community

Week 19

I leave old sticky notes from my mother around the house because… what else should I do with them when I find them? I don’t want to throw them away and I don’t want to put them away, either. So they sit out, collecting dust, beguiling to be read, hauntingly there.

In the first few weeks following Mom’s death, so many loving people gave and gave and gave. Aside from meals that nourished my whole family, people gave me face masks, candles, stickers, socks, etc.

Peoples’ hearts can be so beautiful in heartbreak.

At the time, I had so little capacity to process the gifts, so I set them aside as if part of a collection. Now, I can’t even remember who all gave things. Someone gave me a necklace — I don’t remember who now. She gave a card, but it was separated from the necklace. I can’t remember who to say “thank you,” to… but…

Thank you.

Thank you each person who gave food or a card or some piece of comfort. Thank you for reaching out, thank you for reading these, thank you for commenting, thank you for showing up and bearing witness to a pain that seems as unbearable as it is. It’s not easy or comfortable to watch this incomprehensible level of pain. I know many of you who knew and loved my Momma hurt too, and many of you who simply know me hurt for me. Thank you for giving out of your pain and for showing up.

I tried to go through that collection of gifts — those tokens of love and comfort — yesterday, 133 days later, but I still can’t get through it. It’s still too raw, it’s still too fresh of a reminder that my world was ripped apart… that my Mommy is gone. Yet, the things that I got through reminded me of all the love you have given me and all of the love you had for my Momma. It felt raw to touch and see these gifts of love from people I could not even remember. So I will try again another day, and be reminded once more of all this love.

Love is all we have left, and love is both enough and not impossibly enough at all. But love does, as the old saying teaches, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends,” and what is grief but love that persists?

Day 22

We don’t have to be afraid of our emotions, we don’t have to be afraid of experiencing deep sadness and despair, but we should be afraid of not sharing those emotions. We should be afraid of bottling up our feelings, we should be afraid to pretend everything is okay, we should be afraid of running/hiding/escaping from our pain.

Pain demands to be felt. When we ignore it or when we hide it from the world, we destroy ourselves. It’s not fun to be sad, it doesn’t feel good, but it is vital to our health and to the health of our community.

Isolation demands secrets and keeps one quiet. Feeling one’s pain will not ruin oneself, but unshared thoughts and feelings can consume their host.

True community, sincere authenticity, and genuine friendship begin when honesty permeates every interaction. The pain that we conceal cannot stay hidden. We cannot protect our hearts from feeling deep heartbreak, but we can grow and heal from that hurt. Sharing our pain creates a system of rivers and waterways that lead to an ocean of safety — it protects from flooding and destruction that unchecked thoughts create.

Yes, enjoy privacy, yes, be discreet, yes, be careful with whom you share your inmost thoughts, but make no mistake: you must share. Be honest with yourself about your thoughts and feelings, and be open with your friends.

The only way we overcome darkness is with light — the light of honesty and truth.

Day 21

Grief spotlights time’s relativity. It’s been three weeks since…

It feels like three years, or sometimes three days. The days are all different but the heartache remains the same. Feelings. They’re just that — feelings. They’re aren’t good feelings, and there aren’t bad feelings. They are just feelings, each one with important messages and memories.

Sadness, I think, we feel most acutely. We feel grief, sadness, and trauma with all of the senses: it leaks from our eyes, it steals our taste, it stuffs our smell, it quickens our heartbeats, it deafens our ears. It makes us painfully aware of our thoughts and processes and it highlights both past memories and future dreams. We’re somehow the most vivid versions of ourselves in deep suffering, because it fractures our capacity to be anything else.

We’re raw, exposed, and in need of help, love, and compassion. We need all these while happy, but we feel the need for them most in sorrow. Our walls crumble in hardship because our defenses are broken — we no longer have the energy to organize thoughts and feelings and responses in a tidy manner.

Perhaps we are most ourselves when we allow sorrow to guide us. When we do, we are sensitive both to the more painful emotions but likewise sensitive to gratitude and awe. In the years to come, I will remember this deep and sacred pain, but I will remember your kindness too. I will remember the friends and family who joined me in my grief, who sat with me while I mumbled, who kept checking in, who brought me food, who gave generously without expectation. I will remember all the good as much as I remember the horror, because, at this time, I am most sensitive and most receptive to it all.

That is the beauty of sorrow and heartbreak. That is the beauty of love. This heightened sensitivity opens the core of who we are and allows others to love the deepest part of ourselves.

Day 18

One day, I will run out of pictures of me and Mom. That thought haunts me every time I write one of these posts.

I feel bad for the kids who will grow up with ChatGBT, for they may never know the therapeutic art of writing.


