Jefferson Countian Kaitlin Riffe, 29, has faced a lot of grief in her young life, including the unexpected, traumatic loss of both her parents.
Her father, former Jefferson College Police Chief Don Riffe, died last year due to COVID-19, and her mother, Jeannie Riffe, died 15 years ago in a horrific traffic accident Kaitlin witnessed.
In an effort to better understand her grief, she recently wrote a book, ”Lessons I Learned From Two Dead Parents.”
The book’s catchy title reflects Riffe’s no-nonsense approach to sharing her firsthand experience with devastating loss.
“The grief I felt as a result of my mother’s death and now my father’s death has shaped my entire life,” said Riffe, who works for the ATF National Integrated Ballistics Information Network investigating violent gun crimes in southern Illinois.
Riffe, who lives in Herculaneum, sketched out the attention-getting title and bare-bones outline of her first published book in about two weeks in the spring of 2022, two months after her father died. She then spent about nine months writing the book’s 10 chapters. Each chapter is a lesson about how to survive grief written in a gutsy, straightforward style.
The 104-page hardback book was Amazon’s No. 4 most popular grief and bereavement book when it was released in March.
It sells for $20 on Amazon, and a paperback soon will be offered on Amazon. In addition, Riffe said she plans to upload an audiobook on YouTube.
Sales from the book will benefit Operation Sheepdog, a nonprofit organization Riffe recently founded in honor of her father.
“My father once paid for a textbook for a recruit who could not afford to buy it himself,” she said. “The goal is to award 10 grants by the end of 2024 to police recruits training at the Jefferson College and Mineral Area College law enforcement academies.”
Writing “Lesson I Learned From Two Dead Parents” proved cathartic for Riffe.
“I started writing the book to help process my own trauma,” Riffe said. “Once I started putting my thoughts on paper, I couldn’t stop writing until it was all out of my head. I wanted to use writing this book as an opportunity to communicate with other grievers.”
In the book, Riffe describes “massive loss,” “massive trauma” and “massive life changes,” subjects she understands well.
She was 14, a freshman at Herculaneum High School, when her mother died in October 2008 at age 42 in an accident involving a tractor-trailer on I-44 at the Union exit. The family, who was returning from a trip to Lake of the Ozarks, had stopped because their pontoon boat trailer had lost a tire. Riffe’s parents were outside the family’s SUV when the tractor-trailer hit her mother, who died on impact.
In contrast to her mother’s sudden death, Riffe’s father was in the hospital for a month and a half before passing away at age 59 from COVID-19. The Jefferson College police chief also was the lead firearms instructor at the Jefferson College Law Enforcement Academy.
Prior to working at Jefferson College, he had worked 30 years as a special agent in the Army Investigative Division. He retired from that job to raise Riffe and her younger sister, Kara, after the accident.
“When my father died, I lost my go-to person to call after a hard day at work or when I was stuck on a case or needed career advice,” Riffe said.
In her book, Riffe says that after her mother’s death, she battled grief and trauma, though she did not recognize the symptoms because it was all she knew.
Twelve years after her mother died, Riffe suffered a breakdown that led her to get therapy. She was working for a police department in Colorado in 2020 and planning her wedding, while burdened by thoughts of how it would be different if her mother was there. A routine mental health check-in opened an emotional floodgate.
“I cried to a stranger that I needed help,” she said. “I was burying massive amounts of trauma. That first round of therapy helped me identify trauma responses I had developed from my mother’s death that I wasn’t even aware of. It changed my life.”
Riffe said a second, more severe breakdown came in 2021 following the birth of her daughter, Ava.
“It was debilitating,” she recalled. “I was told that I struggled with major depressive disorder, anxiety and a severe episode of postpartum depression. I was later told by another mental health professional that I met the diagnostic criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder. Trauma had forced my brain to rewire what it thought was a helpful way to function while in survival mode.”
Riffe said she still deals with some challenges, but she is better-equipped today to identify negative thinking and process her emotions.
“I still struggle with how grief and trauma have impacted my life,” she said. “I miss my parents every day, but it doesn’t define me as much as it used to. I have learned that accepting you need help and actually going to get it are powerful acts of strength. I deserve to live instead of just survive.”
She said her book has helped her deal with her trauma.
“Whatever happens with the book, I am walking away with a better understanding of myself, my trauma, my grief and what moving forward looks like.”
A self-described energetic overachiever, Riffe is not one to sit idle.
On July 3, she plans to launch “The Dead Parents Party Podcast,” which will be available on her website at kaitlinriffeuding.com. The website also will list upcoming events, such as an Operation Sheepdog fundraiser from 2-8 p.m. on July 29 at The Hill Cigar Co., 5360 Southwest Ave., in St. Louis. It will include raffles, free food, live music, a Nobletons Distilling House bourbon-tasting and a book-signing.
Riffe also hopes to present a TEDx Talk on grief at some point, and she definitely wants to write another book on a yet-to-be-determined subject.