Overview

The Year After Kahlia is a raw and compassionate account of surviving the first year after the death of her daughter. Written in the months following her daughter Kahlia's death, Kirsten O'Connor traces the lived reality of grief as it unfolds over time, not as a tidy journey, but as a daily act of survival. This book does not offer platitudes or silver linings. It speaks honestly about shock, numbness, anger, guilt, love, and the profound disruption that loss brings to the body, identity, and inner world. Blending personal narrative with reflection, the book explores what is happening beneath the surface when grief takes hold, including changes in the nervous system, memory, sleep, and sense of self. Alongside the storytelling are gentle journal prompts and grounding tools, offering language and support for experiences that are often left unspoken. This is a book for bereaved parents and for anyone walking alongside deep loss. It offers companionship rather than answers, and permission to grieve without timelines, expectations, or performance.

Full Product Details

9780473764609

Table of Contents

Reviews

This book is a much-needed companion for when the unthinkable happens. With raw honesty and immense compassion, the author shares the devastating loss of her daughter and the heart-wrenching, often disorienting year of grief that followed. The Year After Kahlia offers solace and permission to those who grieve: there is no right way, no linear path, no fixing required. Interwoven with her own story the author offers insights into the biology of grief, about the brain fog, disorientation, guilt, resistance to ""moving on,"" and even the practical demands that follow a death. She reminds us that our inability to function, or even to feel at times is not failure, but a natural response when body and heart are overwhelmed. As a reader I felt truly seen in the messiness of my own grief, and invited to release the expectations of how it ""should"" look. Instead, the author extended gentle guidance and prompts, small steps to keep breathing, to keep going, to bear the unbearable. --Chameli Gad Founder, AwakeningWomen.com ""The Year After Kahlia is written with the same fierce love, humour, and tenderness that Kahlia herself brought into the world. Kirsten's memoir is not only a mother's tribute but also a guide for all of us learning how to live with grief that never fully goes away. As a counsellor, I have rarely encountered such an honest and generous work of love - one that will comfort, challenge, and companion many who face the unthinkable."" -- Alxandra Duncanson BCoun, PGCert Responding to Trauma Counsellor (MNZAC). ""Kirsten and Kahlia's story is raw, unflinching, and deeply human - a testimony to love, loss, and the resilience it takes to survive the unthinkable. This book is a gift. A deeply moving account of what it means to love fiercely and to grieve honestly whilst navigating a whole new world. Their story will stay with me always"" -- Jenna Hyndman Funeral Director

Author Information

Kirsten O'Connor is a New Zealand author and grief advocate, and the founder of This Is Grief. After the death of her daughter Kahlia in 2024, Kirsten began writing to survive, to tell the truth about suicide, and to challenge the silence that surrounds grief. Her work blends lived experience with social insight, and focuses on love, loss, and what it means to keep living after the unimaginable.She is the author of The Year After Kahlia: Surviving, Loving, and Writing My Way Through Loss and writes from Aotearoa New Zealand.

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