Bridgeville woman authors book on vocational grieving

Bridgeville resident Rebekah Colson recently published “Walking A Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes: Vocational Grieving, Transition and Recovery.”

She conducted many telephone interviews and traveled all around Pittsburgh talking to people to form the background of her book. She became interested in this topic as she listened to friends’ stories about work changes, career transitions due to divorce and forced retirement. The pain expressed from forced decisions really piqued her interest.

This interest matched her background in the field of vocational rehabilitation. She has a bachelor of science degree in human development and family studies and certification in gerontology from the University of Wisconsin. Her research and methodology courses helped her format a survey, conduct the interviews and edit the book.

After surviving a health scare in 2014, she realized there were many items on her “to do” list that she wanted to pursue, with writing a book being No. 1. She had been writing poetry since she was a teenager so, with her newfound interest in vocational grieving, she decided there was no time like the present to tackle writing a book on the subject.

She first developed a storyboard, then conducted online research to sketch in themes and trends. She drafted an open-ended survey to allow the subjects she interviewed to tell their own stories and took a year to meet, interview and write about the career transitions of 50 people who encompassed various races, economic ranges, states in life, backgrounds, nationalities and personalities.

Colson made every effort to describe each person’s background and personality and integrated her research results into each person’s story. Her friend, Lisa Toboz, provided the photography for each chapter and the book’s cover.

The book was written over a three-year period and is available online through kdp Publishing on Amazon. It is available in paperback or via Kindle.

Colson says she is in the “virtual planning” stage for her second book, which will be a character-driven novel.