All Episodes

Did you know that the first Sunday of each May is International Bereaved Mother’s Day? That’s what we will be talking about in this episode, along with touching on the week that follows which most of us dread… Mother’s Day. Just a warning, I am very real and honest about my thoughts and feelings about all of this, in a way that isn’t normally like me.  But Mother’s Day is one of the hardest days w...

When our child dies, we want to die ourselves so we can go be with them. It may not make sense to others, or even ourselves, especially when we know in our heads that we have reasons (people) to live for. It is important for you to know that this is “normal” for someone who has lost a child, and also that you will get past those feelings at some point and start seeing that life is worth living aga...

The day this episode is released, my daughter, Becca, would be 39 years old. Instead, she is forever 29. Three of Becca’s siblings are now older than their big sister, with one more sibling yet to hit that marker. The birthdays of our children are painful and bittersweet. We are so thankful for the day they came into our lives, but we won’t be celebrating with them, doing things like serving them...

This episode is a continuation of last week’s topic. We are all very aware that in this life, we don’t always get what we planned. I’m pretty sure as a parent, it wasn’t your plan to be listening to a podcast for grieving parents, and it certainly wasn’t in my plan to host one, or to have a full-time ministry to pareavors. Something we desperately need, to be able to move forward is hope. This inc...

We just got done having our GPS Hope and Healing retreat in Texas and it was wonderful! (See the link below if you want to find out more about our retreats.) Today and next week’s episodes are one of the sessions from this past retreat. None of us ever planned to be listening to a podcast for parents who have faced the death of their child! But we know that sometimes things that happen in our live...

When our child dies, we are surrounded by family and friends who hurt with us, cry with us and pray with us. Some of them will sit with us, call to see if there is anything we need, and we often get a couple weeks’ worth of meals brought to our house. Then 3 months, 6 months, 12 months later, it seems some of those same people either start avoiding us or start hinting that maybe it’s time to pull...

This is the 100th episode of the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope Podcast, which means it has been going faithfully for almost two years already! In trying to decide what to do for this special episode, I realized that many of our listeners might not know things like how the ministry of GPS Hope got started, what happened that caused me to start writing my first book, or the crazy story of how we end...

This is the last episode in our series of Grief and Music after Child Loss. What you will be hearing is part of a conversation I had with Hannah Linton and her mom, Kathi Wilson that was originally recorded as a video in 2017 for our Hope & Healing Virtual Summit (online conference). Kathi is a singer/songwriter, and one of her CD’s I played many times in my little prayer room as it ministered...

We are continuing with our series on Grief and Music by talking to Angelique Marketon. Angelique has been a songwriter and worship leader for many years.  Her ministry through music was starting to grow to a national level, as area churches would ask her to come and lead worship for their events, and her recordings were starting to get noticed. Then her son and only child, Isaiah, died at the scen...

We are in a series of Grief and Music. This week, our guest, Yolanda Blade-Rory, shares with us her experience with music and worship after the unexpected death of her seven-year-old young son, Sasha, who died of an unknown heart condition. The episode ends with listening to one of the songs Yolanda wrote in her place of fighting the suffocating grief.   Yolanda Rory is a licensed and certifi...

This is the first episode in a series about Grief and Music. Music affects our souls. God created it that way. Music can be a powerful tool as we fight our way out of the darkness, trying to find hope, light, meaning and purpose again after the death of our child. In this episode, I will share my personal experiences with music, as well as giving you plenty of reasons to have music in your life ri...

This is a topic I don’t hear talked about much, but it affects so many of us.  Who would have ever thought we would be faced with the decision of donating our child’s organs? There are so many mixed emotions about this, whether you did, or whether you didn’t. The world of organ donation is a family within a family. We are all family in the world of being a parent bereaved of our child (a pareavor)...

