Losing a Child: Always Andy's Mom

Ally's life changed in the blink of an eye just 6 months ago when her 20-year-old daughter and best friend, Cadence, was killed in a tragic car accident. Talking with Ally last month brought me back to those early days, weeks and months after losing Andy. Outsiders may have a hard time understanding this, but after losing your child, you feel like you are living your whole life in a fog. Nothing a...

Today's guest, Aga, compares her life of grief to living in a deep, dark forest. She says that she longs to see light. Occasionally, bits of light do find their way down through all of the darkness, but then, in an instant, the light disappears, and she is left in the darkness again. I love this analogy so much because it emphasizes the unpredictability of having those moments of light and how bri...

Five years later. There aren't words to describe the heaviness of this day. I got an email from my father-in-law saying that he felt like their lives ended when they received the phone call that night. I couldn't agree more. The family we are now is not the one we were 5 years ago. From the outside, we may look the same. We still go up north to the cottage, go tubing in the boat, and eat Grandpa's...

Every week before I release a new podcast episode, I listen to the full episode one last time in order to get one or two take-home points that I can write about to accompany the podcast release. I know that some people will never listen to the episode and only read these paragraphs either through Facebook, Instagram, or my email list. I have been told that sometimes listening is just too painful a...

"I'm gonna leave." This is such an innocent phrase. It is something that Chester's son, Corban, likely said to his parents hundreds of times over his 21 years of life. It meant that he was going somewhere - to school, to the movies, maybe just out with friends. He was going somewhere specific. That is why it was so healing for Chester when he learned that these were the last words that Corban said...

When someone asked Elizabeth what her grief felt like in the months after her 9-week-old baby, Delia Grace died, she described it as if her body was on fire, but that the fire was invisible to others. She says that she tried to continue functioning, but that it was impossible to do the 'normal things of life' when you felt like you were on fire. You can't think. You can't focus. You can't understa...

I first met today's guest, Destia, when I was a guest speaker for Lisa Boehm's Hope and Healing Together Community last year. I learned that Destia's son had died of Moyamoya disease, and that, in her grief, Destia was trying to educate the medical community about Moyamoya in order to help save lives. Destia decided to come on the podcast to continue this process of educating people about this rar...

When starting this podcast almost 4 years ago now, I had a goal. I wanted to create a resource for bereaved parents, a platform for parents to tell stories of their children and their personal grief journeys. I wanted it to feel safe and encouraging, offering a little bit of hope as they traversed through the dark, lonely road of grief. I realized while recording this special 200th episode that we...

Andy's Mom. These are such sweet words for me to hear. When today's guest, Mary, wrote me a few weeks ago, and she introduced herself as Andy's Mom, we had an instant connection. She was not Andrew's Mom or Drew's Mom; she was Andy's Mom, and I immediately had tears in my eyes just reading the words. I recently had a Caleb's Mom write to me to tell me how listening to another Caleb's Mom on the po...

I love how timing so often works out perfectly. Tracy should have been on the podcast months ago, but due to computer issues, this episode comes out one week after our coping strategies one. Tracy's daughter, Katie, was a girl with a smile that would light up a room. She was an inspiration to many as an amazing friend, mother, and police officer. In fact, Tracy said that Katie was so kind that whe...

After the death of a child, grieving parents continue to function. We get up out of bed (most days). We usually shower. We eat at least something. Some of us even try to work. How do we do it? We cope and each person has different coping strategies that we rely on to use during these dark times. I remember so many people saying to me after Andy died, "You are so strong. I would never be able to do...

This week's episode was an emotional one for me as will be quite obvious to anyone listening. As I was listening one last time before releasing it, I think I realized why this week's guest impacted me so intensely. I felt like I was talking to myself 20 years from now. There were so many similarities between our boys and our lives, but Linda is almost 26 years into her grief journey while I am jus...

Each week, I usually find one main takeaway point from the podcast episode. After talking with Chris though, I learned two key things. As much as I tried to get it down to one point, I couldn't leave one out. They were both equally important. The first lesson Chris learned many years before she even had Becca, she was in the Pediatric ICU with one of the cardiac children that her family fostered f...

