Overcoming a Parent’s Worst Nightmare

Bereaved mother offers tips on her most important Life Lesson

Perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a parent is experiencing the loss of a child. However, as one mother shares, it’s possible to turn one’s devastation into spiritual enlightenment and to weave the tragedy into the fabric of your life and your family.

“I don’t think any parent ever gets over the loss of a child,” says Caroline Flohr, whose memoir “Heaven’s Child,” (www.heavenschild.com), recounts the transformative death of her 16-year-old twin daughter, Sarah.
“Through the web of pain, I have been amazed by the power of family, love and faith in healing. I have learned that death defines not the end of the journey, but a beginning.”
Flohr reviews some of the milestones in her journey to inner peace:

• Deeper meaning: Through the death of someone so important, you will be changed. The question is how you will be changed. Will you grow, or become diminished? Flohr grew with the realization that death – so often viewed as an end – is just the beginning of another phase of existence. “One of my favorite quotes is from poet Rabindranath Tagore: “Death is not extinguishing the light. It is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”
• Celebrate life: When the bereaved are able to look at the life of a person who has passed and see more beauty than pain, they should rejoice. The reality of a person’s absence will always have an element of sadness, but the joy of  wonderful memories is even more powerful. When loved ones leave this Earth, graces are given to those relationships left behind. These are gifts. When we can acknowledge them, our lives can expand in the present.
• Ready for anything: Once you’ve experienced the worst and pulled through, you know you will be able to weather just about any adversity. Maya Angelou wrote, ‘“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” Have faith in that inner strength we all harbor, Flohr says.
• Appreciate what you have: Life as we know it will come to an end. This includes everyone we know, love and care about; it’s a fact that we often forget, and it’s as startling to remember as it is true. Come good or bad, we do not know what the future will bring, which means we should take every opportunity to fully embrace the present, and our loved ones.

About Caroline Flohr: Caroline Flohr was a busy wife and mother to five children when her 16-year-old twin daughter, Sarah, was killed in an accident. She was forced to dig into the deeper meaning of existence and came away with profound edification. Flohr lives with her husband and children on Bainbridge Island, a suburb of Seattle.

Should Authors Respond to Critical Reviews? Yes

It has been a few months since my book “a child lost in flight” was published. The book has been steadily gathering reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. As any writer would, I have been reflecting on the reviews, especially the critical ones. The reviews seem to fall into a few broad categories.

Favorable Reviews

Review category 1: OMG, yet another book on grief and death. These reviews generally start by reviewer feeling sorry for my circumstance, and ends thanking me for the “happy ending”

My response: To this my response would be “thank you for sharing my journey”

Review Category 2: Accidental reviewer. Reader generally is not sure why they picked up a book on death and grief – perhaps motivated by a blog post or other reviews. They too generally end with a “thanks for the happy ending”

My response: To this again my response would be “thank you for sharing my journey”

Neutral Reviews

Review category 3: It was a fast read. In this review, the reader generally begins thanking me for the narrative without being verbose.

My response: In the book, I could have delved a bit more into the gory details of my experience. I realize I kept the narrative intentionally short.  Wonder if expanding the book from 60 to over 100 pages would leave the reader more “satisfied”?

Critical Reviews

I appreciate the fact that some reviewers have taken the time to be critical about this work. And even while being critical, they have taken pains to point out the critique is about my narrative and not about my experience or the ordeal I went through.

Review category 4: The book was focused on me (the author), my grief and how I tried moving on. It did not highlight how others around me reacted and felt.   

My response: This is right. My original intent was to focus on highlighting “my” story, my viewpoint and perhaps my grief and moving on. Even Suja, my wife, who kindly agreed to proof read it remarked how I had completely omitted her perspective and viewpoint from the narrative. After all, weren’t we in the journey together?

Review category 5: Book feels a bit unfinished. Perhaps could do with some editorial help. The narrative has a ‘blog like’ feel to it.

My response: absolutely right. I would love for a publisher to assign a good editor to work with me and help me make the narrative more readable. My guess is that the genera – story of grief and death – perhaps doesn’t have a mass market. Even folks who might read fiction about death or paranormal might shy off a real-life story of grief and redemption. If there is no market for such book, it is unlikely that a publisher will ‘invest’ in the book.

Bottomline: A heartfelt thanks to all reviewers. Please keep the reviews coming. At some point, I may revisit the book and ad a few more details. And make sure the flow and narrative reads better.

Book Reviews by Courtney Bauman: A child lost in flight

Book Review by Courtney Bauman

It was one of the saddest books I have read in a while. It is a non-fiction memoir about the loss of a child. It is very heartfelt and touching, and I am sure it will hit home to all young parents who worry about their newborns. While, hopefully, the occurrences in the story will not happen to them, having a newborn child always leaves parents with a small sense of paranoia with everything they do.

This book was very well written. It was short – only 60 pages but took you basically through hell and back. Overall, it is a story about recovering from a terrible tragedy, and while time may heal some wounds, you need support from friends, family, and sometimes religion to be able to heal enough to move on with your life. This story is very inspirational, and reminds you not to take the simple things in life for granted.

Overall, this book receives a 5/5 for me. It was very well written, and I was hooked from the first page. I needed to know what was going to happen.  I encourage everyone to pick up this book. It is very short and inexpensive, and the struggle that Mohan and his wife went through needs to be brought to light. You will not regret this purchase.

Thanks for the review Courtney

Who likes to read about other’s grief?

I have been trying hard to promote my recent memoir and this weekend I was musing on how many people really like to read books and memoirs about grief and adversity.

How many of us have the perseverance and strength to read about other’s inner feelings of despair and anguish? Even if we know that the writer has been able to - or trying to -  overcome such grief and anguish. Those close to author may find difficult to distance themselves, and sit back to read about an incident they are already aware of.

Humans around the world seek to follow the principle enshrined in the United States Declaration of Independence "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."  And in the pursuit of happiness, reading about human grief and triumphs, and overcoming adversity is not really a priority.

While reading about grief is hard, writing about it can also be equally excruciating though sometimes it is also cathartic. Many of us, self-included, have a strong motivation to write about our grief. For some of us who are unable to verbalize, writing helps get feelings off one’s chest. When our infant son, suddenly died on an international flight bound for India, my wife and I were in shock. I had to begin planning the funeral of our only child instead of the glorious homecoming we had envisaged. It took me a while but I eventually began writing about my experience, observations and feelings as my wife and I began to “move on” in life.

During the past few weeks, I have been trying to seek out reviewers to read "A Child Lost in Flight," the recently published memoir. Although a few reviewers have been kind to post reviews of the book on Amazon, Goodreads and their blogs, I have been finding it especially hard to reach out to influential Digerati.

I think there are several reasons for this: mine not a memoir by a famous person or the story of an incident people may be naturally inclined to explore (how many of us want to even contemplate the death of a child?) Another reason for the lackluster response is perhaps the topic of grief, though the book is not just about grief but how I overcame it.

Maybe I am not “marketing” another key aspect that I have explored in the book, the social comment on the growth pains of India that directly impacts the diaspora like me. As one of the reviewers has posted on Amazon “The book also describes the breakdown of the order and structure that is all too common on airlines based off of India. When this subtle incompetence is combined with a ridiculous level of bureaucracy within India's public sector organizations, one has to struggle through even basic processes that we in the western world take it for granted.”

Perhaps the real question here is in reaching out to readers. They must be thinking: Yes, I know you have written about your adversity and how you overcame it; but by reading about your grief and travails, am I going to experience some negative emotions? And why should I invest my time and energy in reading about your travails and challenges when I could be in pursuit of happiness?

link: cross post from other blog