You Won't Always Be This Sad

by Sheree Fitch

Somewhere
in the midst of this mess—must be a poem

“You won’t always be this sad,” her mother, who also lost a son, reassures her, while a close friend encourages her to pick up the pen and write it all down. Capturing her own struggles as she emerges from shock in the wake of her son’s unexpected death at age thirty-seven, author and storyteller Sheree Fitch writes lyrically and unabashedly, with deep sorrow, unexpected rage, and boundless love. She discovers that she “dwells in a thin place now,” that she has crossed a threshold only to find herself in “the quicksand that is grief.” The result is a memoir in verse of immense power and pain, a collection of moments, and a journey of resilience.

Divided into three parts, like the memorial labyrinth Fitch walks every day, You Won’t Always Be This Sad offers words that will stir the heart, inviting readers on a raw and personal odyssey through excruciating loss, astonishing gratitude, and a return to a different world with new insights, rituals, faith, and hope. Readers, bearing witness to the immeasurable depths of a mother’s love, will be forever changed.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Grief, Nonfiction

136 pages, Hardcover

First published October 21, 2019

About the author

From the Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia:

"Sheree Fitch is an educator, literacy activist and author of award winning poetry, picture books, nonfiction, plays and novels for all ages. Her first book, Toes in My Nose, illustrated by Molly Lamb Bobak, was launched in 1987. The books that followed have garnered numerous awards, including The Mr. Christie Award for There Were Monkeys in My Kitchen, The Anne Connor Brimer Award for Mable Murple. If You Could Wear my Sneakers, a book on Children's Rights commissioned by Unicef won both the Ontario Silver Birch Award and Atlantic Hackmatack award.

In 1998 she won the prestigious Vicky Metcalf award for a body of work inspirational to Canadian Children. She has been goodwill ambassador for Unicef since 1994 and her lipslippery adventures have taken her to remote parts of the globe.

Her work as a poet and literacy educator has taken her to the Arctic as eight-time poet laureate for Peter Gzowski's fundraisers for literacy and to Bhutan where she taught writing and participated in that country's first national reading week. Author readings have taken her to Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Belize and Mexico.

Currently, she is Honorary Spokesperson for the New Brunswick Coalition for Literacy. The coalition recently initiated the Sheree Fitch Adult Learner Scholarships. She is also Honorary Spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Read to Me Program. This program provides literacy information to new parents and books for newborns. Each year she sponsors a writing competition for New Brunswick Youth. Her latest venture in literacy education includes completing a three year (summer ) writer in residency for Somebody's Daughter --- out on the tundra in Nunavut. This is an innovative program for Inuit women started by Bernadette Dean, Sheree's friend and former student from a writing workshop Ftich held during one of her soujourns to the north.

In the fall 2004, Gooselane Editions released an expanded anniversary edition of her adult book of poetry In This House Are Many Women and Orca published Pocket Rocks, illustrated by Helen Flook.

In May 2005, Fitch's first novel (ages ten and up), The Gravesavers, was published by Doubleday Canada Random House. A coming of age story blended with a historical event—the wreck of S.S. Atlantic in 1873—Fitch considers the novel "a kind of love letter" to her Maritime home and a celebration of her roots. Upcoming books include If I Had A Million Onions, a collection of nonsense for all ages and Peek a Little Boo, a book for babies.

Fitch lives with her husband, Gilles Plante and divides her time between Washington D.C. and River John, Nova Scotia. In demand as a visiting author, workshop leader and keynote speaker, she is currently working on an adult novel. She holds a B.A. from St. Thomas, an M.A. from Acadia University and honorary doctorates from both St. Mary's and Acadia for her contribution to Canadian literature and education. She has two grown children."

