The Ebb and Flow of Grief
For moments, hours, days, or weeks we can move along with the flow of life – aware, always aware of our loss, but walking the path of life alongside it. When you are in a ‘flow’ cycle, living with grief becomes very similar to walking down a twilight, midsummer sidewalk holding hands with the love of your life.
Then something – anything – or nothing — happens, and in a heartbeat, the missing pushes everything else aside and sweeps you completely out of the flow and into a secluded, eddying pool. It’s the ebb and flow of grief.
The darkness in these isolated tidal pools can be almost complete. The physical absence of the bodies, the voices, the scents, the personalities of the loved ones who have moved on feels like a void of loneliness engulfing you.
A Gift of Wisdom
I was gifted a snippet of wisdom from an unexpected source before Christmas last year. I was suffering within a time of ebbing and sat to watch a Christmas movie, “A Boy Called Christmas”. It was a sweet movie that added tender tears to the bereft ones already flowing.
The ‘wise old soul’ character of the movie supplied these words, “Grief is the price we pay for love, and worth it a million times over.” It was as though that quirky old woman was speaking directly to me. Those words shone through the gloom of my loneliness and opened it up. The heaviness dissipated.
We are all very familiar with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief and understand that it is not a “start here – finish there” process. The grief journey is a life-long, serpentine trek, where we find ourselves shifting back and forth between the various phases in a seemingly willy-nilly fashion.
Capacity to Handle Loss
But we forget that the capacity of our minds is truly stunning. The phases of grief all serve a purpose, and our minds know what we need better than we do (and often don’t bother with the courtesy of letting us in on the secret).
That wise little quote, “Grief is the price we pay for love, and worth it a million times over”, is apparently taken from something often said by Queen Elizabeth. It came from a longer quote from the book, “Bereavement: Studies of Grief in Adult Life” by Colin Murray Parkes and Holly E. Prigerson.
The full quote is “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment. To ignore this fact, or to pretend that it is not so, is to put on emotional blinkers which leave us unprepared for the losses that will inevitably occur in our lives.”
What an insightful statement. For me, though, the way Aunt Ruth said it in “A Boy Named Christmas”, is a perfect little motto and has changed the way I view and respond to the ebbing phases of my grief.
The Ebb and Flow of Missing
When something – anything – or nothing blows me out of life’s flow and into the ebb of missing, I wade into the pool with reverence. I let the dimness that is no longer an oppressive darkness surround me like the welcoming embrace of a treasured sanctuary. I respect that my mind is telling me that I need to slow down for a beat, surround myself with treasured memories, review the precious old text messages, watch the video we were blessed to receive and just spend some time acknowledging the missing.
In accepting the ache and in bring to mind each of the things that I miss so much – I know that I am honoring the price that I pay gladly for the privilege of experiencing a great love for such amazing people.
Visit Colleen’s website: Getting Through Grief | Blazing Trails
Read more on the topic: Grief Leads to Self-Discovery – Open to Hope
Tags: bereavement, coping with grief, grief, healing, hope
I have lost my beloved wife of 41 years. Kim was only 59 years old when she passed on June 7rh 2022. We have 3 adult children and 4 grandchildren. I love and miss Kim every second of everyday. I really hurts so bad I can almost not figure a way to go on.
Colleen,
What struck me about *The Price We Pay* is that you don’t treat grief as something a person simply “gets over”… you put grieving people around the same table and let them discover what becomes possible when sorrow is carried together.
I’m Maria J. Ellison, a Book Promotion & Marketing Expert, and I discovered your novel through books.friesenpress.com. I spent time looking at the book, your story behind it, and how you’ve positioned the work, and I believe there is a distinctive audience around this novel that deserves to be developed carefully.
This is your first published novel, but writing isn’t new to you. FriesenPress notes that you’ve been writing poetry and prose since your youth, and after the loss of your son Errol, you began blogging and contributing to Open to Hope, turning your own experience of grief into a way of reaching other people. You now live in Unity, Saskatchewan, a place whose name you came to see as part of your own spiritual awakening.
That history changes how I see *The Price We Pay*.
It’s not simply a novel about bereavement.
