Elizabeth Leanne freely admits writing a memoir before you turn 30 is a tad unusual, but the Okotoks family counsellor’s tumultuous 20s provided her with ample material for the recently released book.
Initially written as a cathartic exercise to process the grief of becoming a widow in her late 20s, Soaring with Burnt Wings was eventually published almost eight years after her husband’s passing.
Leanne will be doing a book signing at Yooneek Books in Olde Towne Okotoks on Saturday, Feb. 25 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Subtitled ‘Lessons in love, life, laughter and surviving unimaginable grief,’ the memoir takes an unvarnished look at the couple’s struggles and triumphs, and how a newlywed managed to rebuild her life after losing a spouse.
“It’s my story with my late husband and how I was widowed before I was 30,” she said. “It’s our journey as junior high best friends to his struggle with addictions, sobriety and then getting a diagnosis of cancer at 27 and dying within a year and a half.”
Leanne started writing two days after her husband passed away in February of 2014 and continued with the therapeutic endeavour for the next 18 months before putting it on the shelf for several years.
It was never intended to be a book, but prompting from friends eventually changed that.
“I was remarried and on mat leave in 2018 when I gave it to a group of friends and asked them if I should pursue it,” she explained. “They all said absolutely, you need to publish it, so I started the whole publishing journey.”
Leanne said the book is not meant to be a road map to recovery because everyone’s journey is different, but rather it’s to show people there’s life after loss.
“Inspirational is the best word for it (the book). You can survive this. Your world can literally shatter and you don’t necessarily need to know how you can do it, but it can be survivable. You can find joy and really enjoy life again, even if at that moment it doesn’t really feel possible.
“I don't think there’s any training in the world that can prepare you for that (losing a spouse) but about six weeks after he passed, I decided if I’m going to keep living in this world and not to choose to take my life, because it was that horrific initially, then I have to learn how to live with joy and make this a meaningful life, so it was then I said to myself how can I apply all my teachings to my own life,” said Leanne, who is a family counsellor specializing in addictions and mental health.
She readily sees the irony in her late husband getting sober, and how the couple was enjoying its healthiest two years, both physically and mentally, only to be handed the devastating diagnosis.
“It would have been very easy to go the ‘it was unfair’ route but we honestly laughed more about it, about the irony of life, the cards you can get dealt,” she said.
Leanne said writing the book also filled a need to document all that had transpired, to solidify that it actually happened.
“It felt so surreal that he was here and now he’s dead,” she said. “There was so much in our journey, and some of it was so crazy, that I had to get it down.”
She said some people questioned how someone could start writing a memoir before they turned 30, but Leanne said she felt like she had lived 80 years by then.
“My 30s have been much more simple,” she added with a laugh.
Soaring with Burnt Wings is available at Yooneek Books in Okotoks, Spisherbocker Books in Diamond Valley and on Amazon.
