The Story Behind The Story of Losing Faith
By Denise Jaden - September 8, 2010
When people hear that the title of my book is Losing Faith, the first question I often field is whether or not it is a religious book. Well, no, it’s not. But to me, at least, the book does have spiritual themes and a double entendre with the title.
Even though I’m from a Bible-belt community, I did not grow up in the church. I had a fairly regular group of friends at school, but my best friend lived across the country in Colorado. Before the world of e-mail, we wrote each other long handwritten letters, filled with every little detail from our daily lives. But when a long stretch passed without a letter from my friend, I started to worry.
I worried even more when I received a letter from her parents.
My friend had been killed by a drunk driver, and at sixteen, I didn’t have much of a grid with how to deal with such a tragedy. Not only that, but in the letters I later exchanged with my friend’s parents, and while meeting with them in person, I realized how much I had not known about my friend while she was alive.
This sense of wishing, so hard, to have known someone when it’s too late…that was likely the seed that started Losing Faith.
In my early twenties, I worked at and attended a very down-to-earth Christian church. We had a passionate congregation with a strong following of youth. The place was filled with all these wildly different, yet passionate, young people that you would not have found mixing together any place else. I saw so much hurt in that place, kids pouring out their pain and asking God for help, and I thought back to my own teen years. I wondered how getting through my friend’s death might have been different if I had believed in something.
This, altogether, was my inspiration for the story of Brie and her process of grieving for and understanding her sister, Faith. It’s a culmination of passionate young people with different backgrounds and beliefs, dealing with and processing their hurt in different ways. It’s also a story about secrets and wishing you had paid more attention.
Is Losing Faith a religious book that tells you what’s right and wrong? No. Is it a spiritual book that lets you know it is okay to search, to ask questions, and to believe in something big within yourself? Absolutely.
Even though I’m from a Bible-belt community, I did not grow up in the church. I had a fairly regular group of friends at school, but my best friend lived across the country in Colorado. Before the world of e-mail, we wrote each other long handwritten letters, filled with every little detail from our daily lives. But when a long stretch passed without a letter from my friend, I started to worry.
I worried even more when I received a letter from her parents.
My friend had been killed by a drunk driver, and at sixteen, I didn’t have much of a grid with how to deal with such a tragedy. Not only that, but in the letters I later exchanged with my friend’s parents, and while meeting with them in person, I realized how much I had not known about my friend while she was alive.
This sense of wishing, so hard, to have known someone when it’s too late…that was likely the seed that started Losing Faith.
In my early twenties, I worked at and attended a very down-to-earth Christian church. We had a passionate congregation with a strong following of youth. The place was filled with all these wildly different, yet passionate, young people that you would not have found mixing together any place else. I saw so much hurt in that place, kids pouring out their pain and asking God for help, and I thought back to my own teen years. I wondered how getting through my friend’s death might have been different if I had believed in something.
This, altogether, was my inspiration for the story of Brie and her process of grieving for and understanding her sister, Faith. It’s a culmination of passionate young people with different backgrounds and beliefs, dealing with and processing their hurt in different ways. It’s also a story about secrets and wishing you had paid more attention.
Is Losing Faith a religious book that tells you what’s right and wrong? No. Is it a spiritual book that lets you know it is okay to search, to ask questions, and to believe in something big within yourself? Absolutely.
