Abuse and grief may leave you with deep wounds, but the path to healing will always be open. With an unrelenting mindset, Brian Francis managed to endure a childhood of domestic abuse and the trauma of his father’s death. He tells how he embraced unwavering resilience to write a memoir about his experiences, insights, and realizations to spread inspiration to people who are going through the same struggles. Brian also shares how he gained deeper empathy as a psychiatric nurse, his decision to seek reclassification as a conscientious objector in the Navy, and how he connected with his readers who now feel less alone because of his truth.
I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others.
Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World.
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Surviving Grief With An Unrelenting Mindset With Brian Francis
Grief and pain come in many different packages. What happens when you’re a young boy, and your family is destroyed when one parent kills the other? How do you handle your grief when you’re always pushed to the side and told to be quiet, to be seen and not heard? How do you relate to pain differently in your life? In all of that, you decide to tell your story in a book for the world to see. This conversation with Brian Francis is going to answer those questions and more. Let’s get into this conversation.
Brian, welcome to the Widowhood.
Thank you.
Thank you. With, “Welcome to the Widowhood,” when you first hear those words, what does it mean for you? I understand you’re not a widower as it relates to this, but when you hear those words, what does that mean for you?
The first connotation I get from it is loss. It’s interesting that you have formed a community around loss. I think that’s needed, especially in our society.
No matter what our pain or our experience is, I’ve learned that there’s value in connecting with other people, and that understanding can relate to your loss. It’s not in a trauma-bonding, unhealthy way, but a way that’s validating and can be empowering.
I have found that through what I’ve done here, there’s been a lot of validation.
Writing The Book Unrelenting: When Safe was the Exception
When you say what you’ve done here, I’m guessing you’re relating to this book that came out in August 2025.
Correct.
Tell us about the cover and the title.
The cover is based on a watercolor painting that a friend of mine did specifically for this project. It was designed to indicate the sense of loneliness and powerlessness involved in domestic abuse. For her original painting, they couldn’t use it for whatever reason, but it had a black cloud moving through the figure of the young boy. That was her emoting that trouble, that negative connotation we necessarily get with abuse, and how it affects the person. It goes right through them, and yet still lingers. The title is a double-edged sword. The title has to do with my mother’s unrelenting need to control and the abuse that resulted. It also has to do with my unrelenting desire not to be victimized.
I don’t think anybody wants to be controlled. We are autonomous people. We want to act and live out that resilience of individuality. What moved you to finally put your story on paper? Was there a moment when you knew it had to be written? How did that go for you?
It’s an interesting and long slog. Back in the ‘90s, I wrote a one-act play based on this, and I submitted it for a playwrights’ festival. One of the judges came to me before they had decided, and she said, “This is a little too fantastic. Why don’t you tone it down a little bit?” I said, “That’s real. That’s my life.” She said, “Oh.” It was then selected for production in that playwright’s festival. That gave me a hint that I could tell the story, but at that time, it was still raw and painful, so I shelved it.
Back in 2014, a series of events unfolded with somebody that I had not spoken with for a long time coming back into my life. They wanted to know what was going on. I said, “There’s this idea I have to write a memoir,” and they encouraged me to do that. I started that, and it has been a long process. There was a lot of self-editing. It was dealing with it again, dealing with the pain, dealing with all of those negative memories, and especially dealing with the loss of my father. It was a very difficult thing, but writing this was cathartic.
What part of this journey surprised you the most in writing this story?
The validation that people have given me since they’ve read this and said, “I had no idea.” These are people who lived close to me, school chums and so forth. Once it was on paper, I felt like I was finally not free of it, but I had let go enough to let this all go out into the world. Somebody said, “I didn’t realize, and I’m sorry.” That probably was the greatest impact on my life as an adult for this whole thing.
Here, I get to be the first show that you’re continuing to share this story with the entire world. We connected in, I believe, a Facebook group for people who have written books. I asked people if they had a book that they had written that relates to grief or pain. Even though this is predominantly for grief as it relates to widows and widowers, it is the family community and how the death of our family members impacts us.
