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HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE
An Uncensored Battle Cry for the Bereaved and the Bullshit-Intolerant

Okay, forget your yoga retreats, your healing crystals, and every single saccharine, pastel-covered grief pamphlet they shoved into your trembling hands the second your world detonated. We're talking about Cassandra fucking Crossno's HOLY SHIT, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t, and let me tell you, this isn't a book—it's a goddamn Molotov cocktail lobbed straight into the sterile, sanitized, emotionally neutered landscape of grief literature. This is the uncensored, blood-spattered field manual they should have given you the moment your reality shattered like cheap fucking glass.

Before you even crack the spine, before you process a single sentence, the title hits you like a sledgehammer to the chest. HOLY SHIT, THEY'RE GONE. No glossing over, no gentle introductions, no bullshit euphemisms. The strategically placed asterisks aren't hiding the truth; they're intensifying it, hinting at the raw, unfiltered, primal scream that echoes across every goddamn page. This isn't a gentle nudge; it's a declaration of war against the unrealistic, half-hearted self-help guides championing quick healing and toxic positivity that dominate the market. It’s a warning shot across the bow of polite society, screaming, "We're getting real, and we're doing it with ferocity."

You ever watch your world detonate in real-time? Not metaphorically. I mean actually shatter—like standing barefoot on the goddamn pavement while a nuke drops in your backyard and everyone around you just keeps sipping their pumpkin spice lattes like nothing happened. That’s what grief is. It’s waking up mid-surgery with your chest cracked open and no anesthetic in sight. It’s psychological waterboarding while everyone else gets brunch and fresh fucking starts. Imagine standing in the middle of a goddamn freeway, massive trucks and cars hurtling past you at 90mph, missing you by inches. Your ears are ringing with deafening noise. Your vision blurs and darkens at the edges like you're about to black out. Your legs are paralyzed, feet cemented to the asphalt. And every motherfucker on the sidelines is yelling "just get to the other side" like you’re too fucking dumb to figure that out yourself. That is grief. That paralyzing, surreal, rage-fueled disconnect between your ruined interior and their shiny, intact bullshit lives.

This isn’t a journey. It’s a fucking hostage situation where your sanity is gagged and bound in the trunk while your emotions careen down a mountain road with no brakes. This is crawling through broken glass with no end in sight, just hoping you can scream loud enough that the universe hears you and decides to back the hell off. It’s like you died too, but nobody had the decency to bury you. It monumentally, catastrophically, soul-crushingly sucks.

Enter Cassandra Crossno. She’s not your yoga instructor whispering about finding peace. Fuck peace. She’s your war correspondent, covered in blood and screaming across enemy lines, holding the severed head of denial in one hand and a torch in the other. She’s the battle-hardened, foul-mouthed guide through the eye of the goddamn hurricane that is your grief. Crossno isn't some therapist who’s never had their insides gutted in real time; she's the bitch dragging your bloodied ass out of the fire while screaming “DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE LAY DOWN.”

The genesis of this book wasn't a carefully considered project; it was a goddamn explosion. It was a primal scream born from the crucible of unimaginable loss—Crossno's own harrowing experience of losing her fiancé, Patrick Allen Nichols. His death wasn't a gradual decline; it was a sudden, brutal, utterly unexpected blow that shattered her world in an instant. A violent theft of time. Patrick, her world, her compass, her goddamn oxygen—ripped away like the universe just needed to remind her who’s boss. She didn't lose him—she got robbed. Murdered by fate. Slaughtered by the universe. And the body they left behind? Wasn’t just his. It was hers too.

When Patrick died, the universe didn’t even flinch. But she did. She flinched so hard her bones cracked. She didn’t get a “moment of silence.” She got a pile of bullshit pamphlets about “honoring his memory” and “finding peace.” Peace? The fuck is peace when your heart’s a smoldering crater and your lungs forget how to work without him? The immediate aftermath wasn't quiet reflection; it was a maelstrom of overwhelming grief, paralyzing shock, intense anger, and the crushing weight of guilt. This wasn’t a gentle descent into sorrow; it was a freefall into the abyss. The lack of adequate support during this crucial period fueled Crossno's righteous fury at the inadequacy of existing grief literature.

The morning after Patrick’s heart stopped, some chirpy drone dropped off a grief book with soft clouds and a fucking sunset on the cover. She didn’t even read the title—she turned that shit into a projectile missile and launched it like a grenade. It hit the wall so hard she half-hoped it’d take the whole goddamn room down with it. Why? Because it was pure, industrial-strength horsefuckery. Every condescending, sugar-coated line written by some emotionally neutered therapist. What she needed wasn’t some limp-dick, soft-focus fairy tale on “moving forward.” “Healing takes time,” it cooed. “Grief is a journey,” it whispered. NO, motherfucker. Grief is a chainsaw massacre of your reality. It’s a psychological IED going off in your soul while everyone around you just carries on like nothing’s burning. There’s no journey. There’s no closure. There's only carnage and you—bleeding out, teeth gritted, screaming through the rubble with no map and no morphine.

