A Poetry Collection for the Heartbroken, the Healing, and the Hopeful “Grief does not follow a straight path—and neither does this book.” In Uprooted: A Season of Grief , Canadian poet Mary Ann Burrows invites readers into a raw, lyrical journey through the landscape of loss. Written in the aftermath of her father’s passing, this collection unfolds like the changing seasons—carrying us through the frozen stillness of sorrow, the first thaw of memory, and the slow, tender return of light. Each poem in this deeply personal book is a moment of reckoning—with death, with love, and with what it means to live on after someone we cherish is gone. Using rich metaphors from the natural world, Burrows plants us in a space where mourning is allowed to be beautiful, strange, and alive. This is not a how-to guide for grief. It’s a companion. Whether you’re grieving a parent, a partner, a child, or the version of yourself that existed before the loss—this collection will sit beside you, gently. It will not rush you. It will not ask you to move on. It will remind you that your roots are still here, even when everything feels upturned. Perfect for readers who loved: 🌿 The Wild Edge of Sorrow by Francis Weller 🌿 The Carrying by Ada Limón 🌿 Devotions by Mary Oliver Gift this book to: —Someone in mourning —A friend going through a season of change —Yourself, if you need a reminder that grief can be a sacred teacher "There is something sacred in the breaking," Mary Ann Burrows writes in Prologue: The Unraveling, the first piece in Uprooted: A Season of Grief . She's right. This stunning collection is a meditation on the holiness of collapse—and the beauty that sometimes rises from the wreckage. In these deeply felt poems and reflections, Burrows invites us not just to grieve, but to awaken. I met Mary Ann as she was standing in the liminal space that follows a parent's death. She was navigating grief not as an endpoint, but as a threshold—an unraveling that also held the potential for rebirth. I had the honor of walking alongside her as she asked: Who am I now? What is mine to carry? How do I begin again? Mary Ann writes with both emotional precision and spaciousness. Her imagery is vivid and spare, grounded in the natural world. In "You Died," she writes: You died and the truth of us rose like curtain dust... we said what needed to be said. These are not poems of sentimentality. They are clear-eyed, spiritually rooted offerings that allow us to feel what we may have tucked away. In the tradition of poets like Lucille Clifton and W.S. Merwin, Mary Ann writes to tell the truth—especially the truths we avoid in daily life. The book is arranged across a symbolic year that begins not in January, but in Autumn—the season of falling, releasing, uprooting. It's a choice that mirrors the experience of loss itself: the disorientation, the cold, the hollowing out. In "Uprooted (Oct. 16)," she writes: I feel the ache of earth removed, my roots exposed, hanging bare. And yet, there is beauty here too. Tenderness, devotion, hope. She reminds us, again and again, that even in the harshest winters, something lives beneath the surface: Winter asks nothing of us but to trust that beneath the frost, something is still alive, waiting for its time to return. By Spring, the speaker has softened. The grief is still present, but it has shifted. There is space now for surrender, for beginning again. In "Oh, Hollow Bones," she writes: this is how a body remembers, this is how a soul begins again. And by Summer—titled "The Return"—Mary Ann claims something deeper: a new way of being. A new self. In "Unchosen," she writes: Walk toward something softer, something sweeter, something mine. I do not wait to be chosen. This is the heart of the book: not healing as erasure, but healing as becoming. As a Story Healer, I don't try to fix people. There's nothing broken about grief. What we need is permission to tell the truth. To stop living the story we were handed and start living the one that is truer. Uprooted is that kind of book. Mary Ann Burrows has written something sacred. Something brave. Something that might just help you find your way back to yourself." -Dr. Rick Diamond, Storyhealer " This book is a true gift. Mary Ann Burrows' words are a dialogue with those of us who are finding it difficult to walk through grief. Whether recently grieving or staying in grief from past losses (be it through death, a break-up, or a difficult life situation), her book of poetry brings us through the seasons of our grief, one step at a time. I believe this book brings clarity and acceptance of grief, through the beauty of nature and the ever-changing seasons of our lives. Mary Ann Burrows' book will be in my home library, so that when my time comes to pass, my children and grandchildren will have these words to help ease their hearts and souls, and to know that "after loss, after emptiness, we find acceptance and belonging, a return home to ours