Author Sarah Standifird

Highway safety isn’t political… it’s personal 🚗💔

Sarah Standifird’s story is reaching hearts everywhere 🌍
From Telemundo to USA Today and across social media… people are listening.

Grieving parents are speaking up 🕊️
Voices are rising louder than ever 📢
And they’re demanding real change.

Because no family should have to live this story.

It’s time to pay attention.
It’s time to act.

When a story hits the headlines… it gets attention.
When it becomes a book… it creates a movement. 📖🔥

After being featured in USA Today 📰 and Telemundo 📺, Sarah Standifird is bringing the FULL story to the world with CITIZENS PREY—and this is bigger than a book.

This is about truth.
This is about justice.
This is about making sure no other family has to walk through this pain. 💔➡️❤️‍🩹

👉 www.SarahStandifird.com

Read it. Share it. Be part of the movement.

When distracted driving meets corporate negligence, families pay the price.
CITIZENS PREY asks the question: Who is held accountable?
Highway safety isn’t political.
It’s personal.
CITIZENS PREY reminds us why reform begins with truth.

Throwback to the red carpet at the La Jolla International Fashion Film Festival 🎬✨

Six years ago… lights, cameras, questions—and one moment to tell your story.

You never know when you’ll step onto that carpet…
🎤 The mic is in your face
🎥 Cameras are rolling
⏱️ And you’ve got seconds to deliver a sound bite that sticks

That’s what this moment was.

No script. No do-over.
Just clarity, conviction, and courage.

Because your story isn’t just meant to be written…
It’s meant to be spoken when it matters most.

Be ready. Your moment is coming. 🔥

👇 Have you ever had a moment where you had to show up ready?

We can't bring my son back but as a leading speaker in the USA on distracted driving I might save your best friends life! SarahStandifird.com

Before Rob died, I thought I understood loss in the way most people do, at a distance, as something that happens to other people, something you observe, feel sympathy for, and then step away from. I believed without ever having tested it, that time had a way of carrying people through. And then Rob died, and everything I thought I knew about grief collapsed under the weight of actually living it.

There’s a moment when loss stops being an idea and becomes your reality. For me, it wasn’t poetic or symbolic. It was abrupt and disorienting. Life didn’t just shift. It fractured. The person who was at the center of my world, my partner, my best friend, the one who had shared in all the moments of my life, was just gone. And what remained wasn’t just absence, but a kind of silence that made everything feel unfamiliar. I was still here, still breathing, still expected to move forward, but nothing about forward made sense anymore.

So I did what people often do when faced with something that feels impossible to carry. I tried to understand it. I read what others had written, listened to those who spoke about grief with confidence and clarity, sat in rooms with people who were also grieving, hoping that somewhere in all of that I might find something that would anchor me. But what I came to realize is that there’s a huge difference between understanding grief and actually living it.

I wrote ‘SURVIVING – Finding Your Way from Grief to Healing’ as a man who no longer recognized his own life. The man who wrote that book wasn’t calm or composed. He wasn’t standing on the other side of grief offering reassurance. He was in the middle of it, often unsure of what the next hour would feel like, let alone the next day. There were moments of anger that didn’t feel reasonable but were completely real, moments of exhaustion so deep it felt like my body and mind were no longer working together, moments where the simplest tasks felt overwhelming because everything was being carried alongside the weight of my loss. There were days where I found myself asking questions that had no answers, replaying conversations, wondering about choices, standing in the space between what was and what could have been.

That’s the version of me that wrote those pages, not the one people see now, but the one who was still trying to figure out how to survive something he never thought he would have to go through.

I didn’t set out to write a book in the traditional sense. I wasn’t trying to teach or instruct or even explain. I was just trying to process something that felt too big for me hold in silence. Writing became someplace I could put the thoughts I had swirling around in my head. I wrote about the anticipatory grief of watching someone you love slip away while you’re still holding onto hope, even when you know, somewhere deep inside, that the outcome isn’t going to change. I wrote about the relentless “what ifs” that can take hold if you let them, the questions that circle endlessly even though they can never alter what’s already happened. I wrote about the physical and emotional toll of grief, the way it can make you feel as though you’re losing your sense of direction, your ability to focus, even your sense of who you are.

