Potts Foundation Launches Book on Child Loss

By Cynthia Drummond for BRVCA 

November 15th 2024 

RICHMOND – The Maddie Potts Foundation has published a book featuring stories from parents about their children who passed away. 

“Lives Unfinished: Parents’ Reflections on Child Loss,” published by Stillwater River in partnership with grief coach, Susan Lataille, is an analogy of 10 stories, recounted by the parents of children who died. They are not easy to read, and 

the back cover of the book includes a warning: 

“These stories are real and raw, and we tell them to keep the memories of our children alive. We want to show you that the memories of your children will live on too. We hope and pray that our stories will help you continue to honor your children and to survive with us.” 

Maddie Potts 

Maddie Potts’s sudden death, at age 17, on the Chariho soccer field, plunged the Chariho community into mourning. Potts’s parents, Stephanie and Dan, created the Maddie Potts Foundation to honor their daughter and raise awareness of brain aneurysms. 

The press release for the new book reads, “Having connected with so many families who have survived their own losses, the Foundation sought out a way to immortalize the memories of children like Maddie, whose lives went ‘unfinished’.” 

Reached Thursday, Stephanie Potts said she hoped that in addition to honoring the families and children, the book would serve as a resource for other grieving families. 

“When we left the hospital, we left with a cardboard box, a cut-off uniform and a pamphlet with minimal resources on grief – nothing that we found helpful,” she said. “That has especially been in the back of my mind, that I wanted to make that better, give something more than what we got. So, with those two things in the back of my mind for years, our outreach coordinator put me in touch with Susan Lataille. … Because Susan is in Rhode Island, and because Susan is also a certified grief counselor and has lost her son, I felt like it was a safe space to extend that to other authors. Maddie’s foundation provided the $10,000 that a program like this costs, and we extended it to several other parents throughout Rhode Island and they all responded that they wanted to join in.” 

Potts described the process of writing the chapter about Maddie as “excruciating.” 

 “I wrote it from a perspective of an emergency medicine physician assistant veteran, essentially, that was living a parallel life of trying to be a P.A. and trying to be a mom and both personalities trying to save Maddie,” she said. “And, to put that into words took an enormous emotional toll, because I really wanted to do justice for, not just that everyone did everything right to try and save Maddie, but that other medical providers can learn from this and hopefully have a better outcome than what we did.” 

Signed copies of “Lives Unfinished” will be available for purchase at the book launch which will take place at the Maddie Potts Memorial Field House on the Chariho campus on Saturday, Nov. 16, at 11 a.m. Members of the other families who contributed to the book will also be attending the launch. 

The book can be ordered from the Maddie Potts Foundation for $19.99, and is available on Amazon.com.