A lot of times, it’s not always the nice cookie-cutter story that everybody wants to hear. Being able to be validated, even in this space. I believe there are people who are going to read this conversation, and some of this will resonate with them because pain has a way, once you experience seeing other people’s pain and trauma very differently.
I would agree with that 100%. Many people that I know have gone through, I won’t say, similar things, but some of them have gone through the loss of a special person. I’ve got a close friend from high school. She was one of the first people to buy this book. Her husband is not dead, but he’s in a permanent vegetative state. He doesn’t recognize her, and can’t recognize her at all. She has been dealing with that loss and that pain. She read this book and thanked me. It was helping her to place her own pain in perspective and get a feel that she wasn’t alone.
How has sharing your story changed the way you see grief or mental health in 2025?
I’ve had a lot of things come into play there because I spent a lot of my nursing career as a psychiatric nurse. I saw grief firsthand, but it wasn’t me. It wasn’t my grief. It wasn’t people related to me. It was outside of that. I learned how to deal with others’ grief. With this coming out, the process of writing it and getting it out there to the public, I’m looking at it in a whole new way. It isn’t totally new, but it’s new enough. It’s different. How about that? It’s a different way of looking at it. I have a lot more empathy than I thought I was capable of, and it’s because of this.
By writing about your grief for public consumption, you will look at it in a whole different way. Share on XHow Loneliness Shaped Brian’s Healing Process
I’m going to ask one more question, and then I’m going to get into reading some of the book. After I read, I would like you to tell me how you hear it now, or explain to the audience what is going on in this part. I’m not going to give the book away because the goal is for them to be interested, but I want to ask. You mentioned loneliness as a central thing. How do you think that has shaped your healing process?
I have accepted help from outside a lot more as a result of that. I realized how much of a loner I have been my whole life. I’ve had people in my life. I’ve had people close to me. I still have this aspect of me that is a lone person. This book has opened my eyes to the fact, like my friend from high school, that there are other people to share this with. Sharing it has lightened the load.
Do you find more comfort in being a loner with people?
I split that. I used to be just a loner. You have introverts and extroverts. There’s been a fairly new middle ground called omnivert. I’ve realized that that’s what I am. I am comfortable in crowds to a certain extent. I’m very comfortable being alone. I don’t have to go one way or the other. I can do both.
The People Brian Dedicated His Book To
Dedication. “Dedicated to the memory of Charlie Francis. We are better for having known you, and we continue to see your goodness after all those long years. You would still be proud of us. We miss you.”
It still brings tears to my eyes. He was a big figure in my life. He taught me a lot about compassion and giving. Some of it I didn’t realize until I was much older. That’s how I came to realize that giving has been the greatest aspect of my healing. It was giving to others. That’s what he did. He was not an educated man. He only got to the sixth grade, but he was able to teach me a lot about life.
Who is Charlie to you?
He’s my dad.
Thank you. Acknowledgement. “I wish to give heartfelt thanks as well as to acknowledge the assistance and the input of the following people, all who had an influence on the way in which the story of this part of my life eventually came to appear on the pages of this book.” Who are all these people? I don’t want to say someone’s name wrong, but I do like the part you said, “This part of my life.” What made you specifically use those words in that part of this?
Some of those people knew me back when and guided me or comforted me. Some of those people are mental health professionals. This part of my life changes depending on who I’m talking about there. For those who helped me and comforted me, they were exposed to what I went through and what’s described in the book. For those who helped me process it and get the words on the page in a way that isn’t too scary, but is also understandable, those people helped me. That was this healing process as an adult. There are two aspects there. Both apply.
Books That Brian Plans To Write In The Future
Thank you. “Man Shoots Wife, Kills Himself,” the headline read. That man was my father. By the time I read in the newspaper that evening, how I had felt early in the day made a lot of sense. It was a bright September morning in New England, and the first day of the 1976-77 school year. I should have felt great about the day ahead, but I left the family home for school that morning with an uneasy feeling in my gut. It was quite unusual for me to leave the house with both of my parents still there.
