Book
Death Taught Me How to Love.
Love Taught Me How to Live.
A memoir about grief, resilience, and learning how to live again
Some books are written on purpose.
Others are written because life leaves no other choice.
This memoir belongs to the latter.
After the loss of her brother, her mother, and the slow unraveling of family, identity, and certainty, author Shannon Hurst didn’t wake up one day wanting to write about death. But grief kept writing itself into her life, until she finally wrote back.
What emerged is a deeply honest, unfiltered memoir about loss in all its forms: the death of loved ones, the loss of family as we knew it, the loss of safety, relationships, and even the quiet grief of losing our fur companions who walk beside us through the hardest seasons.
A story rooted in grief and
grounded in healing
Blending raw personal narrative with moments of reflection, psychology, and hard-earned insight, this book explores how early loss, trauma, and family fracture shape who we become... and how healing doesn’t come from “moving on,” but from learning how to carry what we’ve lost.
Set against the backdrop of mountains, lakes, long drives, and time spent outdoors, the story weaves nature into the healing process, not as an escape, but as a mirror. In stillness, in motion, and in solitude, grief finally had room to speak.
And in listening, something unexpected happened.
This is not a grief book that tells you how to feel
It doesn’t offer platitudes.
It doesn’t promise closure.
And it doesn’t rush the process.
Instead, this memoir speaks to anyone who has:
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Lost a parent, sibling, or loved one
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Grown up with divorce, trauma, or emotional instability
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Experienced the quiet grief of losing family, identity, or belonging
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Loved deeply after loss, and feared losing again
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Found unexpected healing through nature, movement, or solitude
It’s for those who are still standing, even when they don’t know how.
Why this book resonates
Readers often say this book feels like:
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Sitting across from someone who finally says the things we don’t
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Having language for grief they’ve never been able to name
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Being reminded they’re not broken... just shaped by what they’ve survived
This is a memoir about resilience without romanticizing pain, about love that endures beyond death, and about the quiet courage it takes to keep choosing life after loss.
About the author
Shannon Hurst is a writer of over 30 years and an award-winning photographer and photojournalist. Her work is deeply influenced by nature, storytelling, and the intersection of loss and transformation. When she isn’t writing, she can often be found in the mountains or on the water, where reflection and healing come easiest... usually alongside her fur companion, Denali.
This book is both a reckoning and a love letter, to those we lose, to the lives we survive, and to the versions of ourselves that keep going.
