Katie Rizzo
Author/Poet/Teacher/Mom
On September 17, 2024, Katie Rizzo lost her firstborn son to addiction. She found that grief mirrored pregnancy. The first few months she had nausea as grief moved in. Then there was a period of numbness, followed by “showing” where she wanted everyone to know. She began writing poetry—something she had never done before—as a way to speak to him across the veil. Then when it got really unbearable, Nick Cave wrote a piece on asking grief to sit beside you, which was her call to delivery. Now she can walk with grief alongside and hopes to share her story to help others who have lost a kid to anything like addiction that is stigmatized, and to help anyone lost in grief.
Katie Rizzo’s memoir, The Trimesters of Grief, will be released on October 6 by Koehler Books, with Blackstone Publishing handling audio licensing.
Trained in biology and psychology, Rizzo earned a master’s degree from Yale University and completeda MSII at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She taught at her local public high school for over fifteen years and lives in Arizona with her husband and their two dogs..
