Eight minutes.
That is how long it took for Michael’s life to be forever changed. In late November 2016, a fire broke out in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Unbeknownst to Michael, the winds picked up while he was driving with his oldest son, and the fires swept toward the family home. Michael is haunted by nightmares of his frantic drive back through the fires, trying to get back home.
By the time he arrived, the fire had taken the lives of his daughters, Chloe and Lily, as well as his wife, Constance. In the months after the fires, as Michael struggled to sleep, he would write about his pain. One day, he posted a writing on Facebook. It “went nuts,” causing Michael to start a blog.
Michael continued in his dark world until November 2023, when he stood at the memorial for the fires. He whispered to the empty air, opening his heart to the girls he had lost. In the silence, he heard Chloe’s voice, bright and urgent: “Daddy, it’s time to do the work.” The words struck a chord deep inside him. That night, he enrolled in college, determined to learn how to translate his pain into something to help others.
Thus, The Million Stages of Grief was born. Each chapter opens with an italicized fragment from his old blog — a snapshot of confusion, terror, or numbness. The remainder of the chapter presents the lessons he gathered in classrooms, therapy rooms, and through life’s experiences, reshaping those dark moments into pathways forward. Before pressing “publish,” Michael whispered a brief prayer, handing the manuscript over to his girls, asking, “I am completely giving this to you. However big you want this to go, however many people you want to read it, I give it all to you.”
Years ago, while working as a zipline instructor, a woman kicked Michael, knocking him over. Inexplicably, five years later and one month after that prayer, she posted the video to TikTok, garnering 1.5 million views. Curious, Michael created his own TikTok account, stitching the video to a narration of his story and book. The new post surged to 2.5 million views. I guess his girls decided that their story needed to go very big indeed.
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