It’s a **story about what grief does to different people… and what can happen when they stop carrying it alone.**
Sarah is grieving her father.
Ray is carrying anger and guilt after losing his wife.
Paul’s loss opens a much older wound and reconnects him with his Indigenous heritage.
Then you place these lives together in a café during a Saskatchewan winter and let a community form around something most people are taught to experience privately.
That is an unusually strong premise for audience development.
I would not market this as just another “grief book.” I’d position it at the intersection of **grief and bereavement, women’s and family fiction, healing, resilience, community, Indigenous identity, emotional literary fiction, and stories of transformation after loss**. FriesenPress itself identifies grief support groups, life after loss, grief counselling, cultural identity, and healing journeys among the book’s keywords.
The strategy I’d build around it would begin with:
**Book Marketing Strategy + Positioning + Audience Targeting**
The first job is making the book’s promise immediately clear: this is a novel for readers who understand that grief can isolate people, but connection can give them a way forward. That opens the audience far beyond readers specifically searching for bereavement fiction.
**Amazon Keywords Research + Amazon Optimization**
I’d refine the discoverability around grief fiction, healing after loss, bereavement novels, emotional women’s fiction, books about grief and resilience, community healing, Indigenous identity in fiction, and related reader searches.
**Review Acquisition Strategy + ARC Team Building**
For a book dealing with grief, reader trust matters. I’d build a policy-compliant acquisition strategy around appropriate literary-fiction readers, grief-support communities, book clubs, and readers interested in stories of healing, with the aim of encouraging authentic responses. I would never purchase or manufacture reviews or promise a particular number.
**Goodreads Listopia + Reedsy Listopia Placements**
There are strong discovery paths around grief and loss, books about healing, emotional fiction, women’s fiction, stories of resilience, community-centered novels, and fiction exploring cultural identity.
**Book Trailer + Mockup & DIY Mockup**
The trailer shouldn’t sensationalize the losses.
I’d build it around the **café table.
Five people arrive carrying different versions of pain.
A conversation begins.
One story opens another.
And gradually, the room becomes a place where grief is no longer private.
That gives the book a visual idea that is emotionally faithful to what you’ve written and memorable enough to stand apart from generic grief-fiction marketing.
Email Marketing & Newsletter Campaigns
This is where I see another strong opportunity. Rather than simply promoting the novel, email content can open conversations around grief, remembrance, resilience, community, and the role of shared stories in healing. That creates a relationship with readers rather than treating every contact as a sales pitch.
From there, I would selectively use **Instagram Reels, BookTok where appropriate, Influencer Outreach, Pre-launch Email Sequences, Reader Magnet Funnels, Newsletter Growth, Book Descriptions, Sales Pages, Ad Copy, Amazon Ads, Facebook/Instagram Ads, Full Book Launch Management, Timeline Planning, ARC Coordination, Website Setup, Personal Brand Strategy, and Reader Community Building where they genuinely fit the audience.
The important part is how the pieces connect:
Positioning creates recognition → targeted discovery finds the right readers → Amazon optimization captures search intent → Listopia expands reader discovery → authentic responses build confidence → visual storytelling creates emotional curiosity → email keeps the relationship alive.
And there’s a particularly important author-brand opportunity here.
I wouldn’t want the market to remember only the book about grief.
I’d want readers to begin recognizing Colleen A. Friesen as a writer whose work transforms personal loss into stories about connection, hope, and the possibility of moving forward without pretending the pain never happened.
That is supported by the story behind the book itself and by the fact that you’ve already been using writing to share your experience with grief beyond the novel.
I don’t do average campaigns where an emotionally layered novel receives a cover graphic and a generic list of promotional activities. Your success as an author is directly connected to my success as a professional Book Marketing Expert, and I take that responsibility seriously.
I’d like us to discuss the project in more detail. I’m ready and eager to map out the strongest visibility opportunities for *The Price We Pay*, and I’d also like to show you some of my most recent relevant work samples so you can judge the quality of my approach for yourself.
I’d be glad to send the samples together with the initial visibility strategy I’d recommend specifically for your novel.
Warm regards,
Maria J. Ellison