Loss changes everything. It doesn’t just take someone away—it takes away the life you knew, the stability you depended on, the sense of home you once had. No matter how much time passes, that loss stays with you. It lingers in quiet moments, in unexpected memories, in the spaces where that person once was. You don’t just lose someone you love—you lose the version of yourself that existed with them.
When I was writing The Desire of the Ghost in Me, I wanted to explore the profound impact that loss has on us. Not just the sadness, but the way it shifts our entire world. Paris, the main character, experiences this firsthand. Losing her mother wasn’t just about missing her—it was about feeling completely lost herself. She no longer had the one person who made her feel safe, the one person who was supposed to be there no matter what and when you lose someone like that, you’re left trying to figure out who you are without them.
One of the hardest things about grief is that it doesn’t work the way people expect it to. There’s no set timeline for when you’ll stop hurting. Some days, you might feel okay, like you’re starting to move forward and then, out of nowhere, something small—an old photo, a familiar smell, a passing memory—breaks you all over again.
I wanted to capture that reality in Paris’s story because it’s something so many of us go through. Grief is unpredictable. It comes in waves, sometimes gentle, sometimes overwhelming. There are moments when you think you’ve accepted it, only for the pain to come rushing back as if no time has passed at all.
Paris struggles with this throughout the book. She wants to be strong, to push forward, to focus on the future but her past, her loss, keeps pulling her back. No matter how much time passes, no matter how much we try to distract ourselves, there are moments when it all comes flooding back, reminding us of what we’ve lost.
But here’s the thing about loss—it forces us to grow. It changes us, in ways we never wanted or expected. We learn things we never thought we would need to know. We find strength we didn’t think we had and even though it’s painful, even though we would give anything to bring that person back, we also learn to live with their absence.
Paris’s journey is about that slow, painful process of growth. She doesn’t just wake up one day and suddenly feel healed. She stumbles. She makes mistakes. She holds on too tightly to the past because she’s afraid of what moving forward means and that’s real. That’s what loss does—it makes us afraid to let go because letting go feels like forgetting.
The truth is, moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean the love disappears. If anything, love becomes even more present in loss. We carry the people we’ve lost in our hearts, in our memories, in the way we live our lives. The lessons they taught us, the moments we shared with them—those things don’t go away.
When we lose someone, their love doesn’t vanish that’s something I’ve learned, too. It stays with us, shaping us, guiding us in ways we may not even realize and that’s what Paris learns as well. She starts to understand that her mother’s love is still there, even in her absence. She realizes that loss doesn’t mean the end of love—it just means love looks different now.
She learns to carry her grief differently. Instead of letting it weigh her down, she begins to embrace the love that still exists within that grief. Isn’t that the ultimate truth about loss? We never truly “move on”—we move forward, carrying the love, the lessons, and the memories with us.
Loss changes us. It reshapes the way we see the world, the way we love, the way we move through life. But in that change, there is also growth. There is strength. There is resilience. Paris’s journey is one that so many of us can relate to, whether we’ve lost a parent, a friend, a relationship, or even just a part of ourselves. We all carry loss in different ways, but the important thing is that we keep moving forward—not by forgetting, but by embracing the love that still remains. If you’ve ever experienced loss, if you’ve ever felt like the pain would never end, read The Desire of the Ghost in Me and take this journey with Paris.