“From the fruit of a person’s mouth his stomach is satisfied; he is filled with the product of his lips.  Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. ”‭‭

Proverbs‬ ‭18‬:‭20‬-‭21‬, CSB

I’ve thought a lot about words recently: which words lead to life and which lead to death. Words are incredibly powerful. With a mere sentence, one can build up and encourage or one can destroy hope.

One of the first few phrases I uttered after I found out about my Mom’s death was “I can’t do this. I can’t lose my Mom. Scott, I can’t lose my Mom. I can’t lose my Momma. Not my Momma,” I voiced in horror as the concept became a reality.

I’ve thought about that a lot: “I can’t do this,” but the truth is, I can. I don’t want to and I wish more than anything in the world that it wasn’t true, but I can do it. Then, I thought about how the phrases “I can’t do this” and “I can’t handle this,” are statements that lead to death. They’re dangerous – voicing and thinking them concedes defeat before endurance begins.

Thus, I am working to eliminate them from my vocabulary. I can handle this, I can do this, and you can, too.

Life and death are in the tongue, but the tongue only voices what the mind first conceptualized. We must retrain our minds to prepare for the trials we endure.

You and I — we can do this. We are going to make it. We can do this together, we must do this together. Isolation, avoidance, and silence destroy us. Together, we can share our burdens, we can support one another, and we can learn to love and to grow amidst what feels like a nightmare.

I wish my Momma would have chosen together. I wish she would have shared. If she were in her right mind, I believe she would have. We honor her when we share our burdens — it’s what she wanted for and from all of us.

She didn’t want this, not really. She spent the last few years of her life dedicated to preventing this type of reality. That was real. Her passion was real. Her detest for this type of pain was real, but, on that abhorrent day, she believed she couldn’t handle it, and she made that decision alone.

You can handle it. I can handle it. We can handle it together 💙. In her right mind, that is what she would have wanted.

Day 16

Silence. Quiet. Peaceful, terrible.

Tomorrow will be the first day without any guests. All have gone home, and my father, my brother, and I will experience our first bouts of alone time. It’s necessary, it’s healing, and it will likely be painful.

Torrents of grief, sacred and terrible, assuage we mourners. I’ve loved and appreciated the depth and beauty of sadness, but I still hate enduring it at this level of intensity. Sorrow opens one’s eyes to a new world and demands a new perspective from the sufferer. This new perspective can make one bitter or it can make him or her more compassionate, but it either way the perspective shift prompts a response.

Grief is traumatic. It assaults the mind and the nervous system. It manifests itself in sadness and anxiety. It steals sleep from some and it keeps others in bed for days. It produces shaky hands and sore eyes. It creates fear and mistrust. It eliminates filters and threatens boundaries that otherwise would protect its victims.

We aren’t strong, we mourners, we are incredibly weak. We are at our most vulnerable and most sensitive. We are raw. We hurt, often more than we ever deemed imaginable or bearable. Yet, we bear it.

Some watch mourners with awe and amazement — unsure how we could function. Some are offended if a mourner is snappy or not as “bubbly” as normal. Some prefer to look away, noting how painful it is to even think about what a mourner endures.

Grief manifests differently in every individual because of the uniqueness of every single relationship; while that makes each person’s experience vastly personal, a wondrous communal aspect exists when we mourn the same individual.

It’s private, and it’s not. It’s personal, and it’s shared.

Mourning callously brings out both the best and the worst in people, because we join together in our grief but can quickly isolate from offenses and hurts. We are vulnerable, we are tired, and we are boundlessly sad.

When we love each other and show up for one another and extend continuous grace — that is when we mourn well.

We mourn because we lost someone so incredibly precious, and we cannot stop loving them. Love transcends time, space, and even death. Love well.

Above all, love each other deeply for love covers a multitude of sins

I Peter 4:8

Day 14

Two weeks.

There’s a weight so heavy on my chest I feel like I can barely breathe. It feels like I am operating at 50% of my normal capacity, if that. It feels so heavy. What does that even mean? Why does it legitimately feel like there is a weight pressed against my lungs, collapsing them? How does that work? How does the body do that?

I thought we had something special, me and my mom. I thought we had a great relationship. Now I feel like I didn’t even know her. Who was this woman I spent so much time with? I thought she liked being with me, I thought she wanted to be in my life, I thought she wanted to be here. But in the end, she wanted to leave me. It wasn’t worth it for her to stay in my life. She didn’t want to see me grow up anymore. I thought we were going to be two old ladies together. I thought she wanted me. I thought she wanted me. Did she think I did not love her? Why weren’t we enough?

I hate my name. I’ve hated it for a long time. My mom gave me this name because she hoped so badly for me… what good did that do for her? It’s so cruel to be named Hope when it feels like so many people in my world are hopeless.

