there are
over eight billion people
on earth
and none of
them are you.
How does someone survive the unsurvivable?
In 2024, 80,000 people in the US lost their lives to overdose. It is estimated that 48.5 million people in the US are currently struggling with addiction. Many families of those with addiction hide in the shadows. But they don’t have to.
When Katie Rizzo’s life was turned upside down by the death of her oldest son from opioid addiction, as a scientist and writer she fell back on what she knew: documenting, looking for patterns, and poetry. In The Trimesters of Grief, Rizzo shows how grief mirrors pregnancy, from whole-body fatigue to brain fog to the need to tell everyone about this precious life-a life that is now gone. And then it is time to “deliver” grief and let it sit beside us.
Part memoir and part self-help book, The Trimesters of Grief suggests ways to communicate and nurture grief. Other cultures embrace grief as a natural part of life; perhaps it’s time for us to also learn to hold life in one hand and grief in the other.
Katie Rizzo holds two masters: one from Yale University and another from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. For the last fifteen years, Katie Rizzo taught Anatomy and Biology at her local community college and public high school. Her short stories have been published in literary journals and anthologies. Katie helps numerous grief groups and is a grief writing facilitator through Love In The Trenches, a support group for those who have lost a child to addiction. She speaks frequently on grief and loss. Her upcoming short film, Liminal Friend, is in production for fall, 2026 film festivals.
Erica Sullivan is a professional actress of both stage and screen and holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama. She has spent over a decade as a Company Member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has been busy in both the stage and screen world, and has also narrated nearly one hundred audiobooks.