Silent Warrior: Finding Voice After Suicide

"Dad, do you know that my dream is to be a writer?" For young Kristina Stahl, writing poetry, short stories, essays, and short plays is more than a dream, it is how she manages her sometimes crippling anxiety. In this captivating book, readers glimpse Kristina's early writing efforts as they evolve into lyric poems, deeply touching expressions of love and loss, and her commitment to sports and teamwork. She imagines a life as a mother, celebrates her success as a teacher, and shares the challenges of coaching soccer and lacrosse. But each selection brings us closer to the pain and anguish she masks in public, the night terrors and panic attacks that undermine her well-being, until we fear for her and see the end coming. She calls suicide "the option," and sees no way out as her well runs dry. Silent Warrior: Finding Voice After Suicide is a collection of poems and short prose written by Kristina Stahl, and includes tributes and writings from close friends as well as from Kristina's mother, Karin Stahl, author of The Option: a memoir of suicide, mystery, and finding our way, a heart-wrenching and poignant memoir that engages the reader in a mother's search to find her daughter's voice, and then her own.

A Colby College graduate in 1999, Kristina Stahl was an English major, and an All-American in lacrosse. At the time of her death on September 11, 2002, she was a teacher and coach at the Kingswood Oxford School in West Hartford, working toward her masters at the Bread Loaf School at Middlebury College. Three initiatives honor her: Kristina Stahl Creative Writing Fund at Colby College for an annual Writer-in-Residence, Creative Nonfiction Award, and Writing Internships; the Kristina Stahl Anxiety Lecture Series at the Institute of Living in Hartford, CT; and the Teacher Mentoring Fund at Kingswood Oxford.