Happy anniversary to me?

One year ago today I released the first books in the Grief Diaries series. And today I'm releasing the 20th.

In the past 12 months, we've grown to over 500 writers, published 20 titles, and earned 4 literary awards. 

But today's release is bittersweet for me. 

When we lost Aly, our 15-year-old daughter, in 2009, my dear sweet hubby buried his grief in the sand. He escaped into eighty-hour work weeks, more wine, more food, and less talking. His blood pressure shot up, his cholesterol went off the chart, and the perfect storm arrived on June 4, 2012. Suddenly my husband began drooling and couldn’t speak. At age forty-six, he was having a major stroke.

My husband survived the stroke but couldn’t speak, read, or write, and his right side was paralyzed. Would things have been different had I understood what was going on inside my dear sweet hubby's head? I knew what was going on inside his heart: utter devastation. But he hardly cried. Why? Could I have prevented the stroke, and spared our family another tragic turn of events, if I had the resources to know what my husband was feeling? 

Yes, today is a milestone, but a bittersweet one. I wish this book had been around when we lost our daughter, so I might have had a better understanding of my dear sweet husband’s state of mind. Would it have prevented his stroke? I’ll never know. But I’m comforted knowing that this book is now available to help others better understand loss through the eyes of the men they love.

A heartfelt congratulations to the 14 men brave enough to bare their hearts for strangers around the world to read. Yes, real men cry. Maybe, just maybe, this book will help fight the man code, the stigma, that men shouldn't cry.

Real men do cry. And these men are brave enough to share it. Thank you Chuck Andreas, Jeff Baldwin,Robert Boos, Rodney Bruce Cloutier, M G Coy Jr, Bill Downs, Jim Fennell, Jeff Gardner, John Pete, Carl Harms, Stephen Hochhaus, David Jones, Robert L Rieck, Michael Gershe, and thank you to Glen Lord for writing the book's foreword.

Happy one-year anniversary, Grief Diaries. 

#GriefDiaries #GriefMen #RealMenCry