I'm so grateful this collection exists. It is validating to read about siblings' experiences with grief and love in their own words. As beautiful as it is heartbreaking, this collection is evidence that sibling love lasts a lifetime - and far beyond.
-Annie Sklaver Orenstein, Author of Always a Sibling: The Forgotten Mourner's Guide to Grief
I have scoured the internet for resources for my clients who are experiencing sibling loss. I'm grateful to have found a book that incorporates so many perspectives and experiences. My clients, and the population in general, need this book.
-Dr. Ingrid Clayton, Clinical Psychologist and Author of Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves-and How to Find Our Way Back (Putnam, September 2025)
There isn't nearly enough written about sibling loss. As a parent who lost a child, I was immersed in my own grief and at a loss to be there for my other two children. Not only did they lose a sister who they adored, I imagine they often felt as though they lost their parents, too. I'm grateful for this resource to help other grieving siblings to cope with the loss of a brother or sister. Through this collection of sibling stories, others will surely find new ways to process their grief and hold on to their love and connections.
-Lilly Julien, Founder of COPE Foundation, a grief and healing organization helping parents, siblings, and families living with the loss of a child.
As someone who lost her 17 year old brother, this anthology really hit home. It's a powerful collection of stories that speak to the unique experience of losing a sibling. If you're grieving or just trying to make sense of it all, this book offers a real look at finding hope-and remind us all that we are not alone on this journey."
-Dr. Heidi Horsley, Executive Director - Open to Hope Foundation, Adjunct Professor - Columbia University
Finally! Here is a book that helps you feel and understand sibling loss in the most profound ways. I thought I knew a thing or two (or 2,000) about the subject. But, only after reading this beautiful collection did I feel seen and appreciated for the pain that comes from losing your brother or sister (or both). I'm so grateful to these writers for their poignant, generous and comforting words. What a gift.
-Meg Kissinger, Award Winning Journalist and Best-Selling Author of While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Meet the Editors
Lynn L. Shattuck has been publishing essays on the topic of sibling loss for more than a decade. She was a paid columnist at Elephant Journal for ten years; several of her essays on the topic of grief and sibling loss have gone viral. Her writing has also appeared on The Huffington Post, Human Parts, Vice, The Fix, and Al Jazeera. Along with her partners, Molly Fowkes and Alyson Shelton, Lynn co-founded the Loss of a Lifetime, a community and resource for grieving siblings.
Alyson Shelton is an award-winning screenwriter and essayist. Her writing is widely published at outlets including The New York Times, Ms., and The Rumpus. She’s deeply proud of her collaborations with other female creatives, most notably, the comic, Reburn, and the film, To Hold The Night. She’s anthologized in collections including Comics Lit Vol. 1 (Accomplishing Innovation Press), No Contact: 28 Writers on Family Estrangement (Catapult 2026), and Root Cause: Stories of Health, Harm and Reclaiming Our Humanity (Editor: Jeannine Ouellette). She’s best known for her Instagram Live series inspired by George Ella Lyon’s poem, Where I’m From where she’s hosted close to 200 writers. The poem also provides the spine for her forthcoming memoir.
Meet the Authors
Annabel Chown was born in London. She studied architecture at Cambridge University, then worked as an architect for several years, in both London and Berlin. At 31, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, started making notes while going through treatment, and discovered a passion for writing. Her memoir, Hidden: Young, Single, Cancer (Blue Door Press, 2020) emerged from this. She is also a journalist and a yoga teacher. Her writing, on topics including illness, loss, motherhood, and wellbeing, has been published in leading UK publications such as The Times, The Telegraph, and Grazia. She lives in London with her husband and six-year-old son.
Anne Pinkerton is the author of the memoir, Were You Close? A sister’s quest to know the brother she lost (Vine Leaves Press, 2023).
Artie Johann is a TV writer/performer who has written for Family Guy, Big Mouth, and Beavis & Butt-Head. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, kids, and cats.
Carol Schultz Vento is a retired political science professor and attorney. Her Ph.D. Is from Temple University and law degree from Rutgers University. She is the author of 2 books: The Hidden Legacy of World War II: A Daughter’s Journey of Discovery and Twisted Strands: Family Secrets and Intergenerational Trauma. Her sister Rosemary died at age 22 in a Thanksgiving accident in 1973.
Daniel Simpson’s most recent book, Inside the Invisible, published by Nine Mile Books in November 2022, won the inaugural Propel Poetry Prize. Other books include Border Songs: A Conversation in Poems, co-authored with Ona Gritz (Finishing Line Press, 2017) and School for the Blind (Poets Wear Prada, 2014). His work has been anthologized in About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest, and Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, and many other journals. He serves as flash nonfiction editor for Wordgathering, and leads, along with Ona Gritz, online workshops in poetry and flash memoir. He sings with the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia and works as a technical support specialist for the Library of Congress.