Reviews

[Barbara Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the moment I saw this cover and title as a post on Facebook I knew I’d buy it.
It spoke to me.
I felt an immediate connection.
And I was right. It is the kind of book I cherish and hold dear. For it’s wise, it’s true, it’s real.
It’s looking at life with no blinders on, with strength, and with the rawness of a journey of surviving the unimaginable. Sheree reaches into your heart and touches every loss you’ve ever gone through.
I purchased this book yesterday, December 1, 2019. I read it from cover to cover last night in bed, which turned into the early hours of the next day.
At first, I thought I’d read only the first section, save the second part and the third part for future nights. But I couldn’t put it down. Couldn’t stop reading. I had to keep turning the pages as if walking through a labyrinth.
You will learn more about the ancient practice for spiritual centering, contemplation, and prayer—labyrinth walking. To enter and walk slowly while quieting the mind, focusing on a question or prayer.
This book is written by a mother whose son died. A loss that as a mother, I never want to know. But a loss that I know can happen. For to love another is to risk such pain.
So, I want to listen, try to understand, and bear witness to this woman’s words, her journey, her story.
In a sense, this book is a guide for if I ever need it. For in truth, we never know what awaits us in life. I have three children. It could happen. 'There but for the grace of God go I'.
But this is not only a book for someone who’s suffered the loss of a child.
It’s more than that: is a book for everyone, in my opinion. I know that is a bold statement. But let’s be real, we all experience loss and grief and that is what this book is about, how someone, survives what we don’t think we can survive, and that can be the loss of others close to you.
This is a beautiful book of words, gentle images. It takes you on a journey, an almost hypnotic one where you walk along with Sheree through her journey of pain, the journey of this part of her life … the road … the path … the journey of putting one foot in front of the next.
This book is for those moments in life when we’re not sure of how you will make it through.
Sheree opens her heart and exposes her pain, her journey. She welcomes us into her arms, wraps us in the comfort that we are not alone.
To love is to risk loss and pain. It’s part of life and life is a collection of moments: moments of joy and sadness.
We spiral. Inward. Outward. Around and around. Up and down.
I think it is important to not fear pain or grief, not to turn our backs on it. For if we are unable to witness another’s pain, I believe we cannot accept the depth of our own.
When loss comes it’s best not to run or try to escape, but to find a way to be in the moment, to feel, to cry, to release, to grief, to find a way through.
Grief is an individual journey.
Even though I have not experienced the loss of a child, I relate to many other losses in my life, even at times the lost of myself to addiction and depression.
I believe this is the reason I write and share my experiences of the struggles I’ve gone through, to allow others to see beneath the surface, to know they are not alone.
In the back of her book she lists suggestions for further reading. I’d like to share a few suggestions of my own: When Bad Things Happen to Good People Harold Kushner
Gift from the Sea Ann Morrow Lindbergh
How to Survive the Loss of a Love Melba Colgrove, PhD, Harold H Bloomfield M.D. & Peter McWilliams.
To Sheree, I say I am sorry for the loss of your son. Grateful for your strength in the ability to share your pain with the rest of us. Thank you for doing so, and thank you for giving me a book that will remain on my bookshelf as one of those important books in my life that I will turn to again and again. Most of all, thank you for the comfort of: You won’t always be this sad.

[ATLANTIC BOOK REVIEWS · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheree Fitch YOU WON’T ALWAYS BE THIS SAD.

Everyone experiences grief in their own way. Sheree Fitch is a writer and it made perfect sense for her to write about a mother’s deepest grief – the loss of a child. Within the pages of this book, Sheree shares thoughts and emotions in a continuous poem broken up between pages with
the style changing throughout. Sheree uses many forms of free verse to communicate her grief. There is sadness and inspiration in each poem. Heartbreakingly beauty lies within the pages of this book that lays bare her grief. Beautifully crafted word after word, this reader, felt the author’s grieving process almost tangibly enough to be able to reach out and touch it. Sheree gives her reader permission to grieve and sorrow and wail, but also gives her reader a path back to a new reality in a world without a loved one in it. Some people never take the time to grieve. They get lost in their grief over and over and over again. I so wish Sheree Fitch had never, ever have had to write this from personal experience. No mother ever should have to. I am grateful to Sheree for offering this book and her wise thoughts.
This book is filled with grief and suffering and heartache but it is also so very much filled with the singing heartstrings that come from Sheree’s deepest grief. The song begins as a wail and ends as an opus. It is a book of moments in an overwhelming journey of sorrow. I believe that grief does hold heart songs that come about through beautiful and loving memories. Sheree is raw and honest and shares so much. Lose yourself in the beauty Sheree portrays in the good moments, the kind moments she searches for and finds in everyday life. You won’t always be this sad while reading this book. There is so much here to fill your heart.
Everything about this book has changed me. I promise you too will be changed after you have read it. You will be moved.
This book is a powerful gift to grieving souls. I am grateful to have read this book. Sheree has used her beautifully talented writer’s voice and bared her mother’s soul to write this exceptional book about grief. Sheree writes the way she lives her life. Sheree lives with profound thought, deep emotion and boundless love always trying to find her way to “kiss the joy as it flies.” An important book and one I have already recommended to others.