“Hopey, you’re my Hope. You make me believe that everything’s going to be okay and that we’re really going to make it.” That’s what my brother Patrick told me two days before he ended his life. Once he died, I really started to hate my name.

Before that, I was always a pessimist. It felt so ironic to be called “hope” when I so seldom experienced hope myself.

Now this? I hate my name. It feels so cruel tonight.

Why did I start writing these? I keep asking myself that. More precisely, why did I start publishing these? I’ve loved writing for my entire life. I used to write fantastical stories, dreaming worlds late into the night when I was just a young girl. Then in puberty I started writing to cope with my ever-changing world. Now, I almost exclusively write when my emotions cloud my head, spill out of my eyes, and pours from an ink pen onto a blank page.

So, why did I start publishing these?

After Patrick died, I seriously isolated myself. I did not answer my phone for over a month and I had no desire to make contact with the outside world.

In our American culture, grief is so private. Suicide is beyond taboo, and people in mourning may be given three days of bereavement leave. Three days… how pathetic. Our culture almost treats grief like something to be ashamed of or to be quickly gotten over. Because of this, death and grief are seldom discussed and very few — especially at my ripe old age of 27 — people have much of a framework/understanding of mourning and grief.

Grief shouldn’t isolate. It should be something that pulls us all together, something that makes us stop and hold one another closer, something that prompts us to change our lives for the better.

As my friend Olivia Chancellor always says “Alone is a lie.” Maybe if I share my thoughts, others will have the courage to share theirs too. Thoughts can be scary and painful and feel so isolating, but alone is a lie. “Everything that is exposed by the light becomes visible–and everything that is illuminated becomes light,” Ephesians 5:13. It’s only when we share our darkest thoughts that we are truly able to heal from them.

I want to live. I want to have a life full of beauty and joy and pain and wonder. I want to experience it all. I want to be fully present. I want to experience life to the full in every possible way, no matter how it hurts.

I don’t want to move on from this. I will be carrying this for the rest of my life, and I want to grow and learn to carry this with grace and love and even hope. I want to live, and I want to live well.

Day 12

This is actually my second “Day 12” post: I deleted the first one because out of my wounds, I may have wounded another. As I heard John Mark Comer state, “our wickedness is fueled by our wounds.” I was childish in venting my frustrations with a person to the public, and I owe that individual and anyone who read my first post an apology. This is not the time, place, or space to address something of that nature. Especially because I know that person is hurting, too.

It’s heavy. It’s burdensome. Thoughts and sentences and simple human interaction, right now, is hard for me, it’s hard for my family, and it’s hard for our entire community. We all need grace, and grace in abundance.

Most of the time, I simply feel sick. I have no appetite [but don’t worry, I am eating], I feel nauseous and out-of-it and sad. I feel grateful, I feel sad, and I feel numb. Humans are so complex, how is it that we feel so much at the same time?

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We have been provided for in every way from the generous people from our church: “Give us this day our daily bread,” comes alive when each meal we have has been provided, with each meal perfectly supplying enough for my family each day. That has been beautiful and heartwarming and uplifting. People have been the hands and feet of Jesus each day, serving us, providing for us, ministering to us, and caring for us, and it has been astonishing and incredible to experience.

I cannot over-emphasize how grateful I am for our community and how in-awe I am for how we have been treated and loved.

I’ve never felt more provided for or taken care of than I do right now. “God is near to the broken hearted and saves the crushed in spirit” Psalm 34:18. I believe that now more than ever, despite my inevitable deconstruction. I believe it’s far easier to dismiss God than to have faith and trust in him under circumstances like these — this is when faith and trust becomes real.

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Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning — Specifically Suicide Survivors

Saying “It doesn’t matter how they died,” is dismissive. When someone takes their own life, there is no natural cause, no illness, and no accident to blame.

Someone bereaved by suicide can only blame the person who committed the act, and his/her self. Suicide creates an arduous mental cycle. For me, it plays out something like this…

• I’m angry at my mom, she did this to me

• I’m confused. Why didn’t she reach out? Anyone would have helped her, I would have helped her

• I’m sad. She was in so much pain. What was she hopeless about? Why was she despairing?

• I’m confused and wounded. I don’t know what it’s like to have or to lose a child, but I cannot imagine she would give up life with her three living children because she was so desperate to be with her son. Her son, my brother, who also took his life.

• I’m sad, and I’m guilty. Did she know I loved her?

• I blame myself. Why didn’t I notice her? Why didn’t she want to confide in me? What did I miss?

And the cycle repeats. These are thoughts are examples of how suicide survivors think and process this type of death: grief from natural causes does not require this mental load. Thus, when one says that “it doesn’t matter how she died,” it points to their ignorance of the psychological impact and damage suicide survivors suffer.

