All Episodes

Laura hears from many pareavors how they struggle with going to church after the death of their child. In today’s episode, she talks about some of the reasons this happens, along with some of her own struggles in this area. She also spends time talking about the difference between going to church as a Sunday morning  institution and being in fellowship as the church outside the four walls of a bui...

One thing Laura hears quite often from parents after child loss is their discouragement of not hearing from God or feeling His presence in their place of deep darkness and grief. She also hears from those who have read her book When Tragedy Strikes who are frustrated because God doesn’t speak to them the way He did to her during the darkest part of her grief after her daughter died. In today’s epi...

For those of us with other children, it is so difficult to watch them grieve the loss of their brother or sister. While we are relieved to be told that there is no right or wrong way to grieve for ourselves, we are often concerned that our children are not dealing with the loss of their brother or sister. Last week I shared why the death of our child affects our other children so deeply, because o...

Siblings play a big role and are meant to be the longest relationship in our lives. When a sibling dies, the ones left behind lose one of the only people who share a complete history with them, who are also supposed to be in most of their future. If they just had the one sibling, they lost the only person who shares the same history and future, having even more layers of grief to work through. As...

After the death of our child, many of us question God in ways we never thought we would, which puts us in a vulnerable place for attacks from the enemy. Satan does not use new tactics. He uses the same ones he used in the garden of Eden on Eve. In this episode, Laura calls attention to those tactics, reminding us how sly and dangerous the enemy can be, shares how to recognize the enemy’s ways of t...

In this episode, Laura brings on a guest to talk about a deeply serious and needed topic after the death of our child. How important is your child to you, and how important is God to you? Often, we don’t realize the love for our child can overshadow our love for God, causing us to get stuck in our suffocating darkness when our child leaves this earth before we do.  Laura and her guest, Shirley Thi...

Many pareavors (bereaved parents) struggle with feeling guilty for laughing or doing special things like taking vacations after the death of their child, believing it isn’t right to enjoy life again. We will always have an undercurrent of sadness and grief that can surface at any time. Sometimes there are known triggers and sometimes it seems to be for no apparent reason. But we can learn to build...

Many pareavors (bereaved parents) struggle with feeling guilty for laughing or doing special things like taking vacations after the death of their child, believing it isn’t right to enjoy life again. In this episode, Laura brings on Lin Findlay to share about her own journey in this area after the death of her daughter, Aubrie, and why Lin now hosts The Grief Cruise for those who have lost loved o...

In today’s episode, Laura is sharing what a gift it is to be with others who have lost a child because they get it. They understand the darkness and the struggles. It took her almost three years after her daughter, Becca, died to meet with a group who had lost a child because Laura didn’t think it would help to be around a bunch of others who were a mess like she was. When she finally made herself...

Without hope, we have no desire to live. It can be easy to feel hopeless when going into a new year without our child. But that does not have to be the case. Join Laura, as shares how we can stir up the seed of hope that may by lying dormant inside us after the death of our child.   Links Mentioned in th is episode: Find out more about GPS Hope get-away weekend retreats . Click here for infor...

Going into a new year without our child can feel horrible, knowing there is nothing we can do to stop it. Join Laura as she shares what that was like for her after the death of her daughter, Becca, along with sharing some words of encouragement for those who are struggling with feeling like they are leaving their child behind as we close out 2021. Laura also prays over the listeners as they begin...

This episode with Anne Moss Rogers is one with a lot of practical advice for those who are struggling deeply in the darkness of grief after child loss. Being a mom who lost her son to suicide, Anne Moss made a conscious decision to figure out how to work through the guilt, shame and horrific darkness to be able to live a life of meaning and purpose again, both to honor her son, Charles, and to hel...

For Beverly Shoemaker, finding meaning and purpose in her life was extremely difficult after her husband ended his own life three years after their son, Nick, died. Her husband’s decision to take his own life left Bev in an even darker place, filled with anger, bitterness, and deep depression. Bev thought she would never ever forgive the drunk driver who killed her son and struggled to forgive her...

