BY HANNAH HERRERA
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — Opelika native Auburn Chason was 12 years old when she lost her father. Seventeen years later, she wrote a book to help others process grief like hers.
“Fruitful Grief,” released on Feb. 11, is a product of Chason’s own journey with loss, and her passion to help others see that fruit flourishes in the valley of suffering.
“What I started doing in young adulthood was working to give grief a better name,” Chason said. “I talked in my book about how it’s just a thing I don’t want to feel. And so because of that, people have the tendency to push it away. But I have worked really hard to frame grief as a companion that I take everywhere with me.”
Chason said she hasn’t always been so expressive about her suffering.
After her father passed away, 12-year-old Chason closed off. She was hardly talking, and refused to see a therapist.
One day, Chason’s mom came home from work with a stack of yellow legal pads.
“Do whatever you want with these,” she said.
Chason said she started writing, and she never stopped. She said she even took the large yellow pads to school, hiding them under her binders as she took notes for class. She filled page after page with stories of romance and fanciful adventures, and every week, her mom came home with more legal pads.
Chason said she credits her writing journey to the moment her mom walked in the door with those legal pads — and to the Opelika community she said helped raise her.
Cliff McCollum, former editor of the Observer, convinced her to enter an essay contest with the prompt “Who would you take to the Tony Awards and why?” She wrote about her mom. And to her surprise, she won the contest — and two tickets to the Tony Awards. As Chason and her mom sat in their evening gowns watching Hugh Jackman perform in Radio City Music Hall, Chason said her mom turned to her and said “if you can write for this, imagine what else you can do.”
Chason said she also remembers turning in an essay to her 11th grade AP English teacher, Summer Upton. When Upton handed the paper back, she didn’t even look up, and said, “You should be a writer.”
Chason listened.
She said she got involved in her school’s newspaper, started working for the Observer and enrolled in Faulkner University to study creative writing.
Upton, who worked at OHS for 13 years as an English teacher, said Chason’s writing stood out from the beginning. It was insightful, beautiful and “a pleasure to read.”
“There are some writers who will come into your classroom and you just hope you don’t mess them up with the feedback that you give them,” Upton said. “And she was definitely one of those students.”
Upton, who said she remains close with Chason, said she is thrilled Chason has continued to use her gift of words.
“I’m very, very proud that she has kind of stuck with it, and she recognizes that it’s part of who she is.”
Chason’s roots go deep in Auburn-Opelika. For starters, she said she is named after the university — which is also her mother’s middle name. And her grandparents, Bennie and Ethel Hunt, were owners of the famed Auburn Sani-Freeze, a walk-up ice cream bar.
“We are Auburn,” she joked. “Or at least one of us definitely is.”
Even though Chason now lives in Georgia with her husband and daughter, she said she knows Opelika like the back of her hand — and knows the community will always be there for her.
“I could probably name you every teacher start to finish in all my years of high school because I just loved them all so much and they gave so much effort to me and the school system. I couldn’t have picked a better place to grow up,” Chason said.
While Chason no longer writes on yellow legal pads, her love for words has never changed. She has her own Substack, and to write her books, she said she uses sticky notes, which she pastes all over the wall with sentences and thoughts she wants to include.
After taking time off from writing to settle into motherhood, Chason said she has hit her stride with writing. And just like when she was a teenager, she can’t stop. She has written five books in 18 months, including several children’s activity books, “Fruitful Grief” and
“Belonging,” which has not yet been released.
“If you have the words, you’ve got to get ’em out,” she said.
But Chason said she’s proudest of “Fruitful Grief.” She said she wants readers to know that, this side of heaven, “people are the gift” of suffering, and if she can help just one person reframe grief, then her writing will not be in vain. Find her book on Amazon or Lightway Publishing’s webpage.