This book, HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE, was an act of rebellion born from that rage. A refusal to accept the inadequacy, a rejection of sanitized narratives, a defiant assertion of the right to grieve authentically, without a single goddamn apology. Crossno's voice screams, "I get it, and I'm right here with you in the trenches," guiding you through the emotional maelstrom with sharp wit, unflinching honesty, and a profound understanding of the chaotic nature of loss. Her own story serves as the stark, deeply personal backbone, making this a brutally honest and relatable journey. She didn’t volunteer to be a prophet of pain, but the universe slapped a black veil on her and said, “Go forth, bitch. Teach the people what grief really looks like.”

This isn't a gentle read; it's a gauntlet thrown down, challenging you to confront your pain with the same raw honesty. Forget carefully crafted pleasantries; this is a raw, unflinching assault on the senses, a declaration of war against the saccharine lies peddled in the self-help industry. This isn't about comfort; it's about truth—the brutal, ugly, and absolutely necessary truth. This is for the goddamn warriors of sorrow. This is for you, crawling through the barbed-wire trenches of your own fucking soul, half-blind, half-dead, dragging your shredded heart behind you, where every step feels like your ribcage is trying to escape your body.

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE cuts deeper than any half-hearted guide. It unearths the raw, unfiltered emotions. Written with blistering honesty, it refuses to sugarcoat the experience. In its pages, you’ll find a reflection of your own pain, a voice that resonates, and insights that push back against toxic positivity. Gone are the days of isolation and guilt. In a world where the unfortunate reality of loss often meets a barrage of clichés, this book emerges like a raging tempest, demanding to be heard.

What if there was a guide that didn't pull any punches? What if someone finally gave you permission to rage, to cry until your lungs ache, to break down completely, and to rebuild your life on your own terms, without a single goddamn apology? This is that guide. Crossno stands with you, armed with illuminating insights and a fierce understanding of the many layers of grief.

Prepare to confront your fears, embrace your emotions, and emerge with a fiercer understanding of what it means to love deeply and grieve fiercely. The book tackles the shit no one wants to talk about:

