Myra Sack joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her very young daughter Havi to Tay-Sachs, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, maternal and parental intuition, compassionate bereavement, how her new memoir is as much a story of extraordinary love as it is immense grief, when writing is cellular, the language of loss, generating work vs. revising it, the balm of rituals, inviting readers into her grief’s most intimate spaces, and her memoir Fifty-Seven Fridays.

Also in this episode: 

-unconditional love

-writing fresh grief

-taking care of ourselves

Books mentioned in this episode:

Bearing the Unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore

To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Books by Rachel Naomi Remen

Myra Sack graduated with a B.A in government and All-American Honors in 2010 from Dartmouth College, where she captained the women’s varsity soccer team. She earned a post-graduate Lombard Fellowship in Granada, Nicaragua with Soccer Without Borders. Following her lifelong passion for sports and social justice, Myra joined SquashBusters, Inc., in Boston in 2013, serving as their Chief Program and Strategy Officer. Myra has an MBA in Social Impact from Boston University and is trained as a Certified Compassionate Bereavement Care provider by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. She serves on the Board of the Courageous Parents Network and is the Founder of E-Motion, Inc., a non-profit organization with a mission to ensure community is a right for all grieving people. Her first memoir, Fifty-Seven Fridays, was released in April 2024. A writer, coach, and activist, Myra and her husband Matt, live in Boston, MA with their second daughter, Kaia, and son Ezra. Myra's oldest daughter, Havi, passed away on January 20, 2021 of Tay-Sachs disease.

E-Motion, Inc.: www.emotion-mc.org

Get Myra’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-seven-Fridays-Losing-Daughter-Finding-ebook/dp/B0CRD4W7NV

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myra-sack/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrasack

Twitter: https://x.com/myrasack

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers