Her Daughter Died From a Chronic Illness: She’s Sharing Her Diary

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.”