Later in the evening, I learned details about the event that forever changed my life. The family home had never been a placard for a loving place. There had been a lot of violence. My sister and I had endured psychological, emotional, and physical abuse for years, and yet had thought of our lives as normal. My mom had decided to divorce Dad. Now, one of them was dead, and the other was clinging to life in a nearby hospital.”
“About the author. Brian Francis is a retired psychiatric nurse who was born and raised in New England. He has lived a life, frequently expressed in one art form or another. Music, theater, and now writing have all played a part in helping him to maintain an even keel. When he is not dabbling in the arts, he is often to be found on a tractor, building eye projects. He and his wife, Alycia, live with their seven rescue pets on a sustainable homestead in the Pacific Northwest. Unrelenting is his first book.” What are the other books to come?
I have several that have been started. What I’m concentrating on is I’m doing a mildly fictionalized, unauthorized biography of my younger sister. She’s had such an interesting life. She’s so strange. She and I have not spoken in decades. There have been all kinds of things that have happened central to her that don’t make sense to most of the rest of us. I figured that that’s one of the books that I want to do. I also served in the Military in the submarine service. There was a lot that went on there, too.
You say it’s a Navy submarine. There’s a whole other thing going on with that.
That was part of my initial escape, hoping to give in some way, but that didn’t work the way that I had hoped it would. Let’s put it that way.
I have a section about that in the book, so don’t go any further with that. That’s one of the sections I pulled out. I’m going to wait to do it in order, because I was about to do it now, but I’m like, “That’s the third one.” I’m going to stop. I’m going to read from my sections that I have in the book, and then I’ll let you go from there.
Going Through Extreme Discipline And Prolonged Stress As A Child
“Induced stress wasn’t incidental. It was another weapon in Mom’s arsenal. Promises were never reliable. There were always caveats, many of them undisclosed. A deal might sound clear, like, “If you do all the dishes all week, you can go to the movies on Saturday,” but come Saturday, she changed the terms. “I had to remind you on Tuesday, so that doesn’t count.”
As we got older, especially me, the punishments evolved. What once was a swat on the bottom became a strike with a weapon. Kneeling in a corner, being grounded for long stretches, losing privileges, these were common, but under Mom’s hand, these typical forms of discipline became prolonged and extreme. She took away television, telephones, access, bicycles, toys, and favorite activities, and kept them for weeks and even months. What made it worse was the inconsistency. The goal posts were always moving. The same action, like a makeshift shield, as if to slow or deflect the blow.” You thought this was normal.
We didn’t have exposure to other households, so this was what we had. It’s that frog in the beaker thing, where if you put a frog in boiling water, they’ll jump right out. If you put a frog in water and slowly raise the temperature until it boils, then they’ll die. They’ll boil to death. This was the kind of thing that was going on in our house all the time. I mentioned inconsistency. That was probably the hardest part for me. I looked for order. I looked for patterns, and they weren’t there. Things would change, and we never knew when they were going to change or how.
Someone reading this would say, “Why didn’t you tell a teacher?” or, “Didn’t you talk to other students?” It’s hard for them to relate to this level of information, where you learn stuff instantly than the timeline you were in. How would you compare those two or explain that to someone?
It was a very different time. Since I felt it was normal, what was there to tell anyone? I didn’t see it as being abnormal, so I didn’t know that it was something I should be telling someone about. What I did know was that it was not a happy place to be. I would go to friends’ houses, but not invite them to our house. After a while, visiting different friends, I began to realize, “Wait a minute. Why don’t you get punished for that? Why didn’t you get hit for doing that or saying that the way that I do or the way that I have?” It took a while before it started to register that ours was the exception. It wasn’t the norm.