• The Physical Assault: GRIEF WILL EAT YOUR BODY ALIVE AND ASK FOR SECONDS. Your brain? Hijacked. Your immune system? Tanked. Your energy? Nonexistent. Your Immune System Is Like, “Bye Bitch.” You catch every bug. Your stomach’s wrecked. Your hormones riot. Your skin breaks out. Why? Because your body shut down the luxury programs. You’re in trauma survival mode. Grief feels like dying. Tightness. Breathlessness. Nausea. Pain so sharp you think you’re having a heart attack. You go to the ER and they tell you, “Everything’s fine.” NO. It’s not. Nothing is fucking fine. You just got medically gaslit because your pain doesn’t show up on an X-ray. But it’s there. Oh, it’s fucking there. And the fatigue? Oh baby, it’s biblical. It’s “I just walked to the mailbox and need a nap” kind of exhaustion. Cellular. Every atom screaming, “We miss them."
• The Mental Fog: Grief isn’t just sadness—it’s a fucking neurological wildfire. Your brain floods itself with cortisol, short-circuits memory, turns logic into mush. Your decision-making goes to shit. You can't focus. You forget why you walked into the room. Again. You leave your keys in the freezer and your dignity in the toilet. You’re tired down to your soul. You forget words mid-sentence. You do things. Say things. Sign shit. None of it sticks. You could have a goddamn alien abduction in the middle of your kitchen and you’d just blink at it.
• The Societal Bullshit: No one hits pause when your world disintegrates. Time doesn’t freeze. Bills don’t stop. Your boss still wants the report. Your friends still wanna brunch. Meanwhile, you’re barely managing not to collapse in a grocery aisle because their favorite snack is still on the shelf and fuck, how is that even possible? And society? That emotionally lobotomized organism gives you a two-week grace period before tugging at your sleeve: “Come on now, you should be feeling better.” Oh, should I? To which Crossno says: go. fuck. yourself. They want their grief neat, tidy, and behind closed doors. Your screaming makes them squirm. Your tears ruin the party. And if you dare to still be struggling? People start treating you like a problem. Like you're broken. Or attention-seeking. Or dramatic.
• The Grief Inquisition: Everyone’s an expert now: “You should talk more.” “You should cry less.” “You should go out.” “You should stay home.” “You should be over it by now.” They say “should” like it’s a goddamn commandment. Like your grief is something to be fixed with a checklist. Bitch, please. My grief doesn’t have an aesthetic—it has eye bags, unwashed hair, and the emotional stability of a rabid raccoon.
• The Clueless Platitudes: Get ready for the onslaught. "Everything happens for a reason." (Unless the reason is the universe is a vindictive bitch with a hard-on for destruction). "God needed another angel." (NO THANK YOU, GOD. WE’RE FULL UP ON SUNRISES RIGHT NOW. TRY AGAIN NEVER.) "Time heals all wounds." (Yeah? Time can suck my dick.) Crossno provides strategies for shutting them the hell up without committing a felony.
• The Friend Filter: Most people suck at grief. They’ll ghost. They’ll avoid. They’ll say stupid shit like “You’re strong” when you’re actively disassociating on a bathroom floor. Grief strips away the fake and the shallow. You’ll find out real fast who’s in your corner and who can eat gravel. The people who stay—the ones who hold you without fixing, who let you sob snot into their hoodie without flinching—those are your ride-or-die trench mates. They won’t try to fix you. They won’t flinch when you cry. They’ll just show the fuck up—with tacos, whiskey, a shovel, or a goddamn alibi if needed. To the ones who stayed... We see you. We feel your love through the darkness... we fucking love you for it.
• The Rage: You’re furious at the world. At the people who get to keep breathing. At doctors. At fate. At God, if you believe in one—or especially if you don’t. At them—yes, sometimes even at your person who fucking died and left you behind. And guess what? That’s NORMAL. That’s HUMAN. It's rage without a tidy target, and it eats you alive if you don't find a release valve. You’ll want to punch throats. And honestly? No judgment if you do. Don’t let anyone tell you to “calm down” or “find peace.” Peace can suck it. Right now, you need a goddamn bat and something to break. There’s power in rage.
• The Guilt: Grief breeds guilt like rotting meat breeds maggots. It doesn’t matter if you know you did everything you could. It doesn’t give a single shit about logic. Guilt is a cruel bastard that whispers: You should’ve done more. You should’ve saved them. You failed. You have to fight that voice. Every day. Because guilt is a liar wearing your voice.
• The Silence & Loneliness: This is the part no one prepares you for: when the noise dies down. When the calls stop. When the “let me know if you need anything” assholes vanish into the ether. That’s when it sinks in. Eventually, the dust settles. The texts slow down. The casseroles rot in your fridge. And that’s when it gets worse. Grief is the loneliest crowded room you’ll ever sit in. No one tells you how heavy the silence is when their toothbrush is still in the cup. Or how your body forgets they’re gone until it turns to say something and hits the wall of oh right, nevermind. This is grief’s longest stretch—the silent war. No explosions, no sobbing breakdowns—just a crushing, quiet absence of everything.
• The Annihilation of Self: Here’s something no one tells you: when your person died, so did you—the version of you that existed before the loss. You’re not the same. You won’t be the same. You can't go back. That person—who laughed easier, who made plans without dread, who thought certain things would last forever—is gone. And holy hell, grieving them on top of your person is like setting fire to your own shadow. Grief is the annihilation of everything you knew. You didn’t fall apart. You exploded.
• The Spiritual Freefall: Whatever you believed before your person died—about life, death, God, fairness, love, purpose—it’s about to get fucking torched. Grief burns it all down. You’re left staring into the void, asking questions that don’t have answers. Why them? Why now? Why the fuck does any of this exist if it ends in this much pain? You’re allowed to flip off the sky and say, “God, you can meet me in the fucking parking lot.”

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE functions as a comprehensive survival kit for the soul. It’s a hand reaching out from the darkest depths of grief, pulling you up, whispering, “You’re not alone. You’re not crazy. And you’re going to make it through this.” Crossno's powerful voice cuts through the noise of well-meaning but often unhelpful advice, offering a space for raw emotion, unfiltered truth, and a fierce embrace of the messiness that is grief. It’s permission. Permission to feel every goddamn thing. Permission to break. Permission to not be okay for a very, very long fucking time.

This book doesn’t offer peace treaties or salvation on a silver platter. There’s no glory here. What it offers is validation, community, and the raw truth. It lets you know that your pain is heard, your heartbreak honored. It’s a battle cry for every single person who's ever wanted to rip the stars from the sky because they dare to keep shining when their world is burning ashes.

Crossno acknowledges the harsh reality: Grief doesn’t get easier. You just get meaner. But there’s strength in scars. There’s fire in survival. There is no closure. Fuck closure. There is integration. Perseverance. Coexistence with pain. Eventually—after the dust settles, after the aftershocks fade—you will start to feel the faintest flicker of something else. Not happiness. Not peace. Something harder. Heavier. Resolve. You don’t “recover” from grief. You reconstruct. Brick by bloody brick. Not the same house. Not the same person. But something new. Something forged in fire. Something unshakable.

