She always says I’m so cute, but she’s the one with playful red curls framing her face.

I met her on a retreat last spring during a winter season in my life. Pacing the hallway of our hotel I demanded of myself to pull together, but her words had pierced me so deeply. As she finished with a couple other women I walked to her, in pieces. She held my hand and did not look away. She waited, quietly, for words I couldn’t say. Finally she filled the heavy silence.

“Sweet girl, I want to talk to you. But I think this is bigger than me.”
I slobbered. “Yes, you are very perceptive.”

Five months later I’m reaching for her hand over lemon pound cake and an old-fashioned chocolate doughnut. She looked weary, tired and told me for the millionth time, “He was so great, B.” I believe her, though I don’t know for myself. We sit there, crying together over the man whom she loved and is no longer here.

Mere hours after this, I am back to the driveling. The bus has left the school where my two older kids attend and I am unable to peel myself away from her words. I need to go, walk down the sidewalk, but how? Stuck in the first chapter of her book, the story that feels utterly real in the moment, I simply count each minute and get in as much as I can.
Not to mention, my face looks like I just had a run-in with a loving St. Bernard. No child should be greeted from school like that.

“There are no words to describe the hollow, piercing ache.”  -Tricia Lott Williford

This book, her writing will grab you immediately and it won’t let you go for long after you finish the last page. It is a story she lives, tells with audacity, and invites you to see.

It is two days before Christmas when this much-too-young woman takes the title widow. And she isn’t the only one he leaves. Two tender-aged boys journey this with her.

You will read how she navigates being there when her husband died, anger, memories, a double parenting duty, post trauma panic, and the hope for more. She, does, not, hold back.

“I am wordless, swept away by the long lost ideas of home and safety.”

“We pray for healing, but I wonder if we really know what we’re asking for. Is there greater glory in a pain free life, or in his people knowing and trusting him in the shadowed valley?”

“I was furious. Furious that they didn’t watch, furious that my heart spills into my lungs and makes it hard to breathe, furious that he isn’t here.”

–Tricia Lott Williford

The curls fly, her chin points up, mouth open. She laughs full and genuine. It is a great sound for someone with a great sense of humor and it’s evident in her writing. You will laugh with her, and find one of the most beautiful parts of her personality.

She is so authentic, this friend of mine. Her boys ask, and she answers…anything. The memories come, and she doesn’t hide from the hard ones. In fact, she dialogues a fight they had once. She talks openly about death and then dares to move forward.

“I have to let him go. The strings that keep us attached are the same chords that keep me tethered. I have to let go. This is the only way I can hold tightly to the memories, keep them sacred without taunting them.”

“The truth is, if and when the new daddy and I find each other, that’s a gift I intend to give him: he won’t have to fill a void. It won’t be his task to replace what has been lost, to heal my heart, to create my joy. There will be a new place that will be all his…”

–Tricia Lott Williford

You will read quickly, not because it’s a book you’ll want to hurry through, but because every page compels you to the next.

Read it. You will love her. As I do.