I wrote up a series of discussion questions for book clubs if they want to read it and use them for discussion points. One of them was, in today’s day and age, with Child Protective Services, if something like this were to happen, the kids already know that that exists. Sometimes, they weaponize it. They shouldn’t, but they do. They are taught to tell someone. We weren’t. That was not part of growing up then and there. We didn’t know to tell anyone.
I’ve had a couple of teachers that I had in high school who bought the book and read it. They came back and said, “I didn’t know that that was going on.” One of them apologized and said, “I’m sorry that I failed you.” I said, “You didn’t fail me. It was the system. It was the way everything worked.” In today’s world, the Child Protective Services is a great advance. We didn’t have that then.
You and your siblings. Any conversation, as this was going on, amongst you, trying to protect each other and outlive this? As adults, is it any different?
My two older sisters are 8 and 9 years older than I am. They both got out of the house at the earliest stage possible. The younger of the two of them, Chucky, who was mentioned a lot in the book, she tried to protect me at times. She would take me out of the house. I didn’t realize at the time that that’s what she was doing, but as an adult looking back on it, it was clear that she was trying to protect me.
Discussions between ourselves, we pretty much didn’t. If we did, we ran the risk of getting punished for it. Maybe sometimes, when we were out of the house, she’d say something, “You can’t do that. You can’t say those kinds of things to mom. She’s going to hit you.” I’d get warnings, but there was not a whole lot of discussion between us.
What about as adults?
When my mom died, and 4 of the 5 of us were back there for her funeral, Chucky and I were having those discussions. My youngest sister, who did not experience this, got very angry with us for bringing up our mother’s memory in such a negative way. Some of my nieces unfriended me on Facebook because I shouldn’t be talking about my mother that way. She didn’t give that appearance to them, so they figured I was lying. As we’ve gotten even older, we’ve discovered that there is some solidarity, especially between Chucky and me. We have continually been the closest of all of the siblings. We do talk about it.
Why Other People Try To Control The Narrative Of Your Truth
An interesting point about outsiders from your home trying to control the narrative of your truth. That is something that people often experience when they’re grieving, and they’re grief or their experience doesn’t live up to someone else’s expectation. For the person who is grieving, what would you recommend to them that they’re experiencing what other people are telling them, “Don’t tell the truth. I don’t want to hear that,” but they need to get it out to help their own healing?
Write a book. I did get that a lot. I got a lot of opposition, especially within the extended family. One of my cousins, who was pretty close to us, read the book. The first three words of her text message to me were all cuss words. She was flabbergasted. She was blown away. She said, “I was in your home. I knew your mother, your father, and your siblings, and I didn’t see any of this going on. Bravo to you for telling this.”
There have been a lot of revelations there, especially with her and a couple of other relatives. It’s hard because you’re dealing with the living, and you’re dealing with the dead. Supposedly, near the twain should meet. The memory of the dead has been glorified by some, and the truth doesn’t always want to be acceptable. It’s one of those things that’s hard because you try to maintain family relationships and sibling relationships, and they don’t want to hear the negatives. They don’t want to hear your side.
The memory of the dead has been glorified by some, and the truth does not always want to be acceptable. Share on XWell said. It is very unfortunate. People put it under the category of, “You shouldn’t talk ill of the dead.” It’s not that you’re talking ill of them. You’re telling what happened to you. This is your journey.
That’s precisely it. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they didn’t always understand that.
How Brian’s Relationship With His Father Shaped His Identity
That is very common. Does your relationship both to your father’s life in his death and in his living influence the man that you are now?
Lots of ways. I alluded to it at the top of this. Giving is something he did. He didn’t make a point of telling us that he was giving. It wasn’t overt. It was something that we observed him do. He was so kind to people that it struck some people as odd that he ended up having to go this route. He would do all kinds of odd jobs for people. Sometimes, they didn’t have the money to pay him. They’d offer him a pet, or they’d offer him some produce or something from their garden. That was fine with him. He’d take that and go. We had rabbits, a skunk, dogs, and cats. We had all kinds of pets that dad brought home that was payment that he accepted for doing work for somebody.
