What happens when personal tragedy becomes a source of healing, creativity, and a renewed appreciation for life? For author Richard Ballo, writing became a way to navigate one of life’s most painful experiences. It also became the foundation for an unexpected second chapter: creating entertaining children’s books designed to make young readers laugh, think, and solve problems.
In this episode of The Billy Dees Podcast, Billy Dees sits down with Richard Ballo, an award-winning author, professional writer, and national speaker whose work explores grief, bereavement, healing, and the craft of storytelling. Their conversation moves from the difficult realities of losing a spouse to the importance of reading with children, the discipline of writing, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence on creativity and human relationships.
It’s a discussion about loss, but it’s also about moving forward—and recognizing the value of human connection in a world that sometimes seems determined to replace it with technology.
When Personal Loss Becomes a Path to Healing
Richard Ballo has been a published writer since 1972 and a professional writer since 1980. But one of the most defining chapters of his life began in 1993, when his wife, Lisa Johnson, died of cancer. They had married in 1986 and were raising two young children, then just five and six and a half years old.
In the aftermath of that loss, Richard found himself writing about the experience. What began as a personal journal of grief eventually became Life Without Lisa, an award-winning book that received the Florida Publishers and Authors Association President’s Pick Award.
During the interview, Richard challenges one of the most common misconceptions about grief: that people should simply get over it within a few months or allow time to heal everything.
Real life, as he explains, is considerably more complicated.
Grief doesn’t follow a convenient schedule, and there is no universal deadline for rebuilding a life after losing someone you love. Richard describes the process as a journey that can take years, involving intense sorrow, loneliness, and eventually the difficult work of integrating the past into a new present.
His own experience included remaining single for 20 years before eventually finding love again. Today, he has been remarried for 12 years, and he speaks candidly about learning to recognize emotional triggers without allowing them to dictate the rest of his life.
A memory, a birthday, or an unexpected reminder can bring old emotions rushing back. The difference, Richard explains, is learning to recognize those moments and understanding that revisiting the pain doesn’t mean you have to remain there.
His perspective isn’t about forgetting the past. It’s about acknowledging it while choosing to live fully in the present.
From Grief to Children’s Stories
Richard’s writing career took an unexpected turn when he began creating funny stories for children.
The motivation was personal. After losing their mother, Richard wanted his children to experience as much normalcy, laughter, and happiness as possible. As a school volunteer, he read stories to elementary school students and began developing stories of his own.
That experience eventually led to a very different kind of writing.
Richard now has 11 books in print, including works on grief and a series of children’s books featuring Martin the Mouse. The character finds himself being chased through a variety of settings, including the White House, Santa’s house, a haunted house, and a firehouse.
The stories are designed for young children, generally ages three to seven, with colorful illustrations, repetition, and playful situations. But beneath the fun is a practical idea: children can learn to recognize problems and figure out how to solve them.
In Martin’s adventures, the children must work out how to get the mouse out of trouble without adults interfering or harming him.
It’s a simple premise with a useful lesson. Children aren’t merely passive observers of a story; they can participate in figuring things out.
Richard’s work demonstrates how storytelling can serve different purposes at different stages of life. Sometimes writing helps us process profound personal pain. Other times, it gives children an opportunity to laugh, explore, and develop their imaginations.
Are We Giving Children Enough Human Interaction?
The conversation takes a turn toward a familiar sight in modern life: a young child sitting in front of a tablet while the adults nearby carry on their own conversations.
Billy and Richard discuss the challenge of competing with screens for children’s attention, particularly when it comes to books and reading.
Richard believes the answer begins with parents making time for their children.
Reading together offers more than words on a page. It creates an opportunity for conversation, shared laughter, questions, and a relationship that develops through direct interaction. Children can talk about the characters, consider how problems are solved, and connect the stories to their own experiences.
That interaction matters.
A tablet can deliver entertainment, but it cannot independently replace the full experience of a parent sitting beside a child, responding to questions, sharing a laugh, and helping a young mind make sense of the world.
Billy adds his own perspective, reflecting on how television programs he watched as a child inspired him to get outside and play. He contrasts that experience with a modern environment in which entertainment can become an activity that keeps children sitting in front of a screen rather than encouraging them to engage with the world.
