Eileen Drennen, a first mother and open records advocate, has written about how losing her only child to adoption has affected all her relationships in essays and a memoir (tentatively titled ONCE REMOVED and currently out on submission). While she acknowledges the decades-long process of researching, reliving and revising a memoir about the things you can’t change is not for the faint of heart, she credits the process with teaching her about the ways imagination and a sense of play can lighten the heavy load of grief. She speaks about how unpacking generalized grief into specific losses made it more real and how string theory and the idea of multiverses helped her tell a bigger story.

About Eileen
Eileen Drennen is a writer and editor who worked in newspapers for 27 years. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte, N.C., has taught critical writing at the college level and has presented at national adoption-related conferences on topics related to her memoir-in-progress. Her writing has appeared in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, O, The Oprah Magazine and The Rumpus. One of her essays was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and another is forthcoming in an anthology of essay forms.