New release!
The Year After Kahlia: Surviving, Loving and Writing My Way Through Loss by Kirsten O’Connor.
On a personal note, I have two friends who are currently experiencing devastating loss, and I will be buying copies of Kirsten’s book for them. Having gone through this myself, I recognise the enormous value they will receive from reading it. I recommend this book for anyone in this position or who knows someone who is. In Kirsten’s words:
When a child dies, the world does not just break, it rearranges itself entirely.
The Year After Kahlia is a mother’s honest account of losing her daughter to suicide and living through the disorienting, relentless year that followed. It is not a story of recovery or resolution. It is a record of survival, love, and learning how to exist in a world that no longer makes sense.
Written with rawness, tenderness, and unexpected humour, this memoir walks alongside the realities that often go unspoken after loss, the shock held in the body, the fog in the brain, the guilt, the anger, the longing, the practical demands that continue even when life has stopped.
Interwoven with personal experience are gentle reflections on the biology of grief and the nervous system, offering reassurance that what feels like failure is often a natural human response to overwhelming loss.
This book does not offer fixes or timelines. It offers permission.
Permission to grieve without performing.
Permission to move slowly.
Permission to love without letting go.
Permission to survive the unthinkable in your own way.
The Year After Kahlia is for parents and families living after loss, for those walking alongside someone who is grieving, and for anyone seeking an honest companion through the raw terrain of grief, where love does not end, and neither does missing.
Kirsten’s book is available now from Amazon here https://www.amazon.com/Year-After-Kahlia-Surviving-Writing-ebook/dp/B0GDP4HPPZ/ where you can buy a print copy as well as digital. You can pre-order your paperback here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-year-after-kahlia-kirsten-oconnor/1148894926 and here: https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-year-after-kahlia-surviving-loving-and-writing-my-way-through-loss-kirsten-o-connor/book/9780473764609.html Print copies coming soon. I’ll let you know when they’re available.
You’ll also be able to buy it from Poppies in Howick and Wardini Books in Hawkes Bay but if you’d like a signed copy, Kirsten is having a book launch on Saturday 21 February at 1.30 pm. It’s being held at Sprig & Fern, 342 Tinakori Road, Wellington and it sounds like a nice afternoon with food and music. Head along and say hi to Kirsten if you can. Lel.
