To write her memoir, therapist turned to grief – and baseball

When her father died in 2009, Jessica Rios bottled up the hard memories, those times in her young life when he would be gone for days, months, even years, in service of his drug addiction, lost in his own funk or doing time in prison.

Yet for all his faults her father – everyone called him Moncho – was tender-hearted and loved his daughters, and their mother. Her parents fought, sometimes bitterly, and it could get physical. Somehow, though, Moncho would always return to their home in the Brooklyn projects, and there would be days, months, even years of sobriety and faithfulness to the family.

Rios is a Registered Licensed Clinical Social Worker, a Certified Mindfulness Instructor and a Certified Grief Educator. She and her husband, retired NYPD officer Jose Flores, have resided in West Central Florida since 2020 (currently in Pasco County), and Rios helps her clients navigate trauma and grief through her virtual practice.

St. Petersburg Press recently published Grief, Hope, Baseball, Rios’ first-person account of her own experience with trauma and grief. Along with poverty, low self-esteem, fear and shame.

She watched her parents. As a teen, Rios said, “I just knew there was more to life. There was no way I could repeat that cycle. I wanted to help other people. I knew that was in me. To me, that’s my calling. I can’t do anything else.”

Even as life handed her one hard lesson after another, she persevered. “I don’t want to call it toxic positivity, but I did hold on to hope, even as a young girl thinking ‘Things can be better.’”

Moncho and his eldest daughter were serious New York Yankees fans. As Rios was assembling her memoir, visiting old ghosts, she began to see baseball at a metaphor for her life’s philosophy. Every chapter in the book is titled after something to do with the game (On the Shelf, Relievers, The Walkoff, Rounding the Bases etc.).

“For me, baseball was a welcome distraction,” she explained. “It’s all I knew growing up. My dad would take me to softball games, and everyone would laugh. Even if we lost, there was always a celebration around it. It was a constant, growing up, despite all of the trauma going on. The chaos around me. It was a way to connect and a sense of structure that I needed, nine innings and maybe more.

“And over time I learned that it was also a language for grief, the rituals, the unpredictability, the way the game unfolds. It just mirrored for me, life.”

In Grief, Hope, Baseball Rios also chronicles her mother’s own ups and downs with addiction. She recalls family friends and relatives who made a difference in her life, a first marriage that didn’t work out, and her own adult battles with the bottle.

Always, there was America’s Pastime. “There are so many more games in the season. That’s what I held on to. And if we don’t win the championship this year, there’s always another season.”

Rios considers herself a survivor. “Even my parents were survivors in their own way, including Moncho. He had his own trauma growing up. He decided, this was my coping skill, my way to get through.

“I could have easily went that way too, with alcohol.”

Today, Rios counsels her clients on how to deal with some of the toughest stuff.

“Writing this book became so therapeutic,” she said. “And I wanted to name the experience I was going through, and help people feel less alone. Not fixed, because you can’t fix grief. But be seen and maybe feel a little more hopeful as well.

“It’s the ability to stay present. To keep showing up for yourself, for other people. Even when things don’t feel OK.”

Grief, Hope, Baseball at Tombolo Books

Grief, Hope, Baseball at Amazon