Bul­let­proof goes behind the head­lines to tell the before-dur­ing-and-after sto­ry of an unthink­able fam­i­ly tragedy. The book begins with a mar­riage like many oth­er mar­riages, launch­ing with love and arc­ing into fam­i­ly, how­ev­er, hit­ting rocky shoals and ran aground. Dark secrets began to emerge. The only thing that seemed unequiv­o­cal was his devo­tion to the chil­dren. Even­tu­al­ly divorce, the two of us prepar­ing to share cus­tody of the boys across a bit­ter divide. Then, on March 31, 2010, at 8:04 in the morn­ing, my soon to be ex-hus­band shot and killed our two chil­dren, five-year-old Alec and fif­teen-month-old-Ash­er. Bul­let­proof tells the sto­ry, too, of a mar­riage unlike most any oth­er, end­ing as it does in mur­der and death row. For near­ly sev­en years, I have been liv­ing with this…this what? This fact. This tragedy, this shock, this loss, this aching. This emp­ty­ing out of life as I knew it. But also this oth­er side, this hope, mak­ing a new life built on the only thing it can be: love. This sto­ry is mine to live. No way around it. It is also mine to tell.

Lau­rie Beth Morales intro­duces an alter­na­tive yet com­pli­men­ta­ry per­spec­tive and under­stand­ing to the 5 stages of grief devel­oped by her after the mur­der of her 2 sons, ages 5 and 15 months by her soon-to-be-ex hus­band. Lau­rie Beth has unusu­al insight into death and heal­ing, as both a moth­er and a licensed clin­i­cal social work­er spe­cial­iz­ing in grief, trau­ma, sud­den death and addic­tions. Over the past 20 years in coun­sel­ing, Lau­rie Beth dis­cov­ered that trau­mat­ic grief from trau­ma, some­times asso­ci­at­ed with addic­tion (i.e.overdoses, death of chil­dren expe­ri­enced by a par­ent, vic­tim of a crime, acci­dents) were expe­ri­enced dif­fer­ent­ly, the ​“nor­mal” order of the lifes­pan was inter­rupt­ed. Lau­rie Beth will present guide and under­stand­ing of what hap­pens to us when we encounter an unwant­ed, unex­pect­ed real­i­ty – from griev­ing the loss of a life no longer and how to recov­er, to the some­times unfor­tu­nate ​“oth­er side” of life, death. Bul­let­proof will explore sto­ries from acci­dent, to ill­ness, to the myr­i­ad ways we can lose what we love most and out­line a foot­print for the nec­es­sary path to get back to our­selves and life here on earth when all we want to do is to fol­low our favorite ​“favorite” to heaven.