Kathryn Cunningham: Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

Kathryn Cunningham joins us to discuss an experience that changed her life forever and how it led to a book about heartbreak, healing, and hope. Do not miss this interview and  her beautiful new book: Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Buy Kathryn's book:
https://www.amazon.com/Walking-through-Valley-Shadow-Death/dp/1462147186/

Learn more about Kathryn:
https://kathryncunninghamauthor.com

Learn more about Jason:
http://www.jasonfwright.com

About the book:
On February 6, 2023, Kathryn Cunnigham’s eight-year-old son, Dallin, fell from a slide at school and hit his head on the frozen ground. On the evening of the next day, his soul slipped quietly through the veil. 

Walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is Kathryn’s account of what filled those two days: the sorrow, the tears, the decisions, and most importantly, the miracles that came before and after. It is a witness of the awful inevitability of death, that mountain that looms over this valley of mortality. It is a testimony of the loving mercy of our Savior Jesus Christ, the only one who can warm and guide us when that mountain’s oppressive shadow darkens our path. In the days of Kathryn’s deepest distress, she tested the words of our prophet that we should seek and expect miracles and found they were true.

This story will help you see miracles in your own life, losses, and strengthen your testimony of the truthfulness of the plan of salvation.

This podcast is brought to you by InkVeins, your source for book publicity, promo, press releases and more. Text 540-212-4095 for more information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome my friends to the Book Drop Mic brought to
you by your friends at Inc Banes.
We are your source for bookpublicity, promotions and press
releases, and this is, of course, jason Wright.
How are you?
Thank you for tuning into thisepisode.
Don't forget, please, please,we've worked so hard for so long

(00:21):
, please don't forget.
This card of Coda, my middlegrade novel, is finally out.
You can pick it up at Amazon,barnes, noble, in all the
formats audio, e-book, hardcover, et cetera.
We hope that you willappreciate what has been a long
journey to get this novel fromme to my own imprint, inkveined

(00:41):
Publishing, and to you.
So we hope that you and yourkiddos enjoy it.
All right, look, folks, I'vebeen looking forward to today's
interview for a long time.
Some of the guests that Iinterview I don't know a whole
lot about them or their projectprior to booking the interviews,
but this one I've known aboutfor quite some time and I have
been looking forward to theopportunity to finally have this

(01:06):
discussion and dive intosomething that can be a little
bit tough to talk about, andwe'll get there in a minute.
The book is called WalkingThrough the Valley of the Shadow
of Death.
It is such a beautiful andsomehow heartbreaking title at
the same time.

(01:26):
The author is the lovelyKatherine Cunningham.
Katherine, how are you?

Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm doing okay today.
Thanks, Jason.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yeah, I'm so honored that you're with us.
We're going to talk about thebook, we're going to talk about
the title, we're going to talkabout what led you to write it,
but first tell us a little bitabout Catherine.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Okay, I grew up as a Navy kid.
My dad was a doctor in the Navy, so I kind of moved around a
lot and studied French, learnedGerman, got married to an army
guy, lived all around the world,dragged him through master's
and everything.
And I have four kids.
Three are living and my son,Dallin, died a little over a

(02:08):
year ago.

Speaker 1 (02:10):
So I love that you clarify.
You say you have four children.
You still have four children,right.
Yeah yeah, yeah, you have fourchildren.
One of my best friends lost hisson and and it took a little
while for him to sort of findthe right way to answer that
question and his wife was, likewhy is this so hard for you?
He, he is still our child, he'sstill with us.

(02:32):
We're going to see him again.
Like let's not talk about himin the past tense, and it was an
interesting kind of a lightbulb moment for him Like oh yeah
, just because his mortaljourney with us, that season, is
done, does not mean that he'snot still a part of our family.
So of course he's still one ofmy kiddos and that, I think, was
kind of a healing thing for him.

(02:52):
So tell us about walkingthrough the valley of the shadow
of death and your little guy.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
So Dallin was eight years old when he fell off a
slide at school and didn't makeit.
He just hit his head on thefrozen ground and that was it.
But he was in the hospital fortwo days with life support on
and everything.

(03:20):
And that two days was sosignificant for me.
I felt so many things and itwas so intense and I felt like I
learned so much through thatprocess and I received so much
from the people around me andfrom God as well.

(03:41):
I felt just compelled to writeabout it, to process it myself
and to witness of what it was,everything that is horrible and
hard and everything that youreceive as you go into it,
expecting to receive thosethings and expecting to be given

(04:02):
what you need to survive.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Hmm, tell us a little bit about him.
What is he like?