[Rae Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating is a 2.5
I definitely appreciated this book and it’s art. It’s such a heartfelt memoir of moments and challenges, and I do not deny Fitch’s talent. I just couldn’t find myself meshing with the material or the layout of the book. I tried my best to get through to it, but I couldn’t make it happen.

[Wendy MacKnight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to put into words the wonder that is this book by Sheree Fitch. A beautifully woven free verse novel/meditation/horror story/hopeful story, this book, chronicling Sheree’s ongoing journey to live after the death of her beloved son, this book belongs in every household where someone has lost someone they can’t live without (which is all of us). Beautifully written, Sheree let’s us walk a year in her boots, and we are all the better for it. There is no life without grief, and Sheree’s book will forever be on my nightstand.

[Donna Alward · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant, brave, bittersweet collection of poems written following the death of the author's son. A fitting follow up to Everybody's Different on Everybody Street, a children's book by the iconic Canadian children's author to honor her son's struggles with mental illness.

[Katie Clow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheree comforted me with her words, just like she did with all her children’s books I’ve read as a kid growing up. If you are grieving the loss of a loved one, read it. You will find comfort in her words, too.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poetry collections are very hard to rate, I almost didn't want to as they're not something I normally enjoy.

As with every other poetry collection I've ever read, there's a handul that spoke to me. A lot of themes of nature and religion/faith, so this collection will work for someone who loves that.

[Lorielle Giffin · Rating 5 out of 5]

For love never dies for the living
Tell me, please
tell me
that love never dies for the dead.
•••
My favourite writer, Jeanette Winterson, once wrote that poetry “…isn’t a hiding place. It is a finding place.” Sheree Fitch, in her stunning, heart-wrenching, and ultimately hopeful book of poetry—written in the aftermath of the sudden death of her beloved 37 year old son, Dee—certainly does not hide in the pages of “You Won’t Always be This Sad.” In fact, she does everything but hide from what many of us would consider insurmountable grief stemming from an unimaginable loss. She screams. She cries. She laughs. She cries some more. She unravels. She remembers. She grieves, vividly and openly. She loves.

Fitch rips open her grief, her sorrow, her love, and she spills the contents of her feelings all over the pages of her book. She does so in a way that feels deeply authentic and restorative—I get the sense that writing this book was genuinely healing for her.

Fitch, of course, is a writer by trade. But she is an artist at heart. In this powerhouse of an artistic endeavour, Fitch’s readers are given the honour of bearing witness to a mother’s grief, but more importantly, to a mother’s unstoppable love. Using creative forms of poetry, including visual poetry, Fitch takes her reader on a journey through her own personal “labrynth”—better known as the never-ending winding road that is grief.

In my experience, grief is often an uncomfortable topic, even a triggering one. It is something we all feel, or will eventually feel, yet it is often silenced, suppressed, or pushed down, numbed away. In “You Won’t Always be This Sad,” Fitch refuses to stifle her own grief, as to do so would be to stifle the love she had—the love she has—for her son, and the others she has lost. I deeply admire Fitch for her refusal to not feel and for her willingness to share her inner-most pain and her inner-most joy with her readers.

On another note, Sheree Fitch happens to be the writer of my all time favourite book (The Gravesavers). When I reflect on the first time I read “The Gravesavers,” when I was just 11-years-old, I think about how it must have resonated with me so much because of it’s gentle handling of death, grief, and loss from a child’s perspective. It is a book I found great comfort in as a kid and young adult (I suspect this sense of comfort is why I’ve returned to it time and time again). Now, at the age of 27, it seems fitting that I should find comfort, and understanding, in Fitch’s newest book.

I am deeply sorry that Fitch had to write this book. I am also deeply grateful that she did. Thank you, Sheree, for the ALL of it. I give “You Won’t Always be This Sad” five out of five stars.

[Jason Muckley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheree Fitch is a multi-talented writer of fiction, children's books, nonfiction, plays and poetry. This newest book, subtitled "a book of moments," is a book of grief poetry. Her title, "You Won't Always Be This Sad," was something her mother told her through the grieving process of losing her son at a young age. Her mother, too, lost a son unexpectedly much too soon.

