What Love Left: A Memoir

Abstract

What Love Left: A Memoir is a collection of creative nonfiction essays and poems that explore the lifelong impact of grief following the death of my older brother when I was just two years old. The collection is divided into four sections—The Child, The Family, The Self, and The World, which shows how such an early loss can form identity, memory, relationships, and views on the world. Through lyrical language, raw character development, and intimate reflections, this memoir shows what grief leaves behind, how it lives inside me, and how storytelling has become a form of survival and preservation. This memoir was formed, not from the need to resolve grief, but to survive within it. The essays reflect what was lost while continuing to discover what can be found through writing. Ultimately, What Love Left: A Memoir is a personal exploration of how destabilizing pain can ultimately become something that helps carry us forward