mother

An Unbreakable Mother/Daughter Bond to the Edge of Suicide

Ann Marie Sullivan

Poetry Pulled from the Wreckage: A Mother’s Account of Every Parent’s Worst Nightmare

There are many books by medical experts which offer parents crisis-based strategies for coping with the threat of suicide among modern-day teenagers. But there are few books which deliver an inside account of the healing process from the parental viewpoint. Ann begins this poetry collection by describing the emergency phone call which turned her relationship with her daughter upside down and plunged them into a world of twisting pain and mind-numbing confusion. Years later, she has emerged with a volume of more than eighty poems which describes the reconciliation and healing she and her daughter worked hard to achieve. This urgently-needed book throws a lifeline of hope and inspiration to families who are living in the shadow of childhood suicide.

From the Foreword

Ann’s account is refreshing, honest and welcoming.  This is not a self-help book or instructional guide in how to deal with the impact of depression and suicidal ideation. Instead, she delivers a harrowing account of how she learned to accept change without self-condemnation, guilt or shame.
—Patricia Anne Romano, PsyD

About the Author

Irish American author Ann Marie Sullivan captures powerful feelings in her poetic words, transporting people to feel and see deeply while expressing themselves through the words she writes. She currently lives in West Hartford, Connecticut with her daughter where the two share a love of writing together. Ann grew up in many different landscapes across Connecticut where many seeds to her stories came to life. After graduating from Saint Joseph College in 1991, she began her career in teaching in Hartford, where the students have become not only further inspiration but an audience to many of her stories. Since story and students are her passion, she went on to attain an M.A. in Holistic Thinking as well as an M.A. in Writing and Oral Traditions at The Graduate Institute. As a result of her Master’s Degree, she is a contributing author to Where the Words Await: Walking the Writer’s Path, an anthology of creative writing in which she first explored the genre of poetry.