The issue isn’t necessarily that technology exists. It’s whether technology is displacing experiences that help children develop curiosity, communication skills, and relationships with the people around them.
For Richard, children’s books remain one way to encourage that connection.
Artificial Intelligence, Creativity, and the Human Element
The discussion also explores a question confronting writers and other creative professionals: What happens when artificial intelligence becomes increasingly involved in how we learn, communicate, and create?
Billy raises concerns about young people turning to AI not only for schoolwork but also for advice about relationships and other personal matters. As these tools become more sophisticated, he wonders whether relying on them too heavily could change how people develop through real-world experiences and human interaction.
Richard acknowledges that AI can already be used to generate school assignments and assist with writing. He has experimented with it himself, using prompts to explore alternative wording or generate an outline from a scene he has written.
Sometimes the results offer something useful. Other times, they don’t.
But Richard draws a distinction between using AI as a tool and allowing it to take over the creative process.
He continues to write his own material, print it, review it, make corrections, and revise it before working with a human editor. For him, the emotional connections that make a story meaningful require more than arranging words into a coherent sequence.
They require an understanding of people, feelings, and the experiences that give those words meaning.
Billy shares a similar perspective from his own work in media production. AI can help with repetitive tasks and save time, but he believes the central creative contribution should still come from the individual.
The broader question isn’t whether these tools have a place in the creative process. Clearly, they can. The more important question is whether convenience will encourage people to surrender the very experiences that help them develop their own judgment, imagination, and voice.
Technology can assist with the work. Whether it can replace the human experience behind meaningful creative expression is another matter entirely.
The Discipline of Writing: Inspiration Is Only the Beginning
For aspiring writers, Richard offers another valuable perspective: writing doesn’t necessarily require locking yourself in a room for eight hours and waiting for inspiration to strike.
Although ideas sometimes arrive unexpectedly—a scene appearing in his mind or a detail from a news story revealing the missing connection in a developing plot—Richard also maintains a writing schedule.
When he’s in his office, that’s his time to create and get words on the page. Editing, on the other hand, can happen almost anywhere, even in short stretches of time.
He also explains how his curiosity about the world feeds his work. His interests range from mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction to nonfiction subjects such as the environment, government, and everyday life.
In one example, an article about a businessman jailed for polluting gave Richard the missing motivation behind a conflict between characters in a book he was developing. A real-world news story helped him understand why two people with opposing perspectives might develop a lasting grievance against one another.
It’s a reminder that good storytelling often begins with paying attention.
An idea doesn’t have to arrive fully formed. Sometimes it begins with a passing observation, a memory, a question, or a news story. The writer’s job is to keep exploring until those fragments begin to connect.
For anyone who has ever wanted to write a personal story, Richard’s advice is encouraging: start with an idea, a thought, or a remembrance, and build on it.
You don’t have to write an entire book in one sitting. You have to begin.
A Conversation About More Than Books
What makes this interview particularly interesting is the way these subjects connect.
Richard’s experience with grief led him to write about loss and healing. His desire to help his children find joy led him toward children’s literature. His work with young readers reinforced his belief in the importance of personal interaction, while his experience as a writer informs his views on the opportunities and limitations of artificial intelligence.
These aren’t entirely separate topics. They’re all connected by a common thread: the importance of human experience.
Whether someone is processing the loss of a spouse, helping a child learn to solve problems, developing a fictional character, or deciding how to use new technology, the human element remains central.
And while there are no easy answers to grief, parenting, or the future of creativity, there is value in having a thoughtful conversation about them.
Listen to Richard Ballo on the Billy Dees Podcast
In this episode, Billy Dees and Richard Ballo discuss the realities of grief, the long process of healing, the unexpected paths a writing career can take, the value of reading with children, and the role artificial intelligence may play in the future of creativity and human relationships.
It’s a conversation that moves between deeply personal experiences and broader questions about how we live, learn, and connect with one another.
Learn more about Richard Ballo and his books:
- Author website: RichardBallo.com
- Publisher: Tolman Press
For more interviews and thoughtful commentary on current events, culture, and the people shaping our world, listen to The Billy Dees Podcast, available across major podcast platforms.
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