BALTIMORE — A Baltimore woman has taken the grief and pain from the loss of her mother and written a book she hopes will help others navigate that pain.
Nikia Vaughan lost her mother to a fentanyl overdose in 2015.
She didn't want to go down a dark path, so she chose to find joy and peace from the loss.
"Internalized a lot of my grief just because, you know, I'm a wife, I'm a mother, I'm an advocate, a business owner, and I didn't want to like just make everyone else feel some kind of way, so I journaled my feelings," says Vaughan.
After years of reflection, she noticed how helpful journaling was.
So she wrote a self-guided faith journal called Grief and Joy: My Journey of Loss and Healing.
She says she wants it to help people experiencing loss.
"It also talks about other losses, from loss of parents, a partner, even with suicide I touched briefly, and I also talk about loss of a child, and they do give trigger warnings for those readers so they know what they're getting into, but it's also a guided self-journal," Vaughan says.
She says since journaling helped her journey, she wanted to provide opportunities for others to use that same skill, even if they have never journaled before.
"I believe when you go back and you can see the evolution of your yourself, that really, really helps someone to overcome the grief," she says.
But she didn't stop there; she also added important information which can help people beyond the book.
"If you're going through grief, you're not alone. There are resources, which is also in the guided journal that we have listed, uh, specifically Roberta's House, which helped me to get through my grief, um, by honoring my mother, so just make sure that you have some resources and that you can always lean on a loved one or those resources to help you get to your grief to get to your joy," Vaughan says.
Vaughan's book comes out Thursday, May 1st, on her late mother's 68th birthday.
The book will be available on Amazon as well as her personal website.