From that wreckage, you will claw your way forward—not healed, not whole, but fucking alive. You're not losing yourself. You’re becoming someone who knows what survival really looks like. And when the world looks at you with pity in their eyes, not realizing you’ve walked through hell barefoot and clawed your way back out? Smile. They have no idea who the fuck they’re dealing with now. You’re allowed to be a bitch. You’re going to survive it the only way you fucking can: With grit in your teeth. With fury in your chest. With middle fingers raised to every idiot who tries to “fix” you. And with every scar worn like a battle medal.

This is grief, unfiltered. This is pain, weaponized. This is survival when every cell in your body is screaming for a world that no longer exists. It’s rebirth through fire.

Let’s break the silence and start talking about the things that make us truly human. Let’s speak the truth no one else will. This is grief, motherfucker. Welcome to the fucking front lines. Welcome to the goddamn ashes. Now let’s set the truth on fire. Light a match. Let’s burn this bitch down.

If you're shattered—stay shattered. If you're angry—let it burn. If you're sobbing into your steering wheel—don’t apologize. You’re allowed to break. You’re allowed to not be okay. You’re allowed to say, loud and proud: “I don’t know how to live without them.”

This is not the end of your story. It’s the part where you rise, screaming and sacred, covered in dirt, with your heart still beating like a drum. You are not alone. You are not crazy. You are not broken. You’re just grieving. And you're doing it like a goddamn warrior.

So, are you in? Good. Let’s burn the rulebook.

See you in the ashes, badass.

WELCOME TO THE FUCKING SLAUGHTERHOUSE: GRIEF ISN’T A PHASE—IT’S A BLOOD-COATED NIGHTMARE YOU DON'T WAKE UP FROM

This Ain’t a Self-Help Book. It’s a Goddamn Autopsy Report from the Front Lines of Oblivion.

The morning after Patrick’s heart stopped, some chirpy drone dropped off a grief book with soft clouds and a fucking sunset on the cover. I didn’t even read the title—I turned that shit into a projectile missile and launched it like a grenade. It hit the wall so hard I half-hoped it’d take the whole goddamn room down with it.

Why? Because it was pure, industrial-strength horsefuckery. Every condescending, sugar-coated line written by some emotionally neutered therapist who’s never had their insides gutted in real time. “Healing takes time,” it cooed. “Grief is a journey,” it whispered.

NO, motherfucker. Grief is a chainsaw massacre of your reality. It’s a psychological IED going off in your soul while everyone around you just carries on like nothing’s burning. There’s no journey. There’s no closure. There's only carnage and you—bleeding out, teeth gritted, screaming through the rubble with no map and no morphine.

I’m Cassandra Crossno, and I didn’t survive this shit to write a cozy fucking pamphlet. I’m not here to stroke your hair or pat your back—I’m here to rip the blindfold off, shove a fucking flamethrower in your hands, and scream, “FIGHT!” Because when the person you love dies, the world doesn’t hand you a lantern and a map. It tosses you into a goddamn gladiator pit and tells you to shut up and smile while you’re torn apart.

This Is the Shitstorm You Now Call Reality

Picture this: you’re standing dead center in a six-lane highway. Traffic thunders past in a blur of steel and screeching tires. Your ears are shot. Your legs are useless. Your mouth’s open but no sound comes out. And all around you, people stand behind guardrails sipping lattes and yelling, “Just walk across! It’s not that hard!”

That is grief. That paralyzing, surreal, rage-fueled disconnect between your ruined interior and their shiny, intact bullshit lives.

No one hits pause when your world disintegrates. Time doesn’t freeze. Bills don’t stop. Your boss still wants the report. Your friends still wanna brunch. Meanwhile, you’re barely managing not to collapse in a grocery aisle because their favorite snack is still on the shelf and fuck, how is that even possible?

And society? That emotionally lobotomized organism? It gives you a two-week grace period before it starts tugging at your sleeve like a needy toddler: “Come on now, you should be feeling better.” Oh, should I? Fuck your calendar. Grief doesn’t give a flaming fuck about your quarterly goals or your awkward discomfort. It doesn’t adhere to your timelines. It doesn’t wrap up neatly with a bow. Grief is prehistoric. It moves like molten lava, slow and unstoppable, reshaping everything in its path—and it WILL bury you alive if you pretend it’s not there.

Year One: Welcome to the Wasteland

The Shock: Trapped in a Fucking Fever Dream

The early days after death aren’t even real. You operate on fumes, like a ghost haunting your own life. You make phone calls. You plan services. You wear clean clothes. And not one second of it sticks in your memory. It’s like someone else is piloting your meat suit while you watch from some far-off void, screaming into a vacuum.

It’s not weakness—it’s neurological triage. Your brain is throwing up steel shutters to keep you from losing your goddamn mind. But even that temporary shield malfunctions. One minute you’re making a list. The next, you’re on the kitchen floor hyperventilating because you picked up their mug without thinking.

They’re dead. Holy fucking hell—they’re really dead.

