Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide

Award-winning journalist Zimmerman (coauthor, The Healing Power of Storytelling) reflects on her personal journey in coping with the loss of her husband, MIT robotics professor Seth Teller, in 2014. The ebb and flow of life and death wash over the pages of her memoir. She switches from her reporter’s perspective (interrogating why her husband and so many others die by suicide) to writing about her personal mourning for not only the person that he was but for the life she and her two daughters had with him. From treasured memories of her husband and family life to her feeling survivor’s guilt, her book’s vignettes offer a glimpse into how she navigated the daily demands of life with her daughters and discovered a new path to hope. This book’s topic is a heavy one, but it’s ultimately a narrative of resilience, detailing how Zimmerman and her two young daughters survived devastating loss to rebuild their lives and find love anew.