How Two Women Found a Way to Save Each Other’s Lives
Two friends find themselves confronting live-shattering circumstances: the death of a child by suicide and the diagnosis of a glioblastoma brain tumor. Engulfed by pain, they ask each other: “What if? What if we just write to each other? Anything. Just write.”
The correspondence that fills the pages of ANTIPHON begins as a conscious effort by two friends overwhelmed by tragedy to rescue themselves, and each other, from overwhelming grief. Over the ensuing months, it becomes a defiant affirmation of resilience and of lives well lived despite the regrets, heartache, and fear associated with the most devastating of losses. Here is how two women, through the act of sharing stories and bearing witness to one another, find a way to save each other’s lives.
Antiphon: A Call and Response in a Year of Grief and Renewal
Release Date: October 15, 2025
Publisher: Ikaros Books
ISBN 979-8-9993628-0-3 (paperback)
ISBN 979-9993628-1-0 (E-Book)
Available through bookstores and Amazon
Early praise for Antiphon
“In Antiphon: A Call and Response in a Year of Grief and Renewal, Jane Flynn and Christina Holbrook invite us into an intimate exchange shaped by sorrow, love, and the enduring threads of friendship. These luminous, echoing essays—born of personal loss and mortal reckoning—offer solace to anyone who has walked the canyons of grief and knows the rhythm of a broken heart.
With clarity and grace, the authors reveal not only the healing power of presence, but the quiet, life-affirming beauty that persists even in the midst of suffering.
--Karen Wyatt MD, author of 7 Lessons for Living from the Dying
“What Antiphon offers is a glimpse into grief as a communal act. It tells the story of what happens when we don't hide the truth of our suffering, when instead we sit side by side and allow the shared threads of our narratives to intertwine. And through this simple act of telling and listening, of call and response, a new story begins to emerge: one of friendship, hope, and transformational potential.”
--Amanda Veale, award-winning editor and columnist, LUMINA, BLUESTEM, RUMINATE and the best-selling Finnish magazine, ANANDA.
“A testament to the power of sharing our vulnerabilities in the face of devastating loss. During the course of a year, two lifelong friends struggle to orient themselves to their own grief and to a world that will never be the same. Their exchange not only reveals how opening ourselves to a trusted other can begin to mend our tattered souls, but beautifully illustrates the possibility for renewal and transformation through the act of communal self-exploration.”
--Marisol Montoya, LPC, CEAP Certified Grief Specialist and Senior Clinical Consultant, Employee Assistance Program
About the author
Jane Flynn is a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School. After a short career in law in New York, she moved to Greece, where she worked in marketing, retail food, and volunteer advocacy for nearly thirty years.
She returned to the U.S. in 2020 after her son’s death and lives in New York City, where she volunteers with the Central Park Conservancy. ANTIPHON, written with Christina Holbrook, is her first book.