In Reaching for Beautiful, psychotherapist Sally McQuillen takes us on an intimate journey through love, loss, and healing. As a mother and addiction recovery specialist, she offers a deeply personal and unfiltered look at grief—exploring the weight of fear, guilt, and regret while uncovering the resilience that emerges from profound loss.
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Sally McQuillen arrives in conversation with the quiet strength of someone who has navigated deep waters. A psychotherapist specializing in the intricate territories of addiction, grief, and trauma, her background is a rich tapestry woven with threads of artistic expression – writing, dance criticism – and the pragmatic skills of public relations and marketing. This diverse past, one senses, has uniquely equipped her for the profoundly human work she now undertakes, guiding individuals through life’s most formidable challenges. Her debut memoir, Reaching For Beautiful, stands as a testament to this journey, a raw and radiant exploration of love and loss, viewed through the dual lens of a mother’s enduring affection and a therapist’s hard-earned insight.
McQuillen speaks of her path with a gentle cadence, emphasizing its “organic” nature. Her early immersion in the arts at a liberal arts college, where she embraced writing and dance, laid a foundation that unexpectedly resurfaced later in life. A pragmatic turn led her through the corridors of public relations, sports marketing, and even the technological world of IBM. She recounts her younger self, a woman in a suit navigating the then-novel landscape of credit card technology, selling to a demographic markedly different from her own. Yet, it was during this period of professional ascent that a deeper calling began to resonate. Her foray into volunteer work, offering support to others as she herself navigated personal shifts, provided a “hint of fulfillment.” This nascent sense of purpose propelled her back to academia, culminating in a master’s degree in social work.
Life then unfolded with a rapid succession of milestones: marriage, the anticipation of her first child, Christopher, and a job offer in her chosen field, temporarily deferred by the intense demands of early motherhood. McQuillen speaks with a quiet gratitude for the “privilege and opportunity” to be a full-time mother during Christopher’s early years. It was not until Christopher embarked on his own journey to college that McQuillen felt the pull to fully reactivate her professional life. Even then, the path felt intuitive, a return to a vocation that resonated as her true calling. Her specialization in addiction recovery, initially met with a touch of irony given her own history, ultimately revealed itself as a source of profound connection and understanding with her clients.
The conversation shifts to the genesis of Reaching For Beautiful, a subject McQuillen approaches with a palpable tenderness. The loss of her son, Christopher, at the age of twenty-one, in a tragic accident on a frozen lake, is the crucible from which the memoir emerged. In the immediate aftermath of this unimaginable devastation, a simple suggestion from a Facebook friend – to journal – became an unexpected lifeline. Having resisted journaling during her own recovery, the profound yearning for Christopher, the unknowable void of his absence, compelled her to reach for him through words. Texting on her phone became a form of raw, immediate journaling, a way to articulate the unfolding reality of her grief. This digital outpouring, nurtured through years of drafting, the support of a writing group, and the guidance of editors and coaches, eventually transformed into her deeply moving memoir.
When asked about the courage required to share such intimate emotions with the world, McQuillen admits that the full weight of this exposure is only beginning to dawn on her, with the book’s recent release. Yet, beneath this understandable vulnerability lies a powerful sense of purpose. She speaks of feeling a clear directive from Christopher, a posthumous urging to “speak the truth and to then help others.” If her story can achieve even a fraction of this, she believes the vulnerability will have been worthwhile. Her upbringing in communities that fostered openness has, perhaps, also provided a framework for understanding the potential rewards inherent in vulnerability, even when they feel elusive.
McQuillen offers a poignant anecdote about raising Christopher, a child she describes as “wild,” a “bad boy” in the eyes of some. She recounts the sting of judgment, the whispered gossip among other parents. Yet, she also reveals a resilient spirit, a tendency to “overcompensate for feelings of shame by just saying, yep, you better believe it. This is me; this is my son.” In a community often characterized by striving and guardedness, McQuillen embraced a certain “recklessness” in her honesty, readily acknowledging her son’s challenges to teachers and others.
Christopher, it seems, lived life with an unrestrained energy. McQuillen shares vivid memories: a child running by nine months, the countless trips to the emergency room, her own evolving tolerance for childhood injuries. One particular memory stands out: Christopher, barely two, scaling playground equipment within minutes of his mother’s departure during a preschool separation exercise, only to require a straightjacket in the emergency room. This anecdote encapsulates his kinetic spirit. Yet, alongside this boundless energy was a heart McQuillen describes as “wide open.” She recounts a Christmas dinner, a rare moment with all her children, interrupted by a text from a fraternity brother alone at the house. Without hesitation, Christopher insisted on taking their barely finished meal, hastily wrapped as a makeshift gift, on an hour-and-a-half drive to be with his friend.