In our Western Culture, we usually choose names for our newborn babies because we like the sound of it, or we name them after a famous person, or even after an object or a place because we want to give our child a unique name. No matter how we came up with our child’s name, names have meaning, and our name can affect who we become as a person, and how we live our life. This isn’t just something fr...

This is the third and last episode in our series for the newly bereaved. Today we will be hearing from Pam Vredevelt, who has faced both a pregnancy loss, and the death of her 16-year-old son. Not only can Pam share from the personal experience of child loss, she can add the depth of being a licensed professional counselor for over 25 years. As a bereaved parent, we hear a lot about giving ourselv...

When my daughter, Becca, died, I thought I was getting early Alzheimer’s because of how forgetful I was, how scrambled my mind felt, and how quickly important information could leave my brain. I had no idea for the first couple of years that it was “normal” for a parent after the death of their child, and it was a relief to find that out. What else is “normal” for a newly bereaved parent? First, i...

There is no training for being a bereaved parent. It is a very dark place, and we can feel utterly alone, as if no one understands. But those of us who have lost a child do understand, and we want to walk with you, especially through the darkest part of your grief. In this episode there will be things shared that are important for you to know. Not in the way of a “to do” list, but more of a “give...

When my daughter died, I had already been leaning on a different yearly scripture for over twelve years. Each year I wrote down what that verse was, in the back of a specific Bible. In this podcast episode, I thought it would be interesting and valuable to go back and look at the verses God put in my life for the past ten years, starting with the year Becca was so ill (2010), then the year she die...

Every time a new year shows up, it brings lots of emotions for many of us bereaved parents, especially if this is the first time the calendar has turned to a new year since your child died. It can seem horrible because it feels like we are leaving our child behind as we go into a new year. In this episode, you will hear from a few “experienced” pareavors who know what it’s like to face going into...

Christmas can be one of the worst weeks of the year for many of us with child loss. After my daughter, Becca, died, it made me realize that even though I did my best to make Christmas about the birth of Jesus, it really was more about things like baking traditional cookies, giving my kids presents and making the season fun for them. The death of our child causes us to rethink everything we thought...

Child loss take us to such a dark place that we can easily believe it’s impossible to ever have joy in our lives again. But if Christ is in us, so is joy, because that is one of the fruits of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Our lives will never be the same. We will never be the same, but He is always the same. God is right here with us, ready to wash over us with His love, to put the pieces of our sha...

Christmas time can be brutal the first few years for those of us who have lost a child. It is so easy to lose what little peace we started to find. This week we will talk about peace, and the Prince of Peace who came as a baby to die so that we can have peace in the midst of our worst nightmare.   Links Mentioned in th is episode: Join GPS Hope on a cruise for those who have faced a deep loss...

You may not agree with the title of this podcast episode, but it really is true. You can have hope in your life again after child loss. And the Christmas season, as difficult as it can be, is a great time to have that hope infused into your heart and soul. Each week during the advent season, I do a live candle lighting on Facebook (with the advent wreath we used in our home as our children grew up...

This is the final episode in a 3-part series called Rebuilding Your Life After Child Loss. First, we hear from two bereaved parents (Sara Nelson and Melanie Delorme) about their journey coming out of the darkness and back to a place of living a life of meaning and purpose again. Then I share how I have seen and experienced how God lovingly wants to help each of us to move in that same direction. &...

When our child dies, we find ourselves in a place of darkness we didn’t even know existed. There are often many struggles within that place of darkness. Today we will touch on three of these: Prayer Those around us who don’t understand and aren’t supporting us How our thoughts can keep us in our place of darkness I want to encourage you that it won’t always be this dark. Those of us who are on thi...

In this podcast episode, I talk about the mental breakdown that we struggle with after the death of our child. If you are like me, the mental break downs are so very frustrating; the confusion, the fogginess, not being able to concentrate, and major forgetfulness (as in forgetting how to do a simple task you have done most of your life)! It really scared me as I started wondering if I was having a...