This is one of the most profound books of poetry on grief and loss and pain I have ever read. Her emotions and feelings are raw. Her beloved son is dead and nothing she can do will ever change that. She runs through many difficult ups and downs of the grieving process her heart on her sleeve, holding nothing back and bearing everything for all to see. It was fascinating to see the many sources she pulled in her grief journey from verses in the Bible to the wisdom of philosophical thinkers to other modern-day poets like Mary Oliver.

The book is written as a single continuous poem. None of them are titled and they are broken up between pages and the style changes on every new page. Some pages are written in free verse, others are shape poems, some are acrostics, and many other types of forms that Ms. Fitch uses to say and show the readers her grief. I loved the way she utilized the poetic forms and styles to communicate her grief journey. It is sad and inspiring sometimes in the same poem. She is fully present to all that she is experiencing, and yet, there is still hope that remains that this grief will resolve, her pain will subside, the morning sun will arise and a new day will begin.

I received this eBook free of charge from Nimbus Publishing Ltd via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review. I did not receive any fiscal compensation from either company for this review and the opinions expressed herein are entirely my own.

[Alyson · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Won't Always Be This Sad is the title of this collection of poetry, but also the words spoken by the author's mother after her son passed away at the age of 37. Throughout the entire collection, the author shares fragments of her life as she works through her grief. The highly emotional quality of the writing draws the reader in. Although not everyone is a mother, and not everyone has lost a child, the feelings of grief expressed in the poems are universal. There is confusion, anger, hopelessness, and a never-ending search for answers.
The grieving process is hardly linear, and there are profound moments of sorrow as there is acceptance and light. Instead of working towards a trajectory where at the end of the collection, the author has fully made peace and is finished her grieving, she acknowledges that she doesn't have the same sort of sadness as before. In sadness and loss, she can continue to live in a new way.
I would recommend You Won't Always Be This Sad to someone experiencing loss.

[Natasha Oxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheree Fitch puts grief into words that you can take with you after you have closed this beautiful book. Written with poetic structure in mind but carrying you through her narrative experience seamlessly as in prose, she reminds you of all the reasons “You Won’t Always Be This Sad.”

Unlike her I have not lost a child (a human one, that is), but I have grieved for others I have lost. I wish I had had this book to help me through the process then. This will be one I can come back to in my further days of grievance, as I know my life will still have many.

If you are a reader of memoirs or inspirational texts, you should read this book. It is subtitled “A book of moments” and it is just that — so many heartbreaking but resilient moments.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gut wrenching walk through the experience of losing an adult child. The added visual element of sculptural typesetting greatly enhances immersion in her grief, pulling the reader along through the twists and turns of navigating this new reality. As she starts to believe that yes, she won't always be this sad, we also understand that the sadness won't ever go away but it Will become less harsh and raw. Highly recommended to all still living. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for review copy.

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was difficult for me to read, as it brought me back to my early days of loss and grief, but I trudged through...Sheree burst her heart wide open for us, as she always does! There’s hope and resilience in grief, but I felt reassured by her free-form poetry that it’s also ok to still feel like shit sometimes.

[Katherine Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sheree Fitch is best known as a children's author, but this book of poetry, written after her son's death, was amazing. Anyone who has suffered any kind of loss will identify with the words contained therein.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I know she has been through this too and much of the book really spoke to me. Her faith sustains her, but I have lost my faith since my child died. Once and Now poem pages 66 and 67 was the truth. It is a had read for anyone who had lost a child but worth it.

[Nicole Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are no words adequate enough to describe how this book made me feel, or what it means to me. It meant everything.

[Kirsten Lost 2022]

I can't give this a rating. How does one rate grief like this? You can feel the pain bleeding from it, oozing, seeping, gushing...

[Coralie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This just wasn’t for me...

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible.

[Michelle M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully and brilliantly written. Fitch's pain is palpable through the clever use of imagery, alliteration, and more.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heart wrenching

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book. Sheree is a celebrated writer who experienced a most tragic event of losing her son. The grief is palpable. I am hoping we see another book from her as her pain lessens.

[Angie Titus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not usually a poetry or memoir reader, but this book of both was so very good. I loved the way she presented her raw grief. It was a glimpse into her soul.

[Michelle Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for class