After Greg and Cathy's adult son died unexpectedly by suicide, every part of their lives was impacted by the grief. Day-to-day tasks seemed almost impossible. They were now looking at the world through the lens of grief. Cathy says that some days she would drive to the grocery store only to sit in the parking lot for a few minutes, realize that it would just be too hard, and then drive back home a...

One of the most commonly asked questions that I get from listeners is, 'How do I help my surviving children in their grief?' and even more specifically, 'How do I help my grieving teen?' When I was contacted by Olivia's dad a few weeks ago, I initially wondered if her story was one that would resonate with my listeners. As I continued reading, however, I realized how much Olivia had to offer. She...

Resilience is a word that we don't often think about before encountering tragedy. When we see people face difficult trials and then go on to triumph, people call them resilient, but what is resilience? How would we define resilience? As I was preparing for this podcast, I thought that I should probably look up a true definition so I did just that. Merriam-Webster discusses the word resilience in t...

Since starting the podcast, I have often discussed how the mind and body are closely intertwined and how during our grief, one affects the other. Grief doesn't just make us sad. It impacts every aspect of our lives including our bodies. Just a few weeks ago, Gwen and I did an entire episode focusing on how our bodies are affected by grief. As we were preparing for that episode, Gwen suggested talk...

When listening to today's episode, you will likely not believe the number of times the word 'hope' is spoken. From the very first day that Jimmy's 22-year-old son, Lee, was killed in a car accident 16 years ago, Jimmy has clung to hope. Initially, that hope was given to him by another bereaved father who stayed with him in his home after Lee died. He said that although Jimmy could not feel it at t...

When listening to the story of Donna's son, Andrew, I was immediately struck with how his life was touched by God. That is not to say Andrew didn't encounter difficulties. In fact, quite the opposite is true. God seemed to shut door after door in his face, but would at the exact right moment, open a window for life to take a new path. Andrew obediently crawled through each window. From a young age...

Today's episode is the long-awaited Ask Me Anything episode. Virtually all of the submitted questions were for my husband. Perhaps this should not be surprising. I am pretty much an open book on the podcast and am very open with my emotions. Dads can very much be a mystery when it comes to grief. They tend to hold their thoughts and feelings much closer to the chest than moms do. This point was on...

When 13-month-old, Elizabeth was diagnosed with cancer, her parents immediately turned to traditional medicine as most parents do. She had a very aggressive, rare brain tumor that required risky surgery. After the surgery, Elizabeth started chemotherapy. After a brief remission, the tumor returned, and they tried more chemotherapy. After Elizabeth's second relapse, she was 3 years old, therefore q...

Today's guest, Elizabeth, has learned much in the years since her 8-year-old daughter, Erin, was killed while on a hike in the mountains near Vancouver. It was three days before Christmas, and suddenly, life was destroyed. Her perfect little family of four was gone. She was left with her husband and 10-year-old son, trying to decide if Santa should still bring presents for a dead child.  After Eri...

After talking with hundreds of bereaved parents over the past four years, we all seem to hold one fear in common. We are all scared, no matter how young or old our child was when they died, that over time, they will be forgotten. We are afraid that we are the only people who will remember our children. Many parents, myself included, set up foundations in our child's name to help them be remembered...

Thinking back to the first hour after Andy died, I remember being in the emergency room and having such tremendous chest pain that I thought I must be having a heart attack. The ER staff actually put me through the CT scanner and obtained an EKG, but there was nothing physically wrong. Emotionally, however, everything was wrong. Andy was dead, and my whole world felt like it had been destroyed. Al...

A Thousand Pounds. That's what today's guest, Bri, decided to name the book that she wrote 14 years after suddenly losing her 10 1/2-month-old son, Lach (available here ). When Bri was thinking about what the pain of child loss felt like, she describes it as if you were suddenly asked to carry a thousand pounds with you everywhere you went. Even now, she does not think that the thousand pounds are...