If you've ever wondered whether it's okay to feel relief alongside grief, episode 448 of Grief and Happiness is for you. Debut novelist Anna Nordberg shares how losing her mother as a teenager inspired her novel When She Was Ours. Drawing on twenty years as a journalist, she opens up about becoming a mother herself, rediscovering her own mother as a person, and why Americans still lack the language to talk about loss.
In This Episode, You Will Learn:
(00:55) Anna Nordberg's shift from journalism to her debut novel, When She Was Ours
(02:35) Why grief is now a universal theme in books, film, and TV
(03:49) Losing her mother at 17, and learning to hold relief and guilt
(06:37) Creating a believably human mother inspired by her own mom
(09:49) Setting the scene: a wedding, a diagnosis, a family under pressure
(13:24) Why siblings are fiction's most underexplored bond
(18:17) Researching medical detail firsthand, bringing journalistic rigor to fiction
(24:13) A fictional scene that shifted her bond with her mother's memory
(27:24) The \"Bay's daughter\" moment, carrying her mother through her son's medical scare
(32:44) Why writing is a healing, cathartic act, private or shared
Anna Nordberg is a journalist and culture writer whose essays have appeared in Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She grew up in New York City and now lives in San Francisco with her husband and two children. After two decades in journalism, she pivoted to fiction in her forties, drawing on her mother's death as a teenager to write her debut novel, When She Was Ours, out August 1 and available for pre-order now.
On the episode, Anna spoke candidly about how losing her mother to illness at 17 left her without language for contradictory feelings — sadness alongside relief, love alongside loneliness — that no one had told her were normal. She described how becoming a mother gave her new insight into her own mother as a person, and how writing the novel became a way of reconnecting with that memory. She also discussed her fascination with sibling relationships and happy families under pressure as underexplored fiction territory, citing Little Women as an inspiration, and credited journalism with helping her write authentic scenes beyond her own experience. She closed by calling writing a healing, cathartic act, echoing the episode's themes of grief and growth.
Connect with Anna Nordberg:
Book: Anna Nordberg - When She Was Ours
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The Grief and Happiness Alliance
Book: Emily Thiroux Threatt - Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief
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