The Cary resident and former math teacher in New York City recently published her second book, and she speaks to grieving parents up and down the East Coast, sharing her poetry and passages from her books.

Sillau raised her daughter, Robin, as a single mother. By the time Robin was 10, she began to suffer a range of symptoms that doctors couldn’t diagnose: headaches, dizziness and pain in various parts of her body.

Sillau said many of the doctors suggested Robin was a hypochondriac. For 13 years, mother and daughter sought a diagnosis. When Robin was 23, a rheumatologist told her she had undifferentiated connective tissue disease, a systemic autoimmune disorder. Robin died two years later.

After Robin’s death, Sillau began writing a book, “Robin’s Wings: Lessons from My Daughter on How to Grieve for My Only Child.” The book includes passages from Robin’s blog, Decorated Life. (She was an interior designer.)

Sillau later wrote a series of 50 poems – two for each year of Robin’s life – for the book “Missing Robin: Poems from a Mother’s Grief Journey.”

Q: In the book, you talk about how there is no word to describe someone who loses a child the way there is for someone who loses a spouse. Is this a central theme?

Yes. I wrote a poem called “No Words.” (Here’s a passage): “She could picture only her child’s lowering coffin/There are no words for such unnatural loss/For a mother’s grief, words simply fail.”

Q: How hard was it not knowing what was wrong with Robin for so many years?

My poor child was told she was a hypochondriac. It caused a lot of emotional distress. A doctor will never say, “I don’t know,” so those years were torture. Undifferentiated connective tissue disease affects the tissue in the lining of the brain, the pericardium, the tissue around all of the organs. So the pain moves around. When Robin told me, “This hurts me,” I’d take her to this or that specialist.

Finally, she found an internist in Manhattan who said, “I don’t know, but I do know someone who can help.”

Her doctor never said it was fatal. She had just gotten engaged three weeks before she died, had bought a wedding dress three days before she died.

Q: You speak with grieving parents in the Compassionate Friends groups. What do you tell them?

I read “No Words.” I read a section that Robin wrote about not letting your disaster overcome you. I usually close by reading a funny anecdote from Robin’s growing-up life. I remind these parents that they deserve to laugh; the endorphins are good for you.

They see me as a survivor, and I’m only two years in. Every year, I contribute money to the research fund based on Robin’s age. This year, she would have been 28, so I sent money in groups of 28.

Holly Sillau is working on a third book that will be released in June 2013. “Robin’s Wings” and “Missing Robin” can be purchased through online booksellers. All proceeds from the sales of the books go to the Robin Joy Sillau Memorial Research Fund for Connective Tissue Disease at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.