Living Undefeated
Honest writing about childhood cancer, grief, and finding a way to be useful again. From a family who has been there.
The casserole-to-actual-help ratio
Giving Back After Losing a Child: An Honest List
An honest list of ways to give back after losing a child — who each program is for, what it costs, and how long they ask you to wait.
Before you give to anyone
How to tell if a charity deserves your money
We wrote down the checklist we use. Before we send a dollar anywhere, we run the organization through CharityWatch, the BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator and Candid. It is one page, and it works on any charity — including this one.
Read the checklist — freeOn the site, right now. Nothing to fill in and no email needed.
Start here — free, no sign-up
Guide one · 7 pages
A Reason to Get Up
Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, and what that book can and cannot do for you after somebody dies. Who Frankl actually was, what he actually argued, and the famous quote that is not his.
Download the guide — freePDF, 7 pages. Nothing to fill in, no email, no ask attached to it.
Three more, if you want them
These are the books we read and the things we did after we lost Austin. Not advice and not therapy — an honest account of what helped us, and what the research actually says about each of it. Every statistic in them carries a source and a year.
Guide two · 9 pages
The Circling
The Power of Now, and what is actually happening when you cannot stop going over it. Includes the part no grief guide prints: meditation is not risk-free, and who should be careful.
Guide three · 11 pages
Give It Away
Why doing something for somebody else, expecting nothing back, appears to do something for you. With a verified list of places that will take you this week, and the ones that will ask you to wait a year.
Guide four · 16 pages
The First Year
The practical one. What actually has to be done, what the months afterward really look like, and fifty things that might help — each one labeled for whether there is evidence behind it.
If tonight is bad
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, anywhere in the US. You do not have to be in immediate danger to use it.
Crisis Text Line. Text HOME to 741741.
Veterans Crisis Line. Dial 988 then press 1, or text 838255.
If there is an immediate danger to life, call 911.


