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Ta’Shay Mason, a Texas native, served sixteen years in the U.S. Army. She currently works as a social worker helping Veterans with mental health and substance use issues. She is also a volunteer group facilitator at a grief counseling center for children whose parent(s) has died.
Ta’Shay started writing to share inspirational stories with others and she began with the most painful event in her life, the death of her father. She was 9 years old when her father died in a car accident and has firsthand experience navigating the myriad of emotions and struggles that accompany such a profound loss. With the help of her family (including her military family), going to therapy, volunteering, and dealing with her emotions, Ta’Shay was finally able to say goodbye and write her first children’s book, But I don’t want to say GOODBYE! (the first book in A Child’s Journey Through Grief Series) which was released November 2020.
Ta’Shay’s hobbies include, hiking, listening to music, reading, writing, travelling, watching movies and cartoons. She also enjoys spending time with her furbaby, Bella (an Old English Bulldog), and her family.
In sharing her message of overcoming grief, Ta’Shay hopes that readers with a similar experience can identify with the story’s family, learn a creative way of memorializing a loved one, that grief is a process and takes time, and that having a healthy and open conversation about death is helpful to that process.
Reviewed by Tiffany Ferrell for Readers' Favorite
But I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye! is about a little girl who is dealing with the sudden loss of her father. She’s sad because she misses him and knows that he won’t be there anymore. While her mother was very sad also, she told her daughter that memories and stories will keep him alive forever. She then told her that the funeral is where people can come to share stories and memories. It also gives them a chance to say goodbye. On the day of the funeral, both the little girl and her mother were very sad and her mom told her that it will make people think about her father. They might miss him but there are so many memories that will remain. It was hard for the little girl, but she stood up in front of all her family and friends saying how much she missed him, and that she was not ready to say goodbye...
I found this book so touching and heartbreaking. Death and dying is a very difficult subject to write about, especially for a child, but I think Ta’Shay Mason has done a wonderful job writing about it in a way that young children can grasp and understand. It’s a very authentic feeling as we read about the grief of the main character. It’s complicated but loss is a difficult thing to go through. There are so many different emotions and stages of grief. I also really enjoyed the illustrations. They were beautifully done and capture all the emotions one feels with loss. But I Don’t Want To Say Goodbye! is a beautifully written story and I can’t wait to see what the author writes next.
