Author and award-winning journalist Rachel Zimmerman joins the Exchange to discuss her memoir, "Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide." She shares her journey from abject debilitating grief following the sudden suicide of her 50-year-old husband (an MIT professor), to recovery and discovery of joy again. Rachel joins the Exchange to discuss how she and her two young daughters coped in the aftermath of the sudden shock to their lives.
(Santa Fe Writers Project) When a state trooper appeared at Rachel Zimmerman鈥檚 door to report that her husband had jumped to his death off a nearby bridge, she fell to her knees, unable to fully absorb the news. How could her husband, a devoted father and robotics professor at MIT, have committed such a violent act? How would she explain this to her young daughters? And could she have stopped him?
A longtime journalist, she probed obsessively, believing answers would help her survive. She interviewed doctors, suicide researchers and a man who jumped off the same bridge and lived.
Us, After examines domestic devastation and resurgence, digging into the struggle between public and private selves, life鈥檚 shifting perspectives, the work of motherhood, and the secrets we keep.
In this memoir, Zimmerman confronts the unimaginable and discovers the good in what remains.
Rachel Zimmerman, an award-winning journalist, has been writing about health and wellness for more than two decades. She currently reports on mental health for The Washington Post. Previously, she worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and a health reporter for WBUR, Boston鈥檚 NPR station, where she co-founded WBUR鈥檚 CommonHealth blog, and co-created The Checkup podcast with Slate. Her reporting and essays have appeared in The New York Times; The Atlantic; Vogue.com; O, the Oprah Magazine; New York Magazine鈥檚, The Cut, and Slate, among other publications. Find her on at
