Dead Serious: How Death Made Me Laugh at Life is a memoir that meets grief with grit, dark humor, and a stubborn love of life. Through her writing, Sarah Marie Shoulak chronicles a youth marked by close calls with death, major family losses, and the generational weight of sorrow-and shows us how those experiences can often shape our identity.

Instead of framing trauma as something you "get over," Dead Serious explores what it means to live with loss: to keep laughing, healing, and choosing gratitude even when life feels unfair. With warmth and candor, Sarah writes about addiction and sobriety, reinvention, and the quiet work of becoming whole again.

Raw, funny, and deeply human, this book is for anyone navigating loss, recovery, or change-and trying to "get better, not bitter."