McQuillen reflects on the familial roots of Christopher’s energetic nature, acknowledging the genetic inheritance from both her and her husband, who has severe ADD. Her other children, a younger son and a daughter, also share variations on this “theme.” This exploration of her family’s history with what she terms “our theme genes” extends to the complexities of addiction, a shadow cast by her alcoholic father. She poignantly admits that her own upbringing should have made her more aware of the power of genetics. Instead, the anxieties stemming from her relationship with her father compounded her fears surrounding Christopher’s impulsivity, creating a state of near constant “fight or flight” during his upbringing.
The conversation touches on the universality of parental worry, a sentiment McQuillen affirms. She then shares a darkly humorous anecdote about her younger son, a testament to the accumulated experience of childhood mishaps, where genuine injury was initially met with a weary skepticism.
Grief, McQuillen emphasizes, is a profoundly individual process. While her professional training as a therapist didn’t necessarily provide a shortcut through her own sorrow, her accumulated life experience proved invaluable. A pre-existing spiritual foundation and a recognition of the need for self-care were crucial. She was already in therapy and participating in a support group when Christopher died, resources she had to actively amplify. The initial impulse was to be “strong” in a traditional sense, to “do grief right,” to maintain an outward composure. But she soon realized the necessity of allowing herself to fully experience the messy reality of her pain. True strength, she learned, lies in accepting help, in entering the darkness. Her own pain was all-encompassing, leaving her physically and emotionally paralyzed. Self-compassion became paramount, a “permission slip” to prioritize her own well-being in an unprecedented way. This remains an ongoing practice, a constant negotiation with an internal voice urging her to “push through.” Compassion meant allowing herself to lie on the couch, while also recognizing the need to engage with the world, to attend the service honoring Christopher, which ultimately led to healing connections with his peers.
McQuillen acknowledges the painful reality of friends who, despite good intentions, retreated in the face of such profound grief. The loss of a child, she observes, can be deeply alienating, making the bereaved parent a stark reminder of others’ greatest fears. She recounts her own experience of discomfort and isolation while trying to support her younger son. Yet, she also expresses deep gratitude for the many who did bear witness to their pain, even as she understands the need for them to pace themselves through a grief that endures. She estimates that it took over seven years to truly feel like herself again, emphasizing that grief has no timetable. While the intensity lessens over time, the grief for Christopher will be a lifelong companion, its weight fluctuating with one’s willingness to acknowledge and enter its inevitable darkness. She critiques the diagnostic eagerness to pathologize prolonged grief, underscoring the need for self-compassion and acceptance of one’s own timeline.
In addressing the pervasive fear that parents harbor for their children, McQuillen speaks with a sense of newfound purpose. Christopher’s life and death have led her to a spiritual path focused on transcending fear through love. While acknowledging this as a lofty ideal, she recounts Christopher’s three years of sobriety, a period where he was truly his “very best self,” free from the constraints of addiction. His subsequent return to partying in college reignited her fears, a state she suspects she never entirely escaped. Yet, she began to consciously practice “letting go.” She reflects on the societal pressures on contemporary parents, particularly mothers who transition from the workforce, to apply the same standards of achievement to raising children, leading to micromanagement and heightened anxiety. The myriad fears percolating in the world further compound this. She shares an anecdote about another mother’s apprehension about Christopher’s influence, even before his death, highlighting the often-irrational nature of parental fear. For McQuillen, the profound lesson learned is that parental fear inhibits emotional presence. In an effort to forgive herself, she made amends to Christopher and her other children for allowing fear to interfere with her ability to be her best self as a mother. While she doesn’t offer a simple solution to overcoming parental fear, her crystallized understanding is that life is about learning and growth, and children learn best through challenges and struggles. Her role now is to love her living children through their difficulties, offering a safe harbor when they inevitably encounter setbacks.
When asked what she would say to Christopher spiritually, and what she imagines his response would be, McQuillen’s voice softens with emotion. Each morning, she reaches for him, feeling his presence as she works with clients. In early grief, her deepest need was to know that her love was still reaching him, a yearning rooted in her own childhood experience of feeling unloved by her father. To Christopher, she endlessly conveys her pride, acknowledging his “wide open heart” and her gratitude for being his mother, despite the challenges. She hopes he would respond with pride in her and an affirmation that she has honored him in her best way.
McQuillen finds resonance in a maxim shared by a grief counselor: “You can’t go back to normal. All you could do is take the Legos that remain. Build something beautiful.” This resonates with David Kessler’s emphasis on finding meaning in loss, a path she actively pursued through his Grief Educator certification course. She and her husband honor Christopher on his birthday and the anniversary of his death, supporting organizations close to his heart. Their ongoing endeavor is to celebrate him by offering solace and connection to other grieving parents, particularly mothers who have navigated the challenging path of raising a difficult child. Their aim is to share whatever wisdom they have gleaned from their own journey through the darkness.
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