I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This
18 Assurances on Grief
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
New York Times and international bestselling mystery author Clare Mackintosh makes her nonfiction debut with this deeply felt memoir of unfathomable loss, and infinite hope.
“Grief has run through my life like thread through fabric; at times gossamer-thin and barely there, other times weaving thick, clumsy darns across the rips. In my grief I am a mother, a child, a sister, a wife, a woman, a friend. I am also a writer.”
When Clare Mackintosh lost her five-week-old son, she soon discovered there are no neat, labeled stages of grief like so many books insist. The shape of each loss is different; when a parent, relative, or friend passes, we grieve the person in all their beauty, their humanity, their imperfections. For Clare, there was no preparing for the anger and excruciating ache of knowing her child’s life would remain unlived. This is the book she needed then.
Inspired by a viral Twitter thread Clare wrote on the anniversary of her son's death, this deeply honest, compassionate memoir will bring solace and encouragement to anyone who finds themselves walking with grief, whether for a season or for several years. It is for those who need a little voice saying: I Promise It Won't Always Hurt Like This, for the people who love them, and those who understand that great loss can be a window through which we see how powerful, and unending, love can be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mystery novelist Mackintosh (The Last Party) shares in this cathartic account the lessons she learned after the death of her five-week-old son, Alex. Three weeks after his premature birth, Alex's health issues began to snowball, from a bacterial infection to meningitis to a brain hemorrhage. Eventually, Mackintosh and her husband made the devastating decision to take Alex off life support and end his suffering. Almost two decades later, Mackintosh opens up about that experience, structuring her thoughts around "a series of promises: my commitment to that the sun will rise again." Each of the 18 chapters are baseed on a lesson she's learned in the 18 years since Alex's death, including that grievers "won't always lie awake at night, sobbing until cannot breathe," and that the deceased "won't always be first thought in the morning." Throughout, Mackintosh expresses her anguish with striking candor, labeling her feeling after Alex's passing as "raw, choking pain impossible to describe to those who haven't felt it." While certain assurances come across more like platitudes than hard-won truths (including the promise that every mourner will "find someone who understands"), for the most part, Mackintosh delivers a salve for broken hearts. Readers who've been touched by loss will find comfort in these pages.