Today Laura is joined by Bev Shoemaker, who lost her son, Nick, back in 2004 in a car accident. She was contacted within days by another mom who had lost her own son several years previously. This caring woman shared things with Bev that helped her immensely, in navigating through the darkness after Nick’s death. In this episode, Bev passes along some of the helpful advice that was passed on...

Our grief journey can be compared to taking a road trip – an unplanned road trip – which is what Laura discussed last week with her guest, Jill Theriault. In this week’s episode, Jill shares how the road signs we see while traveling can also guide us on our grief journey. They specifically talk about seven of the eighteen signs Jill has listed out on an available PDF. Jill Theriault’s son, N...

Most road trips are well planned, but occasionally they are not. Some things in life are planned, but losing a child is definitely an unplanned part of our life’s journey. Today’s guest, Jill Theriault, has been on this journey as a bereaved parent for over 20 years after her two-year-old son, Nathan, died from meningitis. In this episode, Jill compares our grief to taking a road trip with three d...

Many of us have been thinking about how to deal with the upcoming holidays, especially Christmas, for weeks or months already, so we might as well talk about it. Advent is a time of waiting, usually known for the four weeks of waiting for Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s birth. We think of Jesus coming as a sweet little baby, but He came as more than that. He came as a Shepherd for his lo...

The holiday season brings many dark and painful emotions to the surface for those of us who have lost a child from this earth. It is a time of year where the pain of who is missing can be so much greater than the joy of who is still here. Many of us don’t even want to acknowledge Thanksgiving (or Christmas), but it is hard to ignore because we are surrounded by reminders everywhere we look. Specif...

We want answers and we want them now! We want (or feel like we need) God to explain Himself to us, telling us why our child left this earth before we did. We question how God can call Himself a loving Father or can possibly tell us that He is a good God. We don’t understand, and it is normal and okay to bring our questions and emotions to God, no matter how dark they are. If God explained to us wh...

Most of us are familiar with Paul’s words in Philippians 1:21, “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” As Laura began to study this out, she discovered a much deeper meaning to these words than most of us realize, which is very encouraging to us as pareavors. Laura also shares how that takes us deeper into the word redeemed , ending today’s episode by praying with the listeners about what wa...

There is another thing Laura has learned in ten years of grieving the death of her daughter that she did not talk about in last week’s episode, which is how much of an emotional roller coaster ride it is now, even ten years later. Yes, as the years go by, things smooth out and we may not find ourselves on the roller coaster ride as often, but it still happens. In this episode, Laura shares how fru...

The day this podcast episode airs (on October 12, 2021) will be the 10-year anniversary of Becca’s departure from this earth (Laura’s oldest daughter). Laura says the beginning of the last ten years held the most pain she have ever experienced. She had no idea that kind of suffocating darkness even existed. It scared her, not knowing how she was going to find her way out. When Becca first di...

Recently Laura received a response from one of the Weekly Word of Hope emails. The pareavor was upset with how Laura’s email said, “Neither life nor death is in our hands. God is the one who gives life within the womb. And God chooses when each person takes their last heartbeat.” Part of what this mom shared said, “That is scary. For that implies God organized this death – which sometimes is...

Recently Laura received a response from one of the Weekly Word of Hope emails. The pareavor was upset with how Laura’s email said, “Neither life nor death is in our hands. God is the one who gives life within the womb. And God chooses when each person takes their last heartbeat.” Part of what this mom shared said, “That is scary. For that implies God organized this death – which sometimes is...

Today Laura will talk about a simple way to help pareavors remind themselves of some of the most important things they need to remember on this grief journey, using the word grief as an acronym. Listen in, as Laura talks about each one in detail. G- Give yourself a lot of grace. R – Release yourself from guilt. I – Ignore those who are trying to fix you. E – Engage with other pareavors. F- Find wa...