It never stops hitting you. That realization. It arrives again and again like a freight train to the chest. Your brain can’t hold it. It keeps rebooting. And every crash is a brand new goddamn apocalypse.

The Admin Shitstorm: Grieving While Drowning in Bureaucracy

Nobody tells you that death comes with a fucking administrative avalanche. Passwords. Paperwork. Phone calls that shred your soul one “I’m sorry for your loss” at a time.

“Hi, I’m calling to close my partner’s bank account.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. Can I speak to the account holder?”

“THEY’RE FUCKING DEAD, JACKASS. I AM THE ACCOUNT HOLDER NOW.”

You’ll spend hours begging for access, hunting down documents, and screaming into hold music while your entire body feels like it’s been flayed open. Each call forces you to repeat the unholy truth. They’re dead. They’re gone. They’re fucking gone.

And somehow, you still have to be polite. Civil. As if your entire nervous system isn’t currently short-circuiting.

The Reality Collapse

Eventually, the dust settles. The texts slow down. The casseroles rot in your fridge. And that’s when it gets worse.

Because now it sinks in.

This isn’t a chapter. It’s the new book. And the main character? You—the half-alive wreck limping through the ruins with empty arms and dead eyes.

It hits during commercials. During laundry. On Tuesday mornings. You find their note in a drawer, or their shirt in the laundry, and your soul cracks like glass.

Forever. That’s the word that breaks you. Not "they're gone." But they're never coming back.

The Body Count: Grief Eats You Alive

Your Brain: Hijacked and Held Hostage

Grief is a goddamn neurological carjacking. You can’t think. You can’t remember. You can’t be. You reread the same text four times and still don’t know what the fuck it says. You forget appointments. You lose words mid-sentence. You sit in your car for hours because the concept of “driving” feels like advanced physics.

This isn’t laziness. This isn’t weakness. This is your brain on fire. Literally. MRI scans show that grief lights up the same pain centers as physical injury. You’re not imagining this shit—it’s real.

And just like trauma, it shreds your executive function. So if you’re wondering why you haven’t returned that email or cleaned the house—it’s because your mental RAM is running at 2%.

Fatigue That Could Level a God

Grief drains you like a parasite. You sleep and wake up more tired. You nap and wake up angry. You get winded walking to the goddamn mailbox. That’s not depression—it’s cellular burnout. Your body is metabolizing trauma every second of the day.

Immune System: Offline

Get ready to catch every virus known to man. Your immune system goes MIA. You’re grieving, not just emotionally, but biologically. And your body, brilliant as it is, starts skipping non-essential processes. Like defending against disease. Or regulating hormones. Or maintaining sanity.

The Chest Pain is Real

Grief feels like dying. Tightness. Breathlessness. Nausea. Pain so sharp you think you’re having a heart attack. And you go to the ER and they tell you, “Everything’s fine.”

NO. It’s not. Nothing is fucking fine. You just got medically gaslit by the fact that your pain doesn’t show up on an X-ray. But it’s there. Oh, it’s fucking there.

People Will Fail You: Let Them.

Grief Hierarchy: Fuck Their Ladder

You’ll find out real quick that society only validates grief that’s tidy and familiar. Lose a spouse or child? Here’s your sympathy starter pack. Lose an ex, a best friend, a pet, a lover nobody knew about? You’ll be met with awkward silences and side-eyes.

But grief doesn’t follow their goddamn rulebook. Your pain isn’t up for debate. If they mattered to you, then their loss is war. End of fucking story.

The Grief Police: Fuck Their Opinions

Everyone’s got an opinion. “You should move on.” “You should cry less.” “You should donate their stuff.”

How about YOU should go fuck yourself?

You don’t owe anyone an explanation for how you survive this. There’s no prize for grieving prettily. If screaming in your car at 3 a.m. keeps you alive? Do it. If you need to shut the world out for a year? Slam that door and lock it.

The Abandonment You Didn’t See Coming

People will vanish. Some will ghost you completely. Others will pretend everything’s normal, casually mentioning their lunch plans while you’re hanging on by a thread.

Let them go. Fuck ‘em. Grief is a wildfire—it burns away the bullshit and leaves only what can survive the heat.

The ones who stay? The ones who show up, sit in the ashes, and don’t try to fix you?

Keep them. That’s your tribe now.

The Friend Sorting Algorithm

The disappearing acts will hurt, adding rejection to your already overwhelming pain. And you'll want to scream, “WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU GO?” But here's the brutal truth: some people are cowards. They can't handle your pain because it reminds them of their own mortality. They ghost because they’re selfish, not because you did anything wrong.

And then… then there are the unexpected ones. The ones who step the fuck up. They send you food without asking dumb questions. They sit with you in silence without trying to fix a goddamn thing. They don’t flinch when you sob so hard you can’t breathe, or when you say things like “I wish I could fucking die too.”

