Heidi Chirkoff (right) and Lyndsay Grikinis are two local moms who have come together to create a book about families who deal with the challenges of parents who work away from home.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Heidi Chirkoff
February 20, 2020 - 7:30 AM
When parents travel for work, it can be challenging for children to understand where mom or dad is and that's why two Kamloops women decided to team up to create a book on the topic.
Heidi Chirkoff is a mother and when her son was born, her husband was working overseas at the time. She's a hobby writer in her spare time and the challenges her family was facing with a parent working away gave her the idea to start writing a poem for her son.
"I just started jotting things down to read to him about his dad being away," Chirkoff says, adding her son was about two months old at the time.
Chirkoff says she has always wanted to write a children’s book and thought the topic could be relatable to other families and decided to expand her poem.
Heidi Chirkoff's son, Connor, who is now 18 months old is pictured reading his mom's published book, He'll Be Home Soon.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Heidi Chirkoff
“I’ve always loved writing, that has always been kind of my thing,” she says. “It doesn’t really matter where you are going or how long you are going for, it is an adjustment every time they come back.”
Once Chirkoff decided to write the book, she asked her cousin, Lyndsay Grikinis, to help illustrate the story.
“She has always been super artsy and I asked her if she wanted to work on this project with me and she has twin boys that are four months older than mine so we started this project with little babies and lots of coffee,” she says. “She did amazing at making what was in my head come to life and it was a fun thing to do outside of being a mom.”
In the book, He’ll Be Home, the father resembles Chirkoff’s husband and the little boy is an older version of her son.
“Every time we go through the book, he sees the dad and will point him out and say ‘Dad’,” she says.
Currently the book is only available on Amazon, but the plan is to hopefully expand to stores locally, she says.
The dedication in the book is for the dads out there that are putting in the time working away and recognizing the moms that are pulling double duty at home.
“For us specifically, (my husband) was gone for most of the first year and during that first year they change so fast so every time he was coming home he was coming home to a new baby,” she says. “Thank goodness for FaceTime and our son could still see his face and recognize his voice.”
To view the book on Amazon, go here.
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