Here, you have a tribe of yourself now. Interesting.
I always have pets. I mentioned this a couple of times in the book, this idea of compassionate parenting. He did things and was very effective in what he was doing without doing what my mother did. I learned that you don’t have to be mean or nasty because of my dad. He was tough as nails. He grew up in the Depression. He was on the streets and getting into trouble as a teenager. He never hid that from us. He always told us about these things. He may have fabricated some stuff or told less than truthful accounts, but overall, the message that he transmitted to us was, “Tell the truth. Be good. Help out wherever you can.”
I experimented with lots of things, and I mentioned this in there. Becoming a nurse was one of the best things I’ve ever done. It was because I was able to give and help heal people. When I discovered psychiatric nursing, it was even better because that gave somebody who was going through some unknown trouble or trauma somebody to listen to them and somebody to lean on for help. I’ve always liked being that person.
The Saddest And Happiest Moments In Brian’s Life
Page 192. “It was a course shut down at my wish to change the plan. It was already done. No, it wasn’t. He hadn’t been put in the coffin, and it wasn’t burned yet. Again, I wasted my breath. This part of the whole process was so frustrating. I was being included because of my close relationship with him and because I was the oldest of the three siblings still at home. Yet, I did not have a say because I was too young.
Some of what happened in those few days has become a blur with the passage of time. The service was to be held on Wednesday. We went to the funeral home in the morning. Lori had decided to join Chucky in viewing Dad’s body before they closed the casket. Although nearly everyone questioned her motivation, later, Lori denied doing so and, when confronted with the truth, made up some elaborate story about it. Chucky said of her viewing that she hadn’t seen him look that peaceful in a very long time.
With my mother’s passing in 2017, Chucky became 1 of the 5 of us who have viewed both parents’ bodies after their demise. When I saw the coffin draped with an American flag, I had a very hard time containing my emotions, but I did for a while. I don’t have any recollection of anything that was said by the officiant.
What I do remember was a woman I did not know, once recognized, later identified as Aunt Helen. Wailing and bawling in the back of the room, she cried, “What have you done to my baby brother?” It was precisely at that moment that I lost the battle of self-control. I had held it together for the last six days, but with that outburst, I could no longer hold back the tears.”
That was a tough moment. It was at that point that I realized the finality of it. That was before the service was complete. Both of my older sister’s husbands, without saying a word to me or to each other, took me each by an arm and led me out. That whole incident took only a matter of a few minutes, and it was a crushing blow. That was the saddest moment of my life.
What have been some of the happiest moments of your life?
Working in our backyard with dad on the cars and our band trip to Washington, DC. I did that as a bell curve with the plot of the book and made that the high point. I have also greatly enjoyed my son. My second son was born in 1997. That was a magnificent high point in my life. Due to what I went through, I’m able to appreciate other things that might not be the high point of somebody else’s life, but because of where I was and where I am, the relativity of them, those points become even higher. They become bigger, better, and more lovely things to experience.
Profound trauma has a way of allowing us to take beauty in the simple things that we may not have seen had we not been exposed to that.
That’s a much more succinct way of saying what I said.
How Brian Became A Pacifist While Serving In The Navy
“My first five years in the Navy showed me I was more than my mother thought of me or expected. I was an outstanding sailor. As I began my sixth year in the Navy, I was an experienced non-commissioned officer E-5 who had the time and service and possessed all the requirements to be advanced to E-6. I had the recommendation of the Benjamin Franklin Commanding Officer to be advanced.
I had passed the written test and had made it past the Navy Wide Selection Committee. I had qualified in submarines on three different ships. I was a qualified sonar supervisor with the experience of 3 successful post-overhaul periods and 2 deterrent patrols. I had a good conduct ribbon and at least one formal letter of recommendation in my record. I had never been reprimanded or disciplined in any way. My career has been extraordinary from boot camp right up to this moment. However, I had also insulted this executive officer’s entire way of life.” What happened here?
