Love in the Archives - by Eileen Vorbach Collins (Paperback)

About the Book

"When her fifteen-year-old daughter Lydia ends her life, Eileen finds support in a community of bereaved parents who understand her pain on a level others cannot. No one in the group places a time limit on this grief. As the years pass, Eileen finds ways to honor the memories. She even learns to laugh again. In Love in the Archives, a collection of linked narrative essays incorporating themes of surviving suicide loss, Judaism, interfaith marriage, and mental illness, Eileen walks us through those difficult years"--

Book Synopsis

When her fifteen-year-old daughter Lydia ends her life, Eileen finds support in a community of bereaved parents who understand her pain on a level others cannot. No one in the group places a time limit on this grief. As the years pass, Eileen finds ways to honor the memories. She even learns to laugh again.

In Love in the Archives, a collection of linked narrative essays incorporating themes of surviving suicide loss, Judaism, interfaith marriage, and mental illness, Eileen walks us through those difficult years.

Review Quotes

"...In prose as clear and concise as can be, from a heart that hopes to heal, Collins reaches a benchmark in the grieving process in which memory really does become a blessing. The result is breath-taking and breath-giving."  -Madeleine Blaise, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author of the family memoir, Uphill Walkers, winner of the NYC NAMI Ken Book Award

"...a lesson for other bereaved parents, families and friends, as well as clinical providers, clergy and support system personnel." -John S. Jeffreys, EdD, FT (ADEC), Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

"I am grateful to have met Collins' perspicacious daughter Lydia through this book, grateful to be able to grieve her along with Collins (who is wildly perspicacious, herself.) Love in the Archives is a necessary, energizing addition to the library of suicide loss." -Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis: Surviving My Mother's Suicide and Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, The Body, and Loss