There are a million things I never want to forget about my daughter.

Her laughter. Her funny little habits and quirks. The way she found beauty in things most people overlooked. Like every parent, I knew how precious memories were, but I never realized how desperate you could become to recall every last detail when there are no new memories left to be made.

My daughter, Marya Angelique, died suddenly on October 18, 2024. She was just 19 years old.

Only three months earlier, she had moved into her very first apartment. She was discovering independence, navigating adulthood, and experiencing her first real heartbreak. Her death came under circumstances that left our family with questions we may never have answers to. What I do know with absolute certainty is that my daughter's life deserves to be remembered for so much more than the circumstances of her death.

Marya was an artist, a dreamer, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a granddaughter, and a friend. She loved nature, tiny creatures, and the beautiful, unusual things most people walked right past. She had a way of finding joy in the simplest things and seeing beauty where others might not have thought to look. Her death was one horrible moment in a life filled with happiness and love. I refuse to let that one moment become her entire story.

What began as my own desperate attempt to survive the unimaginable eventually became something I never expected: a collection of books created to help other families remember, honor, and preserve the lives of their children.

I began writing MARYA as an intimate memoir about my daughter's life, our family, and the world we found ourselves living in after she died. I wanted to tell her story, but I also wanted to share the reality of what happens when the life you've always known suddenly comes to an end, yet you're somehow expected to keep living.

I call this period of my life my Intermission.

Before giving birth to my son Caleb and daughter Marya, I spent the first 22 years of my life competing as a singer and acting in small theatre roles. As many people know, in theater, an intermission is the pause between Act I and Act II. The performance isn't over, but everything stops for a little while before the story continues.

When Marya died, it felt as though the curtain had fallen on the life I knew. I couldn't simply walk back onto the stage and resume my role as the same person I'd been before. I needed time to exist between the life I had known and the one I was somehow expected to continue living.

That's what Intermission means to me. It's permission to pause. To grieve. To rest. To remember. To recover and learn who we are before re-entering our lives. To stop pretending we're okay simply because the rest of the world has continued moving.

It doesn't mean our grief will someday be finished or that we'll return to the people we once were. It means our stories aren't over, even when we have no idea how to continue them. Act II may never be as good as Act I, but there is still so much beauty, love, and joy waiting to be discovered, even if sadness will now always exist alongside our happiness.

MARYA is my personal invitation into that space between the life I once knew and the life I am still learning to live. It is an honest account of motherhood, love, loss, and the complicated reality of surviving the death of a child. I share the memories, the questions, the anger, the guilt, the unexpected moments of laughter, and the emotions that don't always fit into the tidy explanations people offer about grief.

I didn't write this book because I had figured out how to live without my daughter. I wrote it because I was trying to figure out how to live with the reality that she was no longer physically here, while still finding ways to keep her part of my life.

That understanding eventually became the foundation of my company, Intermission Grief, and the words I share with other grieving people: 

"Give yourself permission to have an Intermission."

While writing MARYA, something happened that absolutely terrified me.

I couldn't remember my own daughter.

I had spent 19 years loving, raising, and knowing this beautiful girl, yet grief had left enormous gaps in my memory. Things I should have been able to recall so easily suddenly seemed impossible to reach. Her childhood moments, the little stories, the ordinary memories that had always been such a natural part of our lives. It was as though parts of those 19 years had disappeared along with her.

Many of those memories have gradually returned, but I was suddenly confronted with another terrifying possibility. What if one day they don't come back? What if, as I grow older, dementia, Parkinson's disease, another illness, or even a head injury affects my memory? What if I begin forgetting the tiny details that made Marya who she was?

I had already lost my daughter. The thought of someday losing my memories of her was almost unbearable.

I spent months searching for a book that could help me remember and document every detail of my daughter's life. I found plenty of wonderful grief journals asking how I felt about my loss, how I was coping, or what I missed most. However, the remembrance journals I found were generic enough to be used for a spouse, parent, friend, or practically anyone who had died. There is certainly a need for those resources, too, but they weren't what I was looking for.

I didn't want another book asking me about my grief. I wanted a book asking me about my CHILD.

I wanted questions that would take me back through every stage of Marya's life. Her personality, childhood, friendships, relationships, accomplishments, challenges, dreams, quirks, and all the little things that made her uniquely herself. I wanted questions that would make me stop and think. Questions that might bring back memories I hadn't revisited in years. Questions I wouldn't even have known to ask myself. I wanted to remember everything I possibly could.

I wanted to remember the things that seemed so ordinary when she was alive. The expressions she used. The things that made her laugh uncontrollably. Her favorite childhood toys, the unusual things she collected, the friendships she treasured, and the dreams she had for her future. I wanted to remember the stories behind the photographs, the memories that never made it into a photo album, and the moments that mattered even though nobody else may have noticed them.

I also wanted a way to imagine what the stages of her life she never got to experience might have looked like. A place to write down all the dreams I still had for her, dreams that would never have the chance to come true.

When I couldn't find that book, I decided to write it.

A Gentle Guide Through Your Intermission: 365 Prompts to Help You Create a Memorial Journal became my second book. It contains 365 thoughtfully developed prompts designed to help parents dive deeply into their child's life, with more than 100 additional prompts for stepparents, adoptive parents, and parents of children with complex medical needs.

