About 45 minutes after I wrote this morning about the books not arriving, I looked on tracking and saw that the books had arrived into Albuquerque earlier this morning. When I had checked earlier, they apparently hadn’t been scanned in yet. Because they couldn’t deliver them until Monday, Joe and I trekked down to the FedEx LTL Terminal in the South Valley and picked up the books. As we were driving home, I kept thinking how the books arriving is yet another part of the journey. I get to see my finished product. But the final piece of the journey is the books going to people to help them find hope.
Rocky Roads is on the road…but not here quite yet April 16, 2010
It’s been a frustrating week. I had been told that the books would arrive on Tuesday only to get a call from the shipper on Monday saying they would arrive the following Tuesday. I already had sent out messages to people and said in various places that they would ship by today, April 16. Obviously, that’s not happening. Instead, they will ship on the 20th. When I wrote Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? for sibling survivors of suicide, it took me about six years to find a publisher. In that time I struggled because many people came to me when they found out someone they knew had a suicide and told me that they wished my book was available for them. I had thought the book would be ready for the 2001 American Association of Suicidology conference and then it turned out it needed a little more editing and instead was released in July 2001. As time went on, I began to realize the reason Bad Days took as long as it did was because of what I needed to experience in the meantime. I was still just a few years past Denise’s death and I needed to travel my grief road a little further and I needed more time to absorb what had happened along with my perspective of it. In comparison, waiting less than a week for the delivery of Rocky Roads: The Journeys of Families through Suicide Grief is not a big deal. What is most difficult for me is that I wrote the book to help other people. But when almost all the copies are sitting in a warehouse in West Memphis, Arkansas, rather than traveling west to me so I can send out orders that have been placed, it’s a little frustrating. I just want to get copies of the book into the hands of people who need it. I didn’t write it for me, I wrote it because I felt I had something to share that hadn’t been created yet. I hope it brings each person who reads it the hope that is so desperately needed after the suicide loss of a loved one.
In anticipation of the new book, some reflections April 8, 2010
I am expecting that tomorrow I will know when Rocky Roads: The Journeys of Families through Suicide Grief will ship. It’s been a bit of a weird time because I sort of feel like I’m between things. I’m working on some smaller projects since I can’t take on anything big (I leave for the American Association of Suicidology conference in two weeks followed by a trip to England to speak at the SOBS Support Day in Birmingham) until mid-May (yes, a new grief project is taking shape!). But it’s also been a time of reflection back nine years to the publication of Do They Have Bad Days in Heaven? Surviving the Suicide Loss of a Sibling. I keep thinking about how much has changed since I finished that book. My life for one. I look at where I am in the grief journey compared to then. I have had significant losses in my life since Bad Days was published and they have altered my perspective on loss. I have spoken all over the world, earned a doctorate, and traveled the routine life road (added four dogs for one!). But I have seen changes in the publishing world that have made Rocky Roads different. The Internet has changed since 2001 and there wasn’t Facebook or Twitter to build networks of people to share information about a new book. I have over 300 fans for the Rocky Roads Facebook fan. That isn’t a lot compared to mainstream books but it’s huge that over 300 people who care about the bereaved by suicide can become fans of something that will help them and/or they can pass along to someone they know who might need it. I have written here before about how the Internet has changed how we grieve but it’s also changed how we disseminate information in a way that I am grateful for. I remember wanting so badly to get my Bad Days into the hands of the people who needed it and now I feel like I’m several steps ahead of that by having access to more people. Of course, I’m sure it helps that I have also have access to people through being the president-elect of the American Association of Suicidology and because my contacts have expanded through my web sites like www.siblingsurvivors.com. No matter what it is, I’m grateful to have nine more years of experiences and connections to share that I hope will help families around the world grieve suicide loss.