Elise McCall (Cover Artist and Designer) is a multimedia artist and storyteller. Through her art she makes explicit that which is often hidden and shamed from sight. She worked on the concept art for the film To Hold The Night. Her comic credits include: Reburn, Spy Island (Dark Horse), and Man-Eaters (Image). She has shown in traditional art in galleries on the west coast. She notably designed the logo for Fredrik Knudsen’s Down the Rabbit Hole series on Youtube. She's a longtime gamer who resides in rainy Portland, OR.
Gretchen L. Kelly is a writer, parent, and middle child in a close-knit family. When she was in college, her younger brother began having vague health issues. Years later, within days of becoming engaged to her husband of 25 years, her brother was diagnosed with stage four pediatric cancer. Ten days before her wedding, he lost his battle. Grief has been the throughline in every milestone since.
Jennie Burke is a teacher, mother, and harm reduction advocate from Baltimore. Her work has appeared in a variety of mainstream and literary outlets. She holds a B.A. from Boston College in Secondary Education and Faith, Peace and Justice studies, and an MFA in Nonfiction writing from Goucher College.
Jennifer Hilbert Speak is Chief Operating Officer at Pinwheel.us and spends her free time volunteering at the local SPCA and community theatres, as well as reading, kayaking, and driving teenagers around. She lives in Roseville, California, with her wonderful husband, two amazing daughters, and an adorable rescue dog.
Judy Lipson is the author of Celebration of Sisters: It Is Never Too Late To Grieve, winner of the Literary Titan’s 2021 Silver Award. The sole survivor of three sisters, Judy founded Celebration of Sisters, an annual ice-skating fundraiser to commemorate the lives and memories of her beloved sisters Margie and Jane to benefit Massachusetts General Hospital’s Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program.
Judy shared her experience of losing two sisters, her life forever changed, as the keynote speaker for The Bereaved Parents National USA 2023 Conference, The Compassionate Friends National Conference, The Open to Hope Cable television, and as a board member of the COPE Foundation.
Judy’s passion for figure skating was rewarded by being the recipient of the 2020 Get Up Award by the U.S. Figure Skating Association for her resilience on and off the ice.
Julie Cantrell is a multiple award-winning, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author, editor, instructor, TEDx speaker, and ghostwriter. Her novels have earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal and have been featured in Top Reads lists by LitHub, Redbook, Southern Living Magazine, REAL SIMPLE, BookBub, HuffPost, USA TODAY (HEA), and more.
The recipient of two Christy Awards, two Carol Awards, and the Mississippi Library Association Fiction Award, Julie was named a short-list finalist twice for the Mississippi Arts & Letters Fiction Award as well as a two-time short-list finalist for the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize.
Julie currently serves as managing director of Story Summit, an online writing community for writers across the publishing and film industry. She works full-time from her home in Fairhope, Alabama. Learn more: www.juliecantrell.com or www.storysummit.us
Kathryn Leehane is an award-winning writer, speaker, and humorist. Her work has been featured in several anthologies and a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, Under the Gum Tree, Hippocampus Magazine, McSweeney’s, and Ms. Magazine. Kathryn lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, two children, and a menagerie of rescue dogs. www.kathrynleehane.com
Katie Daley has performed her poetry across North America in theaters, radio broadcasts, ballrooms, and junkyards. She's a recipient of three Individual Creativity Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council and a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her poems and essays have appeared in various publications, including High Country News, Exposition Review, Hippocampus, Seneca Review, Slipstream, and Times They Were A-Changing: Women Remember the ’60s and ’70s (She Writes Press). Her memoir about the journey she took hitchhiking and migrant-working her way across the USA in the wake of her brother’s suicide was a finalist for the 2020 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. Her most recent book of poems is Any Closer to Home (Finishing Line Press, 2023). As a teaching artist, she does therapeutic writing outreach in drug rehabilitation programs, hospitals, schools, and community centers throughout Northeast Ohio. www.katiedaley.com
Khara-Jade Warren lives with her husband and two sons in a small town in South Africa, somewhere between the Drakensberg Mountains and the Indian Ocean. She works as a copywriter and content marketer, but her one true love will always be books. One day, she hopes to write a few of her own.
Lia Woodall (she/her) is an award-winning essayist who experiments with form to explore her experiences of twin loss to suicide and family dysfunction. Her hybrid chapbook “Remove to Play” (The Cupboard Pamphlet, 2020) was the 2019 contest winner. Her work appears in Best American Experimental Writing 2020 (digital edition), Under the Gum Tree, Literal Latté, Sonora Review, The Rumpus, Bomb Magazine, and elsewhere, and has been recognized with Pushcart Prize nominations and as notables in The Best American Essays series. She is at work on a collection-across-genre called Leaving Twinbrook: A Memoir of Duality.
Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and host of the Writing Your Resilience podcast. She works at the intersection of storytelling and healing, blending her lived experience with suicide loss and CPTSD with clinical training to help writers transform their toughest moments into art. Her essays and stories have appeared on Risk! and in The New York Times, HuffPost, Hippocampus Literary Magazine, and Kenyon Review Online, among others.
