. The title remains, but the audience disappears. After loss, you inhabit a strange invisibility. People speak to you as though your parenthood has expired, as though love itself were contingent on presence. You still feel the pulse of your child’s existence — in memory, in muscle, in breath — but society has no category for that kind of parenthood. You become a ghost in your own biography. This disconnection is not only emotional; it is existential. The world expects you to resume life as someone else, but you cannot. You are still the person who knows the sound of your child’s laughter, the weight of their hand, the shape of their absence. You ar...