Review of "Finding My Marbles" published by RadiKal Publications

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child.  It doesn’t matter if it were in utero, immediately after the birth, as a toddler or as a teen.  Losing a child has to be a parent’s worst nightmare.  The pain that comes with the loss has to be unbearable and unless you’ve ever experienced this deep and personal tragedy firsthand, you will never know what a mother goes through when her world is turned upside down.

            Finding My Marbles allows the reader to experience the loss of a child first hand.  Written in the dialect of the mother’s that have lost their children, Finding My Marbles reflects the deep, insurmountable pain that can at times seem so overwhelming that you often wonder how the parent managed to survive.

            In this publication, five women describe their loss in vivid detail.  The five women: Shirelle “Diamond” Hogans, Ayanna Johnson-Redden, Darlene Sistrunk, Kya Haman Ray and Stacy Brown hold nothing back as they talk about the loss of their children.

            I refer to this publication by an acronym that I feel describes what is written within its pages.  The acronym is P.O.P.  Pain On Pages.  You can almost hear the cries of anguish as each of the women tells her individual story of pain as well as what she did to get through it.

            The redemptive quality of this work is each of the women’s remarkable faith in God to get them through the day to day.  Keep an eye out for page 141...Darlene Sistrunk’s story.  Without going into the details of the death of her young adult son, she has managed to put her emotions onto the pages of this work succinctly without going overboard.

            There are minor grammatical errors sprinkled throughout the publication, but it does not deter the reader from receiving the powerful message from the contributors.

            Indeed, each of the women re-opened wounds to let other women that are either going through or recently experienced a loss that there is hope.  Maybe the message is that you never really get over the pain as much as you learn how to live with it.  Sometimes, it may take everything that you have including the love of God to reclaim your life…one marble at a time.

J.L. Whitehead

To order a copy of this publication, go to:

www.diamonds-word.org