If Anybody Asks I've Left the Planet

This is not a story about having it all together.

If Anybody Asks I've Left the Planet is a memoir written from the aftermath-after loss, after certainty collapses, after life no longer follows a recognizable map. Shannon Western Fields documents a life shaped by grief, family ties, survival, and the stubborn act of continuing when there is no resolution in sight.

The book moves through deeply personal terrain: absence that never leaves, love that outlives the people it was attached to, and the long, quiet labor of staying present inside a changed life. These are not dramatic set pieces, but lived moments-small reckonings that alter a person permanently.

There is no promise of closure here. No tidy moral. Instead, the narrative offers something rarer: honesty without performance. The voice is stripped back and deliberate, allowing space for what cannot be fixed, explained, or redeemed.

This memoir speaks to those who have lived through loss that does not resolve, to those who know that survival is not heroic but necessary, and to anyone who has continued living after the moment everything changed.

This book is not about leaving the planet.

It is about staying-when staying is the hardest thing there is.