I Keep Taking Pictures Paperback – February 21, 2026

This is not a story with a happy beginning.It does not offer a tidy ending.What it offers is truth.When Amy’s son was taken in a sudden act of violence, her world did not simply break—it imploded. The architecture of her family collapsed overnight. What followed was not a carefully outlined memoir written years later from a place of polished healing. It was survival in real time.For more than a decade, Amy wrote through the wreckage.In Facebook statuses posted at 2:17 a.m.In Instagram captions written through tears.In fragmented reflections typed when sleep wouldn’t come.She didn’t realize she was writing a book. She was documenting endurance.This collection gathers eleven years of raw, unfiltered grief after the violent loss of her son and the devastating aftermath that followed. It captures what child loss actually looks like when there is no privacy, no neat resolution, and no spiritual framework to make sense of it.Amy is an atheist. There is no promise she will see her son again. No belief that this is part of a divine plan. The finality is absolute. The absence is permanent. And surviving that reality requires a kind of strength few people ever have to find.Inside these pages, you will witness:• The psychological shock of sudden child loss• The unraveling of trust in institutions meant to protect and serve• The exhaustion of fighting for answers in systems that resist accountability• The loneliness that follows tragedy• The daily discipline of maintaining sobriety through unimaginable pain• The coping strategies that helped—and the ones that didn’tThis book does not sanitize rage. It does not soften obsession. It does not edit out the ugly parts of grief. It shows the intrusive thoughts, the courtroom fatigue, the social fallout, and the way trauma rewires a body and a brain.But threaded through the devastation are what Amy calls “dandelions.”Dandelions are the small, stubborn reasons she found to stay. A stranger’s message. A sunset that felt survivable. A memory that didn’t completely destroy her. The moment she picked up a camera and taught herself photography, discovering that light could still be captured even when everything felt dark.Photography became proof that beauty could exist in a world that had betrayed her.This is not a story about moving on.It is about moving forward while carrying the unbearable.It is about corruption and grief.It is about sobriety and survival.It is about endurance without illusions.Most of all, it is about a mother’s love that did not end the day her son’s life did.If you are grieving, if you have questioned systems, if you have fought to stay sober through heartbreak, or if you simply want to understand what surviving the unimaginable actually looks like—this book invites you to witness it.There is no fairy-tale redemption here.There is resilience.There is defiance.There are dandelions pushing through concrete.And there is a mother who refused to let her son’s name disappear. Read more