Instead, the book, entitled “The Pain Didn’t Kill Me,” focuses on those aspects of her life, plus discusses their marriage challenges and the grieving process.
“It’s my story,” Bell said during a phone interview from her home in Columbus. “I lay it all out there.”
During the 2 1/2 years it took her to write the book, Bell said she cried every night. She called the writing “a painful process.”
But she has no regrets because, as she said, “I had no idea writing my story would heal me.”
She doesn’t worry about making anyone’s best-selling list. The book, she said, has “served its purpose” because it was therapeutic.
She now dedicates her life to spreading the word about health and awareness, so that others may reduce their chances of experiencing the tragic and premature loss of a loved one.
She is the founder and president of Keeping TABs on Your Heart, a non-profit organization she developed after the sudden death of her husband.
To help further her message, she serves as spokesperson for the American Heart Association and the Ohio State University Richard M. Ross Heart Hospital in Columbus.
Bell was asked what her late husband, a 1977 Middletown High School graduate, would think of her project.
“He was such a giver,” she said. “But he also was very private. I’m sure he would be hesitant about us talking about marriage counseling. But if he knew the good it was doing, he’d say, ‘Let’s do this.’”
She said the book is another leg in her journey of life, one she runs now without Todd.
“He handed the baton over to me,” she said. “We have done something together. I know he has died. I didn’t want him to be dead. They still talk about Todd.”
Since his death, a portion of South Verity Parkway between Girard and Lafayette avenues was renamed “Todd Bell Memorial Way,” and the Todd Anthony Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male was dedicated at OSU.
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