This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
Grief Can Move Mountains
by Valarie Smith
Hi, I am Valarie Smith for an HPPR Radio Readers Book Club Fall Read. American Mother is a modern-day snapshot of journalistic heroism. It’s a meditation on loss and the enduring power of a mother’s love— lingers long after death. Author Colum McCann collaborates with Diane Foley, mother of journalist James Foley who was murdered after months in captivity in the Middle East in 2014. It was vitriolic act of violence that went viral. This book weaves together Dianes words to give voice to her son’s life and his legacy. She refuses to let his death be in vain, transforming her grief into advocacy and policy change.
James Foley was unafraid to travel to war torn territories in pursuit of truth. James dedicated himself to telling the stories of civilians. He recognized people not just as world citizens but rather unique human beings with unique experiences. His was a lifelong learner committed to offering contextual commentary through firsthand experience. That’s the type of reporting that I can applaud and often did aloud when his mother reflected on his journalistic integrity.
Such pursuits ultimately lead to his untimely death at just shy of 40 years old. This book is an account of what it feels like to lose a child: to be suspended in the unknown of whether they are dead or alive, your whole world held hostage as you wait for any news. Often, it is the uncertainty loss—the waiting, the unknowing, the unpredictability—that creates the most profound unease.
They say there is no grief quite like losing a child. As a grief counselor, I understand that all grief is different and unique, so please know that this is not to diminish other kinds of losses, rather to simply acknowledge the raw magnitude of losing a child. This type of grief is too expansive, too against the natural order of life to be contained in a single word. Our English language has no word for it. There are widows and orphans, but no term for parents who have lost a child.
In grief, one of my favorite coping strategies is the practice of turning emotion into motion. Grief often leaves us confused, absent-minded, and untethered too much of reality. But when we turn emotions into action, we begin to move forward—we avoid becoming stagnant under the weight of heart ache. Diane Foley embodies this. She channeled her grief into advocacy, transforming her pain into policy change and greater protection for journalists and hostages. She has become the person she once wished she had.
Through it all, Diane returns again and again to her son’s optimism that, despite heartbreak, “we are bound and held together by a thousand small acts of kindness. Otherwise, we would fall apart.”
Daine used her son’s death to give birth to the James Foley Foundation dedicated to the advocates for hostages, promotes journalist safety and inspires moral courage. This book is a reminded that grief, if harnessed correctly can be used to move mountains.
For HPPRs radio readers book club, I am Valarie Smith.
