The Room Was Full.
Saturday night, a room in Back Bay filled up with people who came for this book, and for us.
Over sixty of you. From down the street and from across New England. From California, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. You got on planes. You drove for hours. You rearranged your weekend to stand in a room and celebrate a book about the hardest thing my family has ever walked through.
I am still trying to find the words for what that felt like.
At seven o'clock, I stood up and read from Fighting for Their Lives out loud, to a room full of faces I love and faces I was meeting for the first time. I thought for sure I would cry. I had braced for it. But I read the pages I most needed other parents to hear, and I stayed steady the whole way through. People in the chairs were wiping their eyes. I was the calm one, and that surprised me more than anything else that night.
The part I will hold onto forever: my whole family was there. Craig, steady as always, our oldest Daniel, and our two younger kids, all of them in the room, watching their mother read the story of our life out loud. They are the reason this book exists. To have all of them there on the night it was celebrated is something I will never take for granted.
None of it would have happened without a handful of people who gave their time and their hearts.
Blackroom Salon in Back Bay opened their doors and gave us a beautiful place to gather. Their generosity set the tone for the whole night.
My friend Rosa built a balloon arch with the cover of the book hand-painted on it. I walked in, saw my own cover rising over the room, and had to stop in the doorway just to take it in.
Devon captured all of it. The photos in this post are theirs.
The night also doubled as a fundraiser for BAGLY, an organization doing work that would have meant everything to my family in our hardest years. Together we raised $250 at the event, before my own contribution. I am adding a gift of my own and sending the full amount directly to BAGLY, on behalf of all of us.
A few of you have asked about the reading. I am putting the video together and will share it soon, so if you could not be there, you will still get to hear it.
And here is the part that still does not feel real. As of today, June 16, Fighting for Their Lives is officially out in the world. Publication day. After all the years it took to write, the book belongs to readers now.
I am celebrating the only way that makes sense to me, by gathering again. Tonight I will be in conversation with Kim Rickard at Ten Trees Books in Natick at seven o'clock. It is open to all. If you are nearby, come. I would love to see your face in the room one more time.
For a long time, I was the one leaving the light on. Saturday night, I watched a whole room leave it on too.
When I sign your book, I write that I am keeping the light on for you. That has always been the promise, and it holds. The light will always be on. Now you can leave it on too, for whoever needs it next.
Jenn
