"This poignant, soul-baring memoir is truly one of the most moving accounts of grief, loss and resilience that I've read." —Tara Parker-Pope, The Washington Post
"Us, After is one of the best memoirs I have read in a very long time. It is poetic and lyrical, unflinching, and a testament to the strength of the human soul...We bleed for Zimmerman and her two daughters. We laugh and cry with them. And ultimately we marvel at their strength and resilience." —Buzz Bissinger, author, Friday Night Lights
“Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide is masterfully written and compelling in its substance and scope. Meticulously researched and deeply personal, Rachel Zimmerman's book is a marvelous feat; I stayed up all night reading it. Page after page, I kept thinking, 'How did she do this?' This being mothering, surviving, chronicling, and asking hard questions of everyone, including herself.”
—Deesha Philyaw, author, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Starred review in Library Journal: “Readers who have experienced grief will find comfort in this deeply moving memoir of love and loss."
Rachel Zimmerman is a writer, reporter and author focusing on health care, well-being, mental health and equity.
For more than 25 years, I’ve been writing and reporting on a range of health topics— from injustice in our health care system and women’s health, to the cost of medicines and emerging brain science (as well as a smattering of stories on sex and kale). Currently, I contribute stories about mental health to The Washington Post. I’ve worked as a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal in Seattle, New York and Boston; and a public radio reporter for WBUR. My memoir, about rebuilding family life after my husband’s suicide, was named a winner of the 2022 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards! The book, Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide, will be published in June 2024 and you can pre-order it now.
Read my latest essays in The Washington Post here and here and in The Huffington Post here.
Here are a few more of my WaPo articles, including, how millennials have transformed grief, the long shadow of intergenerational trauma, ketamine for depression and anxiety screening for adults.
Check out my pieces, “Holding On,” a Tiny Love Story in the NYT and “Love Alone Can’t Prevent Suicide,” at Cognoscenti.
I just did an interview on food and grief for the new podcast, Herstory on a Plate. Take a listen…
Also, you can order the book I co-wrote with Dr. Annie Brewster, The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.
I live in Cambridge, Mass. with my husband, Moungi Bawendi, my daughters (the older one and my stepdaughter are in college; the younger one’s in high school) and a dog called Phoebe. Running and yoga keep me sane-ish.
What I’m Reading…
Letter from A Birmingham Jail
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963
The Tyranny of the Tale
“When did the so-called narrative turn—the doctrine of narrative supremacy—go mainstream?”
By Parul Sehgal, The New Yorker
What People Misunderstand About Rape
“Tonic immobility is a survival strategy that has been identified across many classes of animals — insects, fish, reptiles, birds, mammals — and draws its evolutionary power from the fact that many predators seem hard-wired to lose interest in dead prey. It is usually triggered by the perception of inescapability or restraint, like the moment a prey finds itself in a predator’s jaws.”
By Jen Percy, The New York Times