I came to the realization, through a number of unfortunate events, to borrow somebody else’s phrase, that I could no longer be part of something that was so potentially destructive. Probably the straw that broke the camel’s back was when we test-fired a missile from one of the submarines, and it veered off course. It did not have a weapon-grade payload on board. It did not have a warhead. It had electronics.
It veered off course, and it was heading to Florida. Even without a warhead, had it hit somewhere, somebody would’ve died, guaranteed. They had to destroy the thing rather than watch it follow a proper trajectory. That was a very fortunate part of having all that electronic gear on board in place of a warhead. What went through my mind with that was, “What if this had a warhead and it didn’t have those electronics, and it veered off course like that? What would happen then?”
There had been a number of other things. Part of what it is is the maturity level. We say people are old enough to drink or old enough to serve in the Military, or old enough to drive a car long before they’re emotionally mature. I was approaching that emotional maturity point. I had taken these things into me and understood that I no longer could support that kind of warfare or that kind of weapon brandishment. Those submarines are death machines. That’s what they’re designed to be. I get that. Deterrent, sure, but they rain down death. I asked to be reclassified as a conscientious objector.
Explain what that means. I’m retired from the Army. People reading may have heard that term, so explain what that means.
Conscientious, meaning that I have feelings for others, and object to the use of arms. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t serve in the Military, but what it means is you don’t want to take part in anything that could take another life. I was willing to do whatever it took to go that route. I was happy to stay in the Military. I would’ve gone on for probably at least another enlistment, but my situation had changed. I had matured, and I had become a pacifist, to put it in the most blunt way possible.
Also, explain the response overall. They say that term exists, but trying to execute that and trying to reclassify in that process, dive into that a little bit from your experience.
The people who would make those decisions are career Military people. They are long-term, for the most part, soldiers and sailors. They don’t take kindly to you saying, “I think your way of life is wrong. I want to go this way,” which is what I said by asking to be class reclassified.
That’s how they hear when you’re saying, “Can I be the HR person? Can I do something in admin?” versus you directly being on the firing line. Those jobs were still necessary.
I wanted to become a corpsman. I would’ve been a hospital corpsman in a second, but that was not the way they accepted it. You read that little portion. I mentioned I had insulted this career Navy man. He was a lieutenant commander. He was second in command on the submarine. He was also a very outright Christian and was politically aligned to the right. By saying that I wanted to be a conscientious objector, I told him, “Everything you think is wrong. I want to go the right way for me.” It was not a good thing. It was not a good situation. He took offense. Since he had it in his power to make my life miserable, he did. It was pretty miserable for a while.
I was going to say. It definitely was. Do you feel like we did a good job of covering some highlights of the book?
Yeah. I think that’s great. I love that you read the back cover.
Who is the picture here on the back cover?
That’s Chucky holding me. I was about a year and a half old. She was about nine.
Thank you for allowing me to be your first show.
Thank you. It’s great.
How Brian Handled The Self-Publishing Process Of His Book
I want to shift gears. You said write a book. I want to ask a couple of questions about your book-writing experience. You self-publish through Barnes & Noble, correct?
Correct.
What in that process was it like for you, emotionally and technically?
Emotionally, I was overjoyed that I could get it published. I was frightened because there’s a financial part of that, and I’m not used to spending that kind of money on something that’s potentially so risky.
There’s no guaranteed return on investment.
I doubt I’m going to see a return on this investment, but maybe someday. Technically, I had had a New York editor who used to work for, I think, Scribner. He went off on his own and has been editing books on his own. He took this rough manuscript that I produced and trimmed fat, cleaned things up, and reordered stuff for me, so that it made a whole bunch more sense.
An anecdote from him in that process, there’s a segment in there where I describe how I had to kneel in the corner, my physical body position. I had said that I had to keep my hands behind me like a soldier at parade rest. He came back and said, “It would probably make more sense to people if you described it as a soldier awaiting execution.” It sent chills up and down my spine.