The questions explore the many stages of a child's life, from the earliest hopes and dreams surrounding their arrival through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and the lasting connections they leave behind. They encourage parents to revisit memories they may not have thought about in years, reflect on the little things that made their child unique, and preserve the stories that might otherwise go untold.

It doesn't tell parents how to get over losing a child. It doesn't set a timeline for healing or insist that they find closure. It simply invites them to remember.

There is no deadline, no correct way to answer, and no expectation that a parent must work through a prompt every day. Some questions may bring laughter. Others may bring tears. Some, I hope, will unlock memories that have been buried beneath years of ordinary living or the overwhelming weight of grief. There are also questions that help parents work through their own grief, because that is an important part of Intermission as well.

I also recognize that not every family looks the same, and not every parent has the same memories or experiences. That is why I felt it was important to include additional prompts that acknowledge the unique journeys of stepparents, adoptive parents, and parents of children with complex medical needs. Every relationship deserves to be honored, and every child's story deserves a place to be told.

A Gentle Guide Through Your Intermission is the book I most desperately want bereaved parents to know exists because I truly believe it's the kind of resource so many of us have been needing in our grief.

My hope is that it gives parents something I was so desperately searching for: a way to reach back through the years, rediscover precious memories, and begin preserving the story of a child whose life can never be reduced to the fact that they died.

Once I had created A Gentle Guide Through Your Intermission, I realized there was still something missing. I had developed hundreds of questions to help parents remember their children, but I also wanted them to have a beautiful, dedicated place to preserve the memories those questions brought back.

That's how MY CHILD: An Intermission Grief Companion Workbook was born.

I created a collection of five companion journals designed to accompany the prompt book. Each volume provides space for parents to record their memories, tell their stories, reflect on their child's life, and preserve the details they never want to forget.

The prompt book provides the questions. The companion journals provide the space for the answers, stories, photographs, thoughts, and memories that make each child's life uniquely their own.

I created the journals, but the parents are their authors.

There is no right or wrong way to fill these pages. Some parents may write long, detailed stories. Others may record a few sentences, draw pictures, include photographs, or simply jot down the little things they want to remember. The journals aren't meant to be completed on a schedule or filled out in any particular order. They are meant to become a reflection of the child whose life is being remembered, told through the eyes and heart of someone who loves them.

When completed, each journal becomes something truly irreplaceable: a personal record of a child's life, written by someone who loves them, that can be treasured by generations who may never have had the chance to know that child.

Imagine a grandchild or great-grandchild opening one of these journals decades from now and discovering what their family member was really like. Not simply their name, birthday, or the dates that appeared on a family tree, but the little things that made them who they were. Their sense of humor. Their favorite foods. The things that frightened them, fascinated them, or made them laugh. The childhood adventures, family traditions, friendships, and dreams that helped shape their lives.

Those are the things I want to preserve.

Although these resources were born from child loss, I don't believe a child has to die for their story to deserve preserving.

I have four children, and I plan to create journals for every one of them. I intend to do the same for my grandchildren. Someday, I want future generations of our family to open those pages and discover more than names, dates, and photographs.

I want them to know who our children really were. Who their parents and grandparents were before they became the people those future generations knew.

What made them laugh. What they dreamed about. The silly things they did. What mattered to them. What it was like to love them.

I think about how many stories disappear with each passing generation. How many questions we wish we'd thought to ask our parents or grandparents while they were still here. How many tiny details about the people we love are eventually lost simply because nobody thought to write them down.

I don't want that to happen to my family, and I hope these books will encourage other families to preserve their stories, too.

Whether you're a bereaved parent trying desperately to hold on to every memory of your child, a parent wanting to document the beautiful ordinary moments of your children's lives, or a grandparent hoping to leave something meaningful for future generations, these books were created with the belief that every life has a story worth preserving.

When Marya died, I lost the future I had imagined with my daughter. I lost the opportunity to watch her grow older, see the person she would become, celebrate her accomplishments, and make the thousands of new memories I assumed we still had ahead of us.

There is nothing I can do to change that.

What I can do is remember the 19 years I was given. I can write down the stories, the conversations, the ordinary days, and the extraordinary moments that made up her life. I can preserve the memories that still make me smile and the ones that bring tears to my eyes. I can make sure that Marya's story continues to be told, not simply as the story of a young woman who died, but as the story of a beautiful, complicated, funny, loving, wonderfully unique person who lived.

These books began with my desperate desire to remember everything I possibly could about my daughter. Today, my hope is that they help other parents do the same for their children.

I don't believe preserving memories takes away our grief, and I don't believe we need to find a silver lining in losing someone we love. I do believe that the lives of the people we love deserve to be remembered, celebrated, and shared, regardless of how long or short those lives may have been.

I want Marya's name to be spoken. I want her stories to be told. I want her nieces, nephews, and future generations of our family to know who she was, what she loved, and how much joy she brought into this world.

Most of all, I want them to know that she was here. That she mattered. That she was so much more than the day we lost her.

And I want other parents to have the opportunity to preserve those same things about their own children.

Every story deserves to be remembered because one day, none of us will be here to tell those stories anymore!

With love, Katrina