These people? They're your war tribe now. Honor them. Keep them close. Because in this brutal hellscape, those rare souls who hold space without judgment are the only goddamn lifelines that matter.

Grief and Rage: Let the Fucking Fire Burn

Nobody talks enough about the white-hot, skin-blistering rage that grief unleashes. You’re expected to be sad. Broken. Crying in corners. But when you’re furious—when you want to punch holes in walls and scream until your throat bleeds? That makes people nervous.

Grief rage doesn’t give a flying fuck about social norms.

You’re pissed at the world. At God. At fate. At them—yes, sometimes even at the person who fucking died and left you behind. And guess what? That’s NORMAL. That’s HUMAN.

Don’t you dare stuff it down.

Smash plates. Go primal. Scream into pillows. Write rage-fueled letters you never send. Let that fury move through you. Because if you bottle it up, it’ll rot you from the inside out like emotional cyanide.

This is war. And rage is a weapon. Wield it when you need to. Just don’t let it take over your goddamn soul.

The Fucking Myth of “Moving On”

Let’s annihilate this bullshit concept right now: You don’t move on. You move forward—dragging your grief behind you like a sack of broken bones.

The idea that you’re supposed to “let go” is the kind of toxic horseshit sold by people who’ve never lost anything worth a damn. There is no timeline. No expiration date on pain. No magical switch where one day you wake up “over it.”

You adapt. You learn how to breathe in the crater left behind. You learn how to function with half your heart missing. You build a life around the void, not over it.

There is no closure. Fuck closure.

There is integration. Acceptance. Coexistence with pain.

Some days you’ll laugh again—real, from-the-gut laughter—and you’ll feel guilty as hell. Do it anyway. That’s survival.

Some days you’ll collapse under the weight again. That’s survival too.

You don’t move on. You carry. You fight. You fucking live. And that is the most badass thing you can do.

Your Pain Is Not a Fucking Problem to Be Solved

People will treat your grief like it’s a math equation. Like if they just say the right combination of words, you’ll be “fixed.”

They mean well. But their desire to help often turns into pressure for you to hurry up and heal—because your pain makes them uncomfortable. They want tidy emotions. Digestible sadness. Not the raw, screaming mess of reality.

Fuck that.

Your pain isn’t a flaw. It’s proof you loved deeply. That you gave a shit. That you were all in.

Let them squirm. Let them shift uncomfortably while you stand knee-deep in the blood and ashes of your own life and refuse to pretend it's okay.

This isn’t about making others feel better.

This is about giving yourself permission to fall apart—gloriously, violently, unapologetically—and not feel broken for doing so.

What Comes Next: Rebuilding from the Fucking Rubble

Eventually—after the dust settles, after the aftershocks fade—you will start to feel the faintest flicker of something else.

Not happiness. Not peace.

Something harder. Heavier.

Resolve.

It shows up in your spine. In the way you stand a little straighter. In the way you start to say “no” to bullshit you once tolerated. In the way you begin to choose yourself.

You don’t “recover” from grief. You reconstruct. Brick by bloody brick. Not the same house. Not the same person. But something new. Something forged in fire. Something unshakable.

And when the world looks at you with pity in their eyes, not realizing you’ve walked through hell barefoot and clawed your way back out?

Smile.

They have no idea who the fuck they’re dealing with now.

GET YOUR COPY HERE

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HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t - A Brass Knuckles Survival Guide for the Brutally Shattered

 

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GET YOUR COPY HERE:

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE

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HOLY SH*T, THEY’RE GONE

NAVIGATING THE F*CKING AFTERMATH OF LOSS WITHOUT THE BULLSH*T

A BRASS KNUCKLES SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR THE BRUTALLY SHATTERED

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THE BOOK GRIEF DOESN'T WANT YOU TO READ

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There’s a moment—a razor-thin slice of time—when the whole fucking world goes dark. When everything you thought you knew about yourself gets obliterated in one brutal, soul-crushing second. And you’re left standing there in the ruins, wondering if you’re even still breathing. Welcome to goddamn ground zero. Welcome to grief.

This isn’t some cutesy "How to Cope with Loss" pamphlet. This is a goddamn combat manual for surviving when the universe decides to rip your fucking heart out, slap you across the face, and leave you bleeding on the floor.

I’m Cassandra Crossno, and I’m here to show you exactly what it looks like when love gets murdered in cold blood. When it’s snatched from you in an instant. When everything you’ve ever known gets turned to dust, and all that’s left is you—barely holding it together, but still fighting like hell to keep your pulse steady.

Grief isn't a journey. It’s a goddamn nuclear winter. A cold, suffocating fog that clouds your mind, numbs your senses, and leaves you wondering how you can even make it through one more second. There are no rainbows at the end of this shitshow. There’s no “healing” fairy dust. There’s only survival. And sometimes, survival feels like dragging a goddamn battleship through quicksand.