I said, “I’m going to make that change,” because I loved it. He said, “That’s basically what you were doing. You were in that position where you could have been awaiting execution. Let’s do it now.” He did a great job doing all the edits. He got me the script back, and then I started chopping it. I tried a few literary agents, and I got a lot of rejections.
It’s so painful.
I said, “I think I’m going to try this other route and see if I can get this book out there.” My goal was to get it out before the 50th anniversary of my dad’s dying. It was not going to happen if I went the traditional route. It would still be sitting on somebody’s desk waiting if I had done that. I pay the fee to Barnes & Noble, and they set it up. They also put it through an editing process.
A couple of things that they did came out better. One of them was the eulogy for Mom. I had taken my typewritten, computer-printed eulogy that I had made notes on, and I included it as a photo. They took it, wrote it all out, and added it into the chapter. I thought, “That reads a lot better that way.” It’s a humbling experience when somebody fixes what you think is such a great bit of writing. It’s like, “Mine wasn’t as good as yours. That’s the next thing.”
The process took a long time, longer than normal, because I was a stickler. I wanted the original watercolor painting to be the cover, and they couldn’t do it. When I talked to the artist afterwards, she said, “They AI-ed it. They took an AI version of the painting.” Getting color photographs is another option. Originally, they were going to print it all in black and white. The first person to receive a copy received a copy with all the photographs in black and white. It’s like, “How’d you get that?”
I’ve worked through IngramSpark. They handle the distribution of almost every book in the world. That has been interesting. I can’t say that I’m not frustrated with being unable to monitor the eBook sales because they don’t get reported until the 25th of the month after the month of the sale. I’m always going to be a month behind on knowing how many eBooks have sold. I am also impressed that they can show me how many hardcovers versus paperbacks are sold. I was encouraged to find that I had sold a copy in Germany.
Go analytics. Bravo.
That’s been the technical side of things. I’m a bit of an old-fashioned tech nerd.
Why Brian’s Book Received Strong Reviews Despite Limited Promotion
Your book receives strong reviews despite limited promotion. What do you think about this book that resonates most with the readers?
I keep hearing that it’s raw and honest. Those two words showed up in a bunch of different reviews. I kept thinking, “What’s so raw and honest about it? Why did they say this?” It turns out it’s my writing style. They can see, hear, and feel the honesty in what I’m telling. That meant a lot to me. It was a huge thing. It makes me very happy when people have seen that, and they see what I felt, and they can understand that. It’s gratifying and validating.
For the person who’s writing a book and they don’t feel like they need an outside editor and that what they did is fine, what would you say to them?
Let someone who knows read it. One of the critiques I got early on from one of my readers was, “You’re not a writer. This doesn’t come across well. Here’s why. You skip around, and you’re not staying in a nice, congruent timeline.” You don’t even realize that when you’re writing. You’re putting down the raw data. You’re getting this stuff out there, and you think you’re doing great until somebody else reads it. Let someone else read it.
I have one final question for you. If your father could read this book, what do you think he would take away from it?
He’d cry. I think he would realize how big an influence he’d had on all of us. It’s tough thinking about him sometimes. He was such a giant of a man, and yet he wasn’t. He only stood 5’8”, but I always looked up to him. I think he probably didn’t realize how much he did for us. This book would make him cry to realize that.
I want to thank you for trusting me. I say that because in this world of book publishing, there are a lot of scammers out there. There are a lot of people looking to do a disservice. When you’re self-promoting your book, it’s a lot of work. I know when I put that post in the Facebook group, some people were like, “I want to be on a show, but I’m not sure about this person.” Can you share some things people should be aware of, what that would look like, why you were apprehensive, and how this turned out?
One of the things that I have learned the hard way is that if somebody is offering to help promote your book and in any way whatsoever they want money, it’s a scam. Don’t pay them. Don’t pay anything. Ignore their communications. I had a good-looking one. It showed an email associated with a book club in England. It had a picture of the guy who organized the book club. It had a little quote that was a photograph of a plaque or something that they had with their book club.