Speaker 2 (04:11):
Dallin.
Just my husband wrote theobituary and he said Dallin was
perfectly imperfect.
He just was an eight-year-oldboy.
He loved being a little boy.
He loved being inappropriateand making rude jokes and

(04:31):
sisters and he loved being sillyand reading books and sitting
in my lap and playing soccer andvideo games and watching stupid
YouTube videos.
He just loved every bit ofbeing a little boy.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Isn't that what little boys are supposed to do,
right?
I love that.
As a father of two girls andtwo boys, I say all the time
that I felt like I raised twofamilies because my girls were
older and then we had afive-year gap and then the two
boys and boy and boy.
These boys came along and, yeah, the jokes they make and the

(05:11):
sounds they make and the smellsthat they generate as teenagers,
it's really something to behold.
So I love that idea that he wasperfectly imperfect.
I suspect that God would bepleased with that label as well.
Now tell me again when thishappened.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
He fell on February 6th 2023, and he officially
passed away February 7th.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, so we're barely a year past this.
How long from his passing untilyou created a document and
began to write.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
I that the morning after we came home from the
hospital I you know we hadn'tslept hardly at all at the
hospital, but I couldn't sleep.
I woke up at four in themorning and my head was just
full of things that I had towrite down.
And so I got up and I sat in myfront room and I wrote, and I

(06:12):
wrote, and I wrote, and thatended up being the address that
I gave at his funeral.
And as soon as I had finishedit, I knew that I wasn't done,
that I had to start writing thisbook before it all kind of
faded.
I knew that there were otherbooks that I would write later
on about it, but that thisexperience right now.
I could only write itimmediately.

(06:35):
And so I started writing rightaway and my first draft was done
about two months later.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Wow.
As someone who's written a fewbooks, I can tell you that is
pretty fast.
My friend who's written a fewbooks.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I can tell you that is pretty fast, my friend.
Yeah, it was.
I asked a lot of people to makea lot of sacrifices to give me
the time to do it, but it wasreally important for me to do it
before I forgot and beforethings changed.
And even reading it now I'mlike, oh, I think I would have
written that a littledifferently, but I think that
was the point.
That was the book that I neededto write then that was the

(07:09):
point.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
That was the book that I needed to write then.
Yeah, oh yeah, I can't read alot of what I've written
previously, especially the muchearlier stuff, because I see so
many things that I would that Iwould do differently.
But yeah, with a story likethis, that is so, so close to
your heart.
So if there's someone listeningand I'm sure there is who has
been through something like this, is there any, is there any

(07:31):
advice you'd give them beforethey pick this book up?

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Give yourself some quiet, give yourself some space
that you know is going to beuninterrupted.
This is I made it short onpurpose and you're not going to
want to split it up into manydays.
Maybe you'll have to.
It's hard to read about a childdying.
Anyways, I didn't hold backwith things that I felt and the
way that I describe it.

(07:57):
It's all in there.
So if you have to take a break,that's fine, but most people do
it in one shot.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Well, that is what I did and I, you know, I

(08:28):
no-transcript.
That's one of my favoritethings to ask.
If you're in an elevator andyou've just got a few seconds
with someone and they say whatam I most going to learn from
your book?
What do you say?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
You will learn how it feels to lose someone.
You will learn how it feels tolose someone.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
And you will learn what it means that you are not
alone in that loss.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
What if, Catherine, I finish the book and I have lost
someone and I feel like I'mstill incomplete.
I mean, you are.
There's a hole in your heartforever, even believing as I do
that Dallin is still part of ourfamily and that he's not.
He's far away, but he's notgone.

(09:26):
We're going to see each otheragain and he's even like with me
.
There was a memorial primarychildren's held a memorial for
all the kids that died in 2023yesterday and I kind of reached
out.
It was like, dallin, would youjust go to this with us, would
you be there with us?
And I felt like he was, butit's, you know, it's not the
same.
There are a million places thathe should be, that he's not.

(09:51):
And I would say, if you stillfeel incomplete, you are, you
are forever and there is peacethat you can find.
But part of that peace isintegrating that feeling of
incompleteness, accepting it andknowing, of course, like we
loved each other so much.

(10:11):
We are a family.
Of course, I will feelincomplete.
Always, missing you is part ofloving you and that love makes
us better.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
And that is so beautifully said.
So beautifully said.
I had no idea where you wouldgo with that and I didn't prep
you for the question in advance,but what a beautiful and
inspired, spontaneous response.
I love that that incompletenessis a part of the healing,

(10:45):
accepting that only Christ cancomplete us and that that is a
long process and it doesn'thappen.
It doesn't happen overnight andultimately your family won't be
healed until you are both withhim and with him, right With God
and with your son.
How has the rest of your familymanaged the loss and your

(11:10):
decision to write a book?

