Life After Launch
Eileen Vorbach Collins and her first year
A lot has happened since I was featured here on the Debutante Ball Substack November 7, 2023, the day my book, Love in the Archives, a Patchwork of True Stories About Suicide Loss, was published.
I’ve been a podcast guest on Let’s Talk Memoir, with Ronit Plank and Writing Your Resilience with Lisa Cooper Ellison. Both hosts are skilled interviewers and their questions helped me to understand and articulate more about my book. One question people have asked is, “Why did you want to write about your daughter’s suicide?”
Well, I’d have preferred not to have it to write about. But after Lydia died, I never knew how I might, on any given occasion, answer the ubiquitous question, “Do you have children? The question always includes the assumption that if you answer in the affirmative, you’ll add a few details to keep the conversation going.
Sometimes I’d be frank, but it either scared people away or compelled them to tell me in great detail of someone’s sister’s friend’s third cousin who’d “committed” suicide. To avoid this, I’d sometimes simply say “I have a son” and tell them an amusing story about Daniel and my grandkitten, Chico.
On other occasions, especially if I never expected to again cross paths the person I was chatting with, I might tell them a story about Lydia. A lie about where she’s living and how she loves her life.
I got tired of the lies. I wanted people I met, particularly those I thought might become friends, to know me. I wanted them to know Daniel and Lydia. The reviews indicate that, for this goal, my book has been a success. Here are a few lines from Amazon reviews:
I am grateful that through this book I got to know Lydia.
An incredible privilege to get to know Lydia.
the life of a beautiful, brilliant adolescent child can be a precarious thing.
She wrote her way through grief after the loss of her daughter and has managed to bring Lydia to life on the page.
She also shares Lydia in such a way that I now know her and miss her too.
Eileen Vorbach Collins paints a palpable living picture of Lydia, her talents, loves and her lows.
I am grateful to meet Lydia through this book and mourn her loss too.
—Lydia’s humor, compassion and ornery courage make her real and present to the reader. I wondered as I read who she would be today, had she chosen to go on living.
Eileen’s humor and honesty, her economy of words carried me through this collection. I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to know Lydia.
I fell in love with Lydia, the artist, writer, supernova. I would have loved to have met her, and to Eileen’s credit, I feel like I did, briefly, yet deeply enough for her to have left a mark on my heart and soul forever.
The author has a talented way of letting you get to know this young brilliant girl.
Rather than go through the ‘stages of grief’, this book is a kaleidoscope of experiences and memories of the author’s beloved daughter. We appreciate and wonder at the baby and toddler, the growing child, the rebellious, angry and perspicacious teen.
For a long time, I was ashamed, not of my daughter, but of my failure to keep her safe. Suicide still carries the heavy burden of stigma. I hope my book helps other suicide loss survivors and people who care about us to let go of that.
I’m still not comfortable promoting my book but I’m trying. Being a member of the 2023-2034 Debutante Ball has been helpful. Look, thanks to debut author Sharon Wishnow, I’m writing this piece for our Substack.
When I published with a small press, I didn’t know about trade reviews until it was too late to submit. I could not justify the cost of a publicist. Nevertheless, four bookstores in my current home state of North Carolina have put the book on their shelves as have public libraries in Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and California that I know of.
I thought my book might be too somber for most readers, but that’s proving false according to reviews, many of which mention humor or laughing. I won’t list those here but you can read them on Amazon.
And while those Amazon reviews are so important, and I hope you’ll leave one if you read my book, I’m so very proud of this recent review in LA Review of Books.
In the four months since publication, Love in the Archives has received a Pen Life Award, and is a finalist for a Sarton Woman Writer’s Award and a Forward Indies Award.
Much of this is due to being part of an amazing, supportive writing community. If you’re a debut author or hope to be, my advice to you is, find your people. Don’t write alone.
Now, tell us about your book or your WIP. Tell us your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations. Come join us at the Debutante Ball. As always, tiara and white gloves optional.
Eileen, your brilliant book and your other writing about Lydia shows parents who've lost a child to suicide that they, too, can expand the community of people who know and love their children, simply by talking about their loss. I love knowing Lydia through your words. What a special and spectacular human she was.
I remember getting your book and being afraid to open it—your story was too close to my deepest fear. But once I read it, I was enriched by your willingness to express your emotions.
Our books came out around the same time. I fumbled a lot and missed opportunities but also gained insight and learned to take risks. Most important was the community of authors I discovered who were so open and encouraging—so, thank you!