I will admit that when I first picked up Dear Eliza by Andrea J. Stein, I was half excited about it and half apprehensive. The synopsis looked great, and the book seemed right up my alley, it was just… so heavy. As someone who has lost a parent, stories about losing parents hit very hard. And yet, in a way, I thought it might also be cathartic to find feelings that often feel very personal reflected in someone else, because as personal as loss feels, it’s also very universal.
What I found in Dear Eliza was a story about flawed people, flawed relationships, and yes, a story about how grief doesn’t just change us, sometimes it defines us. But I also found a story about how moving on from grief can be a process, not of shedding your past self, but of understanding the new self you are building will always be a little bit broken. But that’s okay.
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And yet the book, which is centered on grief and explores the titular’s character loss of her father and also her mother in very different ways – because we have very different relationships with people, and our feelings when they leave us will always be different – isn’t just about loss. In fact, I’d say it isn’t really about loss at all. It’s about finding the person you can be in life, even after a loss.
That doesn’t make the book about grief, instead, it makes it an exploration of love and life and what you can still feel and do and think. Sometimes, in our darkest moments, whether those are born of grief or not, we shut down and convince ourselves that we don’t believe the good things that are happening to us. That being broken means being unlovable.
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But there’s beauty in the cracks, and they can be rebuilt. We often rebuild ourselves, and the fact that we have suffered doesn’t make us less, it makes us more. More empathetic, and more able to enjoy what we have in the moment because we understand that we might lose it. And yes, that means finding comfort in the new love you never expected to find and reconciling yourself to becoming the kind of person who can be happy. Who is happy? Despite her previous pain. Or maybe, because of it.
If you’re looking for a book about finding love, not just with another person, but within yourself, Dear Eliza is the perfect mirror to reflect not just insecurities, but the good parts. The ones you just have to believe exist and work towards. I, for one, will be keeping this book somewhere I can see from now on, just in case I ever need a reminder.
Dear Eliza is available now wherever books are sold.