And then, gradually, almost without noticing, something began to shift. Not in a way that erased the pain or made everything feel okay, but in a way that allowed me to breathe again, even if only for a moment at a time. I began to understand that grief wasn’t something I could think my way out of. It wasn’t a problem to solve or an obstacle to overcome. It was something I had to move through, something I had to allow, something I had to feel fully, even when it was uncomfortable, even when it was overwhelming. The healing didn’t come from avoiding the grief, it came from facing it, from leaning into it, from accepting that it was a natural response to loving someone deeply and losing them.

What surprised me most was the realization that the pain I was trying so hard to escape wasn’t separate from the love I still carried. It was, in many ways, an extension of it. The depth of the grief reflected the depth of the connection, and understanding that didn’t take the pain away, but it gave it meaning. It allowed me to begin seeing grief not as something that needed to be eliminated, but as something that could be integrated into a life that still had the capacity for moments of peace, connection, and even joy.

When I look back at that book now, I don’t see something written from a place of resolution. I see something written from within the experience itself, from a place of uncertainty and honesty. It wasn’t written after everything made sense; it was written while nothing did. And I think that’s why it continues to resonate with people, because it doesn’t stand apart from grief and describe it from a distance. It sits inside of it and speaks from there, in the same way so many people find themselves sitting in their own lives after loss.

So when I’m asked, “What do you believe now?” my answer is different than it would have been before. I don’t speak about timelines or stages or expectations. I don’t offer certainty where there isn’t any. What I believe now is quieter, but stronger in its own way.

I believe that grief will change you in ways you can’t predict. I believe it will bring you face to face with parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. I believe it will test you, challenge you, and at times make you question everything you thought you understood about life and love. But I also believe that it’s possible to survive it, not by avoiding it or minimizing it, but by allowing yourself to experience it fully and trusting that, over time, something within you will begin to adapt.

Not in a way that replaces who was lost, because nothing can do that, but in a way that allows you to carry both the love and the loss forward together. And that, for me, is what it means to find your way from grief to healing.

Not leaving the grief behind…but learning how to live with it in a way that still allows for life to continue.

Gary Sturgis
Author: 'SURVIVING - Finding Your Way from Grief to Healing'

Give me a LIKE if you agree

Looking for a powerful guest on distracted driving, corporate accountability, or grief-to-advocacy?
Sarah Standifird brings lived experience—and real impact.

SarahStandifird.com

Be responsible to yourself as the one who’s in charge of your time and attention.⁠
⁠
Remember — every new day is yours to shape. Yours to own. Yours to be proud of 🙌 ⁠
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Share with a friend who need this reminder. ⁠👯‍♀️

See what others are saying about

CITIZENS PREY

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Janelle Flatt
5.0 out of 5 stars A Heartbreaking Fight for Justice After a Tragic Crash

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2026
Format: Hardcover

A heartbreaking, infuriating, and ultimately inspiring true story that demands to be heard

I picked up Citizen’s Prey after seeing it described as the gripping true account of a mother’s battle for justice following a devastating fiery semi-truck crash that took the life of a young father. I wasn’t prepared for how deeply this book would affect me.

Sarah Standifird writes with raw honesty about the unimaginable pain of sudden loss, the crushing weight of grief, and the exhausting fight against a legal system that often feels stacked against victims and their families. What could have been just another tragic headline becomes a deeply personal journey that exposes issues around distracted driving, corporate accountability, and how “justice” can feel painfully slow and incomplete.

This isn’t an easy read emotionally — there were several moments where I had to put the book down because the details hit so hard — but it’s incredibly compelling. Standifird doesn’t shy away from the ugly realities of litigation, the toll it takes on families, or the frustration of navigating bureaucracy when you’re already broken. At the same time, her resilience and determination to turn personal tragedy into something bigger shine through.

Whether you’re interested in true crime, legal thrillers, or stories of real-world advocacy, Citizen’s Prey delivers. It’s more than a memoir; it’s a call to pay attention to the preventable tragedies happening around us every day (the statistic about thousands of annual deaths from distracted driving is sobering).

Highly recommended. This book will stay with you long after you finish it. If you’ve ever lost someone or wondered if the system really works for ordinary citizens, read this.
https://www.amazon.com/CITIZENS-PREY-Sarah-Standifird-ebook/dp/B0GTMWMF5C

See what others are saying about

CITIZENS PREY

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Janelle Flatt
5.0 out of 5 stars A Heartbreaking Fight for Justice After a Tragic Crash

Reviewed in USA

SatahStandifird.com