"He Always Hears:" How One Mother's Grief Leads to Children's Book
For Alyson Punzi the unexpected death of her husband, Frank, changed her life — and the life of her two-year-old daughter — in an instant. But now, two years later, Punzi is using her experience to write a children’s book to help young children like her daughter understand the grace and hope of lament.
No one can be prepared for the sudden death of a loved one, let alone a spouse who is expected to be by your side for life.
For Alyson Punzi, who graduated from Cedarville University in 2019 and currently serves as the executive assistant to the vice president for advancement, the unexpected death of her husband, Frank, changed her life — and the life of her two-year-old daughter — in an instant. But now, two years later, Punzi is using her experience to write a children’s book to help young children like her daughter understand the grace and hope of lament.
“I want to give children and parents a biblical, theological framework for how to lament — how to cry out to Jesus — and the hope in a God who will always keep His promises and always hear our cries,” said Punzi. “Through this story, I want to help children walk away with an understanding of how to tell God how much their heart hurts when things are broken.”
Punzi describes lament as the biblical idea of how to process pain in a world that is broken through orienting the heart towards God and His character. According to Punzi, lament appears frequently and powerfully in the Psalms as a language used to express pain to the God who hears and weeps with us. She points out that even Jesus used these Psalms during His own death as a way of honestly articulating His pain to God. Lament pulls grief and an understanding of death together to show how to live life while walking through pain in a way that is rooted in hope.
Lament is deeply personal for Punzi. During the summer of 2022, Punzi’s husband, Frank, suffered a severe stroke. The medical emergency was alarming to the Punzi family, knowing that Frank, just 25 years old, had been in good health until that moment. A month of searching for answers to his medical crisis led to the discovery that Frank was suffering from a rare form of leukemia, and although he pursued treatment, the cancer quickly spread. Then, just two months after his initial diagnosis, Frank suffered a series of rapid strokes due to cancer-related complications that eventually took his life on August 21, 2022.
It was in the days and weeks after this loss that Punzi had to ask herself how she would explain death to her young daughter to help her process it and channel her grief in a way that was freeing. For Punzi and her husband, lament helped them draw nearer to God during Frank’s treatment and process the grief of the sudden change in their lives.
For Punzi’s daughter, only two years old, there were no tools or resources on lament that would make it easier to understand.
“I had some language and some thought processes for my grief and lament that Frank and I worked through, but then I looked at my daughter and I had no idea how I could help her understand,” said Punzi. “There were plenty of resources about death and grief, but nothing on lament and how we can help children understand it.”
Over the next few months, Punzi felt a calling to create a resource to help her daughter process and understand what lament can be. Punzi originally didn’t anticipate this resource to be in demand for others until close friends and family started asking if they could use it in their own lives. With the support of family and friends and the overwhelming support of Crossway Publishing, Punzi was able to turn her personal writing into a resource for children and parents alike to understand lament. Her book shows children how to lament and illustrates to parents how it can be modeled for their young ones. "He Always Hears” is not only a useful resource for children but is also an opportunity for caretaking adults to learn how to shepherd children through loss.
“As parents, we don’t have to wait for traumatic events to teach kids what it means to experience loss. They see and know that the world is not the way it should be even through small ways,” said Punzi. “One of my biggest goals in writing this book was to start that conversation for children who have experienced any kind of loss, big or small, and help them understand they are not alone and provide them a way to walk through life with it.”
Punzi has learned that, when helping a child understand grief and death, there is no quick fix. The process is a calling for every day. It is less preoccupied with having the perfect answer for every question and is more focused on acknowledging pain while showing hope in a God who is present and always keeps His promises.
Punzi’s daughter is now four, and the last two years of life have been full of questions with difficult answers. As a mom, Punzi has learned that the best way to help her daughter is to teach her how to give her pain to God when both of their hearts are heavy.
It is Punzi’s hope and prayer that this resource crafted for her daughter will be able to impact many other families as well, and that an understanding of lament can be grown through this process.
“He Always Hears” will be published on April 22, 2025, with preorders now available on Amazon.
Located in southwest Ohio, Cedarville University is a Baptist university with undergraduate programs in arts, sciences, and professional programs, and graduate programs. With an enrollment of 6,384 students in 175 areas of study, Cedarville is one of the largest private universities in Ohio and is recognized nationally for its authentic Christian community, rigorous academic programs, and high graduation and retention rates. For more information about the University, visit cedarville.edu.