Who is Vonne Solis?
Vonne Solis is a healing practitioner, grief advocate, life transformation coach, and author of the following books: Divine Healing Transforming Pain into Personal Power: A Guide to Heal Pain From Child Loss, Suicide and Other Grief, Power of Change, and Lessons in Surviving Suicide: A Letter to my Daughter.
What her book and work are all about?
Vonne guested on Kate Delaney’s nationally syndicated radio talk show America Tonight to talk about her book Lessons in Surviving Suicide and the experience that led her to write it. The book’s back cover blurb says:
This book is to help newly bereaved parents who have lost their child to suicide navigate early grief and be aware of the issues that can complicate grief. The body of each chapter has been written as a personal letter to my daughter. In a raw and candid sharing, I recount the difficult emotions and issues that have challenged my efforts to fully heal from her suicide.
The author aims to change the way society thinks about loss and grief. She finds it her mission to empower the bereaved in their healing by raising awareness and providing information and tools to aid them.
“I lost my 22-year-old daughter to suicide in July 2005,” Vonne shared to Kate, “so it was obviously an extremely shocking traumatic time. It threw myself and our whole entire family, including extended members, into a world that was upside down and spinning all around. Nobody knew what was going on for several years.”
To process her grief, Vonne turned to journaling. Pouring out her thoughts and emotion on paper become akin to speaking to her – as if she was alive.
“The experience led me to journaling a lot of my thoughts and experiences that ultimately turned into this book. As part of the journaling, I decided that if I spoke from my heart and spoke directly to my daughter – her name was J Anaya – I just let her know what was going on in the years after losing her.”
Journaling became both cathartic and emotional for Vonne as she processed her grief and turned it into a heartfelt story of strength, hope, and purpose that she wanted to share with others.
“I was really struggling with why I was not able to get over this loss in a way I wanted to, in a way that I can have my life back. So that is how I ultimately started to approach it, by speaking about all the emotions and things, how I had been hard on myself that was making me feel guilty and responsible for her death.
“This ultimately turned into a book because I really wanted to share with other people a portrait of my thoughts, experience, emotions that were damaging to my psyche in many ways and preventing me from even being able to choose to want to have a different life.”
Vonne said there are few resources out there for bereaved parents, so through Lessons in Surviving Suicide: A Letter to my Daughter, Vonne reaches out to others who are in great need of comfort and consolation in one of their most harrowing times. By publishing it, she offers her support and encouragement.
“I decided to publish it into a book and share it with others who are newly bereaved or grieved parents really struggling in their grief as a guide, a comfort, or a source of inspiration that changes bereavement. Through the things that I have learned and experienced, I provide my book as a means of introspection for them as they go through on their journey that all of these things change over time.
“I really wanted to give people a source of comfort because that is something that is really missing when you instantly become bereaved through child loss. I’m telling you it kind of feels that you’re absolutely alone in this world.
Learn from a parent on surviving child loss and help bereaved parents integrate back into the world. Get a copy of Lessons in Surviving Suicide: A Letter to my Daughter by Vonne Solis on Amazon.
To know more about Vonne Solis’ work and advocacy, please visit:
Website: https://vonnesolis.com/