The woman who built a life out of steadiness. Before she was Bernice Barbier, she was Bernice Clark. An only child being raised on the east coast. A Massachusetts girl with careful manners, quick hands, and a habit of listening more than she spoke. She came to Michigan to attend the University of Michigan, earning her associate’s degree before falling in love with Ronald Barbier—a man steady enough to make the future feel dependable. Together, they built a life the slow way.

We often talk about grief as something emotional—sadness, longing, heartbreak. But grief doesn’t stay in one place. It moves. It seeps into memory. Into routine. Into the quiet moments when you expect your mind to hold steady—and it doesn’t. In A Quiet Kind of Poison, grief doesn’t just shape how a person feels. It begins to shape how they think… and how they trust themselves. “The losses had come stacked—so fast the calendar couldn’t keep up.” When loss comes all at once, th