Speaker 2 (11:13):
So my youngest daughter I've been writing for a
long time.
I started writing when myhusband was in grad school to
like, give me something to makeme like a person and not just a
machine trying to take care ofeverybody, make me like a person
and not just a machine tryingto take care of everybody.
And uh, when I told my kidsthat I was getting this book

(11:33):
published, my youngest daughtersaid I knew it, you're gonna be
famous.
I don't think that's what'shappening, but hopefully, and
she's like well, you're gonna becul-de-sac famous.
Well, you're going to becul-de-sac famous.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Like, maybe that maybe that Cul-de-sac famous?
That is the best line I've everheard.
What's your daughter's name?

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Margaret.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Margaret.
How old is Margaret?

Speaker 2 (11:59):
She is 13.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
Oh, my heavens, you tell Margaret, that is the best
description of local fame I haveever heard.
Cul-de-sac famous.
That is the best description oflocal fame I have ever heard.
Cul-de-sac famous.
That is fantastic.
Well, if this podcast can doanything for anyone, I hope and
pray from the bottom of my heartthat it makes Katherine
Cunningham cul-de-sac famous.
That's the best.
Thank you, I love that so much.

(12:22):
Is there something in thefuture for you?
Now that this is?
It's about to hit stores.
It's about to be availableeverywhere people like to buy
their books.
We'll have links to, of course,how people can pick the book up
in the show notes, but I wonderwhat's next?
Often, an experience like thisand a nonfiction title like this

(12:47):
will lead to more.
What do you think that morecould look like?

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Um.
So right now I'm working onanother one I it's.
It uses my my parents story tokind of drive the narrative, but
it is another, a nonfictionist.
It's um, another one about likehow our faith kind of sustains
us and helps us make the riskychoices that end up paying off
big in our lives.

(13:13):
But I've also thought aboutdoing a collaboration with my
sister.
She lost her son about a yearand a half before I lost my son
and I thought bringing ourperspectives together,
especially like a few years downthe road, would really help
people.
And yeah, I've, I've got a.
I've got a few differentprojects in my head that
hopefully will be the same kindof thing things that use

(13:35):
experiences from my life andpeople I've known and and things
from the scriptures and theBible, that but that will help
people feel stronger and feelempowered to face the hard
things in their lives and toface them with faith and with
hope.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
I'm reeling a bit from the fact that your sister
lost a little one as well.
What was his name and how oldwas he?

Speaker 2 (14:02):
His name was Nathan and I always forget how old he
was because he was disabled, hewas nonverbal and there were a
lot of things about him thatmade it hard for me to remember
how old he was actually.
But he was.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
He was in his young teens, maybe 13, if I'm
correctly, yeah, so so same kindof just unbelievable sense of
loss, but in such a different,just unbelievable sense of loss,
but in such a different, such adifferent way.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
It sounds like, yeah, it's just his circumstance was
different.
It's he was sick from themoment.
It was a miracle that hesurvived being born.
We always knew in our heartsthat we were on borrowed time
with him, but it's still sounexpected when it actually
comes and you're actually losinghim.
It's it just hits you so hard,even though you should have

(14:52):
known.
You didn't know you, you couldnot see it coming right, right,
yeah, it's that's because we'renot supposed to.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
It's not, it's not our timing, it's God's and he
and he.
Ultimately, yeah, he's the, the, the author and finisher of our
faith and the finisher of allthings.
So only he knows.
Well, this has been such atreat.
I am going to again make surethat in the show notes people

(15:21):
can find everything they need toknow about you.
The book, where to pick it up Ihope that people will.
The book, where to Pick it Up Ihope that people will.
I hope that if you're listeningand you have not been through
something like this and cannotimagine ever going through
something like this, I hope youdo recognize that you too will
go through something hard.
And this book is not just forpeople who have lost a child or

(15:43):
someone close.
The book is for people who aregoing to go through really hard
and unexpected things.
And if you are listening to thesound of my voice right now,
you are going to go throughsomething really hard and
unexpected, because that is thepoint.
All right, catherine, thank youso very much.

(16:05):
I cannot wait to have you backfor books two, three, four, five
, six, seven, eight, nine and 10.
And prayers, all my prayers foryou to become cul-de-sac famous
.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
Thank you so much, jason, really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
My pleasure.