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In the years since Mallory’s passing, the journal has become a source of solace for Shader Smith as she has traveled the globe speaking about the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. It is also now the inspiration for two new projects she hopes will spark greater understanding of the public health crisis that ended her daughter’s life prematurely and could claim millions more.

A new project, The Global AMR Diary, launched Tuesday. The release is linked to the publication of Diary of a Dying Girl, by Mallory Smith, who died from a superbug infection in 2017. I wrote about Mallory’s story and the need to develop phage therapy to combat AMR two years ago in “Salt in My Soul: Poignant Film Calls Attention To The Need For Phages For Antibiotic Resistance.”

In Diary of a Dying Girl, all of us get a glimpse into Mallory’s quest to live life to the fullest, even as she was dying. The Sunday Paper sat down with Diane Shader Smith to learn more about her daughter, why she felt passionate about publishing her diary, and the advocacy work her daughter’s health battle inspired her to start doing.

A gripping, authentic window into the soul of a young person, this would be a solid addition to any collection.

AMR isn’t a sexy topic; it’s complex and hard to grasp, often going unnoticed by the general public. Many people have no idea what AMR is or how it may affect their lives. They think it only affects those with compromised health, like Mallory, who had cystic fibrosis. This is far from the truth.

Salt in My Soul, my daughter Mallory Smith’s posthumously published memoir, captivated a wide audience, from academic institutions like Harvard and Stanford to higher-profile platforms such as the White House and Capitol Hill… Mallory’s senior thesis advisor, Stanford Professor Sue McConnell, was prophetic when she called Mallory one of the best writers she’d seen in her twenty years of teaching.

Mallory Smith was a young woman who, in her own words, had “big dreams and big goals.”

When she was in high school, she set her sights on going to Stanford. After college, she hoped for a career where she could help people and “move the needle on something that’s important.” She wanted to write about the world and all its beauty. She wanted a life filled with travel and adventure. She wanted to fall in love.

In this adaptation of her memoir for adults, Smith, who died in 2017, chronicles life with cystic fibrosis from age 16 to 25. Illuminating and heartbreaking.

Shortly after Mallory’s death, her grieving mother read the thousands of diary entries in Mallory’s computer. Shader Smith would posthumously publish the entries as “Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life” in 2019 and the not-yet-released “Diary of a Dying Girl” on May 7.

“[Finding the entries] was really devastating,” Shader Smith says. The more she read, the more she realized that her daughter was suffering as much as she was living. The brave face Mallory put on, adopting the mantra “live happy,” was just one side of her lived experience. These entries were the space where she told it all — as Mallory wrote, “the letdowns, the uncertainties, the anxieties, the loneliness.”

Mallory Smith knew she was dying from a young age—you can prolong life to some degree after a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis, but it is a progressive and fatal illness. This collection of her detailed diary entries describes the beautiful moments in her life (love, vacations, finishing high school, and going to college,) as well as the medications, hospitalizations, failing health, and uncertain wait to see if she could be cleared for a lung transplant.