Meghan Britton-Gross is located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She has contributed to “Sweet Tea for the Soul” by Dayspring, featured in an NPR interview and article, “Good Grief” podcast from Lemonada, and has given a TEDx talk on supporting siblings who have lost a sibling.
Michele Peters (she/her) is a self-proclaimed survivor who writes from the heart with the goal of bringing light into dark places. She believes in love first, always. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, US, and realized she had stories people wanted to hear when she auditioned for and read on the nationally syndicated stage show Listen to Your Mother in Spokane, Washington, in 2022. She is a contributor to Her View From Home and has two essays published in So God Made A Grandma, released March 2025. She's working on her coming-of-age memoir and regularly publishes her non-fiction essays at Light Into Dark Places on Substack. The essay in this collection was originally shared as part of a longer tribute work titled The COVID Diaries.
Molly Fowkes lost her older brother, Jimmy, to brain cancer in 2014. His battle with the disease lasted over eight years. She was 17 and he was 21 when he died.
From a young age, Molly knew her passion for helping others would be within the healthcare space. After pursuing degrees in Product Design and UX Design, she began working as a designer in healthcare, with a specific focus on cancer. Her first role was with Blue Note Therapeutics, a prescription digital therapeutics company dedicated to transforming mental health care for cancer patients.
Molly is currently a designer at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she works to solve complex problems and generate long-term, meaningful impact for those directly impacted by cancer.
In 2022, Molly began working with Lynn Shattuck and Alyson Shelton on their website, Loss of a Lifetime, which offers community and resources to those who have lost a sibling.
Ona Gritz’s new memoir, Everywhere I Look, was named the StoryTrade Award Nonfiction Book of the Year, and has won the Readers’ Choice Gold Award for Best Adult Book, a Pencraft Best Book Award in Memoir, the Independent Author Award in New Nonfiction, the Independent Author Award in True Crime, and is a Foreword Indies finalist in Grief/Grieving as well as an Independent Book Review 2024 Must-Read.
Ona’s nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, Brevity, Hippocampus, Salon, and River Teeth, and has been named Notable in The Best American Essays.
She is the author of two 2024 young adult verse novels, The Space You Left Behind, which was featured in The Children's Book Council’s “Hot Off the Press” roundup of anticipated best sellers, and Take a Sad Song, which has been selected as one of Kirkus Reviews’ best YA titles of 2024.
Rebekkah Dilts holds a PhD in French and English Comparative Literature and is a writer, teacher, labor organizer, and mother. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus. She has finished a draft of a memoir she hopes to publish.
Sarah Leibov is a writer, storyteller, and advocate helping to save lives by inspiring audiences to pursue genetic screening. Sarah’s personal essays have appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, Tablet, and other publications. Her memoir in progress is based on a 2012 article about coping with her younger sister's death from Tay-Sachs disease. “Dancing with My Sister” was published in Jewish Chicago: The JUF Magazine and led to her role speaking about the importance of carrier screening for the Sarnoff Center for Jewish Genetics. Sarah is a Feldenkrais Method creative movement instructor and enjoys sharing her stories onstage and online at www.sarahleibov.com.
Stephanie Gutiérrez is a proud Mexican-American with a strong work ethic and a commitment to being present in every aspect of life. Known for her willingness to help others, she brings positivity and a selfless attitude to everything she does. With a kind heart, infectious smile, and vibrant personality, she leaves a lasting impression on all.
A dedicated parent, Stephanie supports her son, an aspiring football player, in his dream of making it big in the sport. Family and community are at the core of her life.
In her free time, Stephanie enjoys hiking, traveling, and exploring new cultures. Her love for food leads her to seek out exciting culinary experiences, finding joy in sharing meals with loved ones. Always positive, she approaches life with a smile and strives to make the world a better place, one kind gesture at a time.
Susan E. Casey, MSW, MFA, is an author, a licensed mental health clinician, a podcaster, a psychic medium, a certified bereavement group facilitator, and a certified life coach. Throughout the past 25 years, Susan has worked in hospice, in-patient, and home-based settings with teens and adults and provided clinical coaching to therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists countrywide to improve mental health outcomes for youth and adults. Susan’s blog and podcast can be found on her website: www.rockyourshine.com
Susan’s fiction has won numerous awards, and Rock On: Mining for Joy in the Deep River of Sibling Grief is her first work of nonfiction published on February 14, 2020 by Library Tales Publishing. Rock On won 1st place in general nonfiction in the Royal Dragonfly book contest and was a finalist in the Best 2020 Books American Fest national book contest, the Book Excellence national book contest, and the National Chanticleer Book Reviews.
Victoria Waddle is a writer with work published in literary journals and anthologies, including Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. Her books include a novel, Keep Sweet (Inlandia Books), a collection of short fiction, Acts of Contrition (Los Nietos Press), and a chapbook, The Mortality of Dogs and Humans (Bamboo Dart Press).
Her essay on the harm of sexual purity culture went viral on HuffPost and BuzzFeed. She was formerly a high school English teacher and a teacher librarian. She can be found on the Substack at Be a Cactus, where she writes about book bans and other literary topics.
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