The story behind the story.

Lara Stone did not set out to write a book. She set out to write a love letter to her eldest son and somewhere along the way, it became a survival guide for living after loss. Her memoir began as a private attempt to stay connected to Max after he died from Non-Hodgkin's B Cell Lymphoma at twenty one. What is unfolding instead is a story about how grief reshapes a family, how joy refuses to disappear, and how love keeps expanding even after devastating loss.

As the mother of three boys, Lara writes honestly about the constant companions of risk, danger, and adventure that shape family life. Her story holds both the fear and the freedom of raising sons who move fast through the world, and the ways loss forever alters how a mother stands inside that motion.

Lara writes from the complicated middle space where sorrow and laughter coexist. She knows child loss. She also knows the layered terrain of cancer from multiple directions—losing her mother and sister-in-law to breast cancer, losing Max to lymphoma, surviving breast cancer herself, and later losing her father to glioblastoma. Her work reflects both the brutality of these realities and the fierce humor and humanity that live alongside it.

Professionally, Lara has spent more than three decades in nonprofit leadership, community building, and philanthropy. She currently serves as Co Executive Director of the Children's Advocacy Center of Bristol County, where she advocates for children and families navigating trauma. That work, like her writing, is rooted in compassion, voice, and showing up when things are hardest.

She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two deeply loved dogs, and a rotating cast of friends who keep her sane. She is the mother of three boys—two living, one always present. Her writing is for anyone who has loved deeply, lost profoundly, and is trying to figure out how to hold joy without letting go of grief.