This is not a love story. This is a war crime against everything you thought you understood about love. And you don’t get to choose how it goes down. The universe plays dirty, and you’re the collateral damage. There’s no way out of this, no escape hatch.

I get it. I’ve been there. Patrick—my anchor, my future, the only person who could look at me and see me—was taken from me. In a single split second, he was gone.

No warnings. No preparation. Just gone.

And now? I’m standing here, on the other side of hell, telling you exactly what this shit feels like. And I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to sit here and tell you some bullshit about “getting through it.”

• I won’t romanticize your pain.
• I won’t tell you it’s “okay.” It’s not. It’ll never be okay.
• Grief doesn’t have stages. It has ambushes. Just when you think you’re starting to breathe, it’ll knock you on your ass again.
• Healing isn’t linear. It’s a goddamn guerrilla war. It’s ugly. It’s chaotic. Some days, you don’t even know if you’ll make it through the next minute.
• And some days? Just getting through the day is a fucking victory.

The Unwritten Manual

Rule #1: There are no rules.

Rule #2: Forget Rule #1.

A FINAL WARNING:

Enter at your own risk.

What you find here might save your fucking soul. Or it might destroy what’s left of the person you used to be. Either way, you’re going to come out of this a different person.

This is what they won’t tell you:

• Some days, you’ll hate everyone who’s still breathing.
• Some days, you’ll hate yourself for still breathing.
• Grief will turn you into a goddamn stranger to yourself. You won’t even recognize the person you’re becoming.
• There’s no “getting over it.” There’s only learning to carry the weight of a broken world.
• Your heart doesn’t “heal.” It learns to fight with its fucking scars.

You think this is about “healing”? Nah. This is about surviving. It’s about figuring out how to live when the universe rips your heart out and laughs in your face as you try to put the pieces back together.

And survival? It looks nothing like what you’ve been told. It’s messy as hell. It’s brutal. It’s the ugliest fucking thing you’ll ever go through. It’s like staring down the barrel of a gun and deciding to pull the fucking trigger anyway. Every day is a goddamn fight. And if you think it’s going to get easier, I’ve got news for you: It won’t. But you’ll get stronger. You’ll get tougher. And you’ll learn to fight back.

You think you know pain? Hold the fuck on. This isn’t about healing. This isn’t about fixing anything. This is about radical fucking honesty. It’s about standing in the complete destruction of everything you thought you knew and deciding—sometimes moment by moment—that you’re going to breathe anyway.

Your pain is real. Your rage is real. Your complete and utter “what the fuck am I supposed to do now?” Yeah, that’s real too. And you don’t have to apologize for it. You’re not crazy. You’re not broken. You’re just surviving the only way you know how—by fighting for every goddamn breath. There’s no map. There’s just you, the wreckage, and the cold, hard truth: the only way out is through.

This is about taking the wreckage of who you were and learning how to walk through the world, changed, but still breathing. And if you can handle that? If you’re ready to face this truth with no bullshit? Then maybe, just maybe, you’ll come out the other side even stronger than you ever thought possible.

So if you’re ready for the real shit, you're in the right fucking place. This is where the truth gets ugly. This is where it gets messy. But if you’re ready to face it, you’ll never look at grief the same way again.

– – – – – –

 GET YOUR COPY HERE:

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE

– – – – – –

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t - A Brass Knuckles Survival Guide for the Brutally Shattered

 

Find it here on Amazon: 

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t

Find it here on Barnes & Noble:

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t

HOLY SH*T, THEY’RE GONE

Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t

A Brass Knuckles Survival Guide for the Brutally Shattered

WARNING: This Book Will Blow Your Fucking Life Apart (And You’ll Thank It For It.)

If you're looking for gentle affirmations and step-by-step guides to inner peace, turn back now. This isn’t that kind of book. This is for the ones whose hearts have been ripped out, stomped on, and left to rot in the goddamn gutter. The ones ready to scream, "Enough is enough!"

Forget everything you think you know about grief.

Grief isn’t soft. It isn’t poetic. It doesn’t give a single shit about your schedule, your responsibilities, or the world demanding that you “get over it.” It doesn’t come in tidy, predictable stages. It doesn’t respect the platitudes people love to throw at you like cheap band-aids over a bullet hole.

Grief is an ambush. A fucking demolition. A grenade lobbed straight into the center of your life, leaving you standing in the wreckage with nothing but the echo of your person's absence.

And while the world expects you to be sad, they also expect you to be quiet. They expect you to cry, but not too much. To be devastated, but in a way that makes them comfortable. To mourn, but never to rage.

Fuck that.

Drawing from her own devastating loss, Crossno exposes the dark side of grief no one wants to talk about: the all-consuming rage, the guilt that eats you alive, the bone-deep weariness, the moments when you just want to burn it all down.