If someone is offering help to promote your book and they want money, it is a scam. Share on XI looked them up. They were on Meetup. That’s how they do their book club. It looked legit. Everything seemed right. This is how I learned I needed to develop the discussion questions. It was because this book club wanted a list of discussion questions. Then, they asked me for money. It was like, “You disappoint me.” It turns out, it was somebody who had gone on, copied and pasted this guy’s photograph and the stuff from the book club, and then started scamming new self-published authors.
Tina’s Writing Process And Upcoming Books
It’s so much work to put your heart into doing this. Thank you for trusting me. Thank you for sharing with our community. I try to give my guests an opportunity to be the host. Do you have any questions you may want to ask me?
How’s your book doing?
I have completed my writing of the book. I’ve turned it over to the editor. I’ll get my first update from them. The book should be available for the virtual kickoff in March 2026. Then, we’re having an event called Hope Grows Here, which is a fundraiser for the nonprofit here in Norfolk, Virginia. There will be an opportunity to have signed copies in person. I will be Doctor Tina by then. That ceremony is where I will be known as Dr. Tina Fornwald. That will be in the book.
How awesome.
I’m blown away by this journey and what it looks like. My book is fiction. Yours is a true telling of your life. My book is The Five Widows Club. It is the story of five widows, which is a mixture of so many people I have met and spoken to, either from this show, a TikTok Live that I do every Monday at 7:00 PM Eastern Time, or a grief support meeting. No one is one of these women, but everyone together.
I also have the outline for my next three books. One would be the story of 5 widowers and then 5 young adults in their grief journey. I didn’t think I had a book in me, but it comes out of you once you start writing and doing things, and when that story needs to be told. I gave it to the editor, and I’m bracing myself for the critique, the writing, and all the stuff. I was like, “Prepare yourself.”
It can be humbling.
It’s going to be. I’m bracing myself for it.
You mentioned that you’re going to have that live event in Virginia. I’ve been asked to go back East to do some book signings and author talks in and around the town where all this happened. It was a big thing to happen in a small town, so lots of people know about it. Some friends are doing a letter-writing campaign to get me on the local NPR station in Boston. I don’t think that’ll actually happen, but you never know.
You can only hope.
I appreciate you having me on. The thought of doing this was brilliant for that group of people. I hope you get more interesting episodes out of it.
Abuse, grief, and loss are terrible things, but it does not mean you cannot survive them. Share on XI have about two more books that I’ve received to be able to support. My experience of writing a book and my experience of seeing how difficult it is to get your story out there and promote it showed me, “Tina, you have the opportunity to help other people who are trying to do this. Why not share those stories, help them, and be there to support them?”
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
I was glad to be able to bring your story to this platform to encourage others to see that, unfortunately, pain does come in different ways. Maybe your book can encourage them, and they can also see that they are not alone. I would like you to close out this conversation with anything you feel like we didn’t cover, where they can find your book, or any other information you want to share.
Primarily, my book is available through Amazon in all formats. They’re doing a print-to-order type thing for the hardcover and for the paperback. The Kindle version or eBook is available through them as well. It’s supposedly available through other formats, but nobody uses any other formats. They’re all going through Amazon.
Accepting that you’re not perfect and accepting that you have worth is far more important than worrying about who will like what’s out there. I do hope that people get something from my book. I would love it if young men, especially, realize that it’s okay to say, “I was abused.” A lot of people have commented on my survival. I get asked all the time, “How did you survive?” I did. That’s the bottom line. Instead of, “What am I going to do next week?” It’s, “What am I going to do in three minutes?” I want that to get out there. Abuse, grief, and loss are terrible things, but you can survive.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Brian Francis
- Brian Francis on Facebook
- Brian Brancis on Instagram
- Unrelenting: When Safe was the Exception
About Brian Francis
Brian is a retired psychiatric nurse. Although born in New England, he has called Washington State his home for more than half his life. Brian and his wife Alycia live on a sustainable homestead with their seven rescued pets. Unrelenting is his first book.
