Tomboy: A Jane Benjamin Novel published June 28. I had expected to share the details of that launch with you immediately after. But, like the tide, life surges and recedes.

A week after publication, my mother, Yvonne Blanton, entered hospice care. A week after that, she passed away.

This seemed so unlikely and yet, at the same time, certain, as if I knew we would lose her when we did. As if the gravitational force exerted by the moon and the sun and the rotation of the earth were possible to feel. Maybe I just wanted to believe I hadn’t been caught unawares, because such uncertainty was too much to tolerate.

I have filled these days with caregiving and planning and doing–the business of dying and death. I haven’t yet begun to grieve and expect there won’t be room for that until we have passed through her funeral.

Of course, it felt impossible to think about my writing life at such a time.

Yet, I am grateful for the kindnesses I collected like sand dollars before my mother died. I would like to share some of that gratitude. Read more.