This isn’t about closure—it’s about survival. It’s about arming yourself for a battle you never wanted, about embracing the messy, brutal, un-goddamn-apologetic reality of grief and giving the world hell for what you’ve had to live through.

The world wants you to move on. They think they have any goddamn clue what you’re going through.

They. Are. Wrong.

It’s time to stop apologizing for your pain and start weaponizing it.

It’s time to stop crawling through the wreckage and RISE—not as the ghost of who you were, but as the goddamn apex predator grief created.

HOLY SH*T, THEY’RE GONE is an arsenal for surviving the aftermath when grief has left you for dead. It’s your battle plan, your manifesto, and your damn-fucking-glorious revenge.

This isn’t just a book—it’s a goddamn revolution.

Stop just surviving the shitstorm. Become the fucking storm.

It’s your pain, your story, your rebellion, and you hold the match.

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE isn’t a gentle whisper of encouragement; it’s a primal scream echoing from the depths of unimaginable loss. It’s a defiant middle finger to the universe for daring to steal your light. It’s a brass-knuckled guide to navigating the wreckage when grief has left you for dead.

Crossno doesn’t offer comfort—she offers transformation. She doesn’t preach self-care—she demands self-preservation. She doesn’t promise healing—she promises a way to keep fucking fighting for your life—even when you don’t know what it’s worth anymore.

Your person may be gone, but you’re still here. And that means their story isn’t over. It lives on through your choices, your actions, your refusal to let grief win.

You are more than your loss. You are more powerful than your pain. And you’re not going to let anyone—not even the universe itself—tell you otherwise.

HOLY SH*T, THEY’RE GONE isn’t just a book—it’s a fucking reckoning.

Step into the fire. Find your strength in the ashes.

And become the unstoppable force you were always meant to be.

Here’s what’s at stake:

✔ Your sanity.

✔ Your future.

✔ Your right to be something more than a walking goddamn ghost.

This isn’t your grandma’s grief guide—it’s a tactical manual for navigating a world that’s turned against you.

This isn’t about polite healing. It’s about arming yourself with the raw, untamed truth and carving a path through the wreckage with a goddamn vengeance.

What's inside this literary grenade?

- Why the Five Stages of Grief Are a Fucking Lie – Shatter the pre-packaged bullshit and embrace the unpredictable, messy, and intensely personal landscape of your grief.

- Rewire Your Shattered Soul – Stop trying to fix what's broken and build a magnificent, terrifying new existence from the ruins of your old one.

- Their Legacy – Your Fire – Turn your person’s memory into an unstoppable force that reshapes the world and sets a legacy in motion.

- The Neuroscience of Your Broken Brain – Understand the physiological chaos raging inside your skull, validate your “crazy,” and command your damaged neural pathways.

- Your Inalienable Rights as a Griever – To rage. To break. To defy every expectation society places on your pain.

Unleash Your Inner Rage

No more holding back. This is your permission slip to scream, to rage, to tear the roof off this goddamn world with the white-hot fury that burns within you.

Transform Your Wound into a Weapon

Your love story didn’t end with death. It simply changed its form. Learn how to carry your person's memory with you not as a burden, but as fuel—fuel for your fight, your purpose, your unwavering determination to reshape this world in their name.

Expose the Grief Grifters

Unmask the "experts" peddling bullshit timelines, the platitude pushers trying to shame your emotions, and the clueless bystanders who’ve never known real fucking loss.

For those ready to rage against the dying light, to fight for every breath, every moment, every goddamn piece of their stolen future—this book is your weapon.

Grief is a demolition of your heart, your mind, your entire fucking existence.

And everyone wants you to believe you should be neatly piecing yourself back together while you’re still bleeding out on the battlefield of your own goddamn life.

But be warned: This isn’t for the faint of heart.

This is for the magnificently broken, the gloriously flawed, the fierce-as-fuck souls who are ready to take on the world—one defiant heartbeat at a time.

Crossno knows. She’s stood in the burning wreckage, tasted the ash of loss, and emerged with a message that’ll shatter every misconception you’ve ever heard about grief:

It’s not about healing. It’s about survival.

It’s about embracing the chaos, finding strength in the pain, and telling the universe to go fuck itself with every breath you take.

The world tried to bury you.

Now, let’s show them what happens when you rise from the dead.

It’s going to hurt like a motherfucker. But you won’t be alone.

And I swear to God, you won’t be silenced.

Are you ready to rise from the ashes and become a goddamn force to be reckoned with?

Then let’s begin.

Because your person may be gone, but their love?

It’s about to shake the fucking earth.

Find it here on Amazon: 

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t

Find it here on Barnes & Noble:

HOLY SH*T, THEY'RE GONE: Navigating the F*cking Aftermath of Loss Without the Bullsh*t