Yes, all death is painful and comparing types of deaths certainly does not help anyone, but please try to understand the differences between a natural death and someone taking their own life.

Acknowledge the suicide survivor’s pain, and acknowledge your own pain. Vulnerability leads to life, bypassing of any type (spiritual bypassing, avoidance, denial, etc) leads to death. Take care of yourself — bypassing is not worth it.

Day 9

Our second church service since Mom left us filled me with encouragement once more. A healthy amount of tears dripped from my sore eyes onto my pallid cheeks as we sang of God’s good plans, his faithfulness, and his constance. All of which I believe, and I mean really believe.

However, I mentioned the dissonance between faith and desperate circumstances during Mom’s Celebration of Life, and I want to share more of what exactly that looks like. Suffering forces people to confront their inmost beliefs, and that is completely healthy and can become beautiful. My Mom loved Jesus with her entire being: the cacophony of confusion left in her wake prompts intense introspection and deconstruction.

Our Father in heaven,

your name be honored as holy.

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

Matthew 6:9-13, CSB

Now, please understand, I’m not looking for answers and I do not plan to provide any at this time, but I do want to share the questions clamoring in my mind. Thoughts that, perhaps, cloud your mind as well. Maybe sharing my thoughts will help those echoing the same to feel less alone and less afraid, because two thoughts can be true at the same time: one can trust God and be utterly confused and skeptical at the same time. Thus, my questions:

• Good fathers are supposed to protect their family. Why don’t you [God] protect mine?

• If Jesus is the abundant life, how could my mom die? She loved him.

• If he [God] knew what Mom needed, why weren’t her needs met?

I’ve said this so many times — I believe that God can do all things, but I fear what he will allow to happen. This is precisely why: I have not experienced twice how despair and hopelessness kill those whom I love, and those who legitimately love Jesus.

Today, I was incredibly overwhelmed by the generosity and the care from mine and Scott’s small group. They ensured our current needs were met and provided provisions for our future needs. My family has experienced such incredible and support from people being the hands and feet of Jesus, and, because of them, right now my faith remains strong. I wrestle through these complex questions, but it is abundantly clear that we have our daily bread, that God is providing and caring for us, and that we will get through this. I cannot thank our community enough for all they have done. You have eclipsed this horribly dark and tragic time with light and love and I am amazed and humbled at all of this. Thank you.

Tips for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

Acknowledging the situation is better than avoiding the topic altogether. It may be awkward to speak up, but a simple “I see you,” goes a long way 💙

I Write to the Griever; I Write to the Friend

Shame cloaks one in fear.  Fear keeps one in isolation.  Isolation repeats the cycle. 

It’s the tragic irony that prohibits us from knowing how to reach out to others when we need them most, and it’s often that same irony that keeps others from reaching out to us. 

The concealment of shame safely shields one from oneself and from others – at times I have been afraid to voice my concerns and share my story simply because the story itself frightened me.  Sharing makes life’s nightmares more real.  Other times, the fear of another’s someone misunderstanding has kept my fingers from typing and my mouth from speaking. 

But where does one turn when he or she internalizes those matters that are too dangerous to share with others?

I look to words – to books and to music, to poems and to plays – but what happens when there are no words?

The prevalence of centuries of literature whispers God’s mercy: one looks to the Psalms for comfort and contrition, the Old Testament stories and New Testament parables for history and application, and the prophecy books for detailed truth of who God has always been.  These precious words preserve timeless truth. It is God who bestows light and life into man, and man who reflects the image of God (Genesis 1, John 1). 

Mankind mirrors fractures of God’s mercy, not because God’s mercy is broken, but because we are broken and fallen creatures.  Mercy cracks through the brokenness of man, reflecting the glory of God, through the gift of man’s words. 

Words meant to heal, words crafted to explain, words written to comfort.  Words to bring the shamed out of isolation and into compassion: words powerful enough to help the confused and broken feel understood and validated.  

I didn’t get those words.  I couldn’t find them. 

When my world fell apart, I fell with it, and there were so few resources to explain.  No one writes about the loss of a sibling, though most of the deceased are survived by siblings.  It’s rare for young people to experience and detail loss. 

And grieving a “complicated death” (ie: suicide, murder)?  Some psychologists write to attempt to explain, but few first-hand accounts exist.  These deaths are shrouded in the shame of the survived, leaving the survived isolated, tabooed, and unreached.

I intend to share the depths of a griever’s experience as a sibling, as a friend, as a woman, as a youth, and as a survivor.  In weeks to come, I will share excerpts from my journals to convey the intensities of loss and the miracles of mercy. Some excerpts may be incredibly intense and seem hopeless, but these are the details of redemption and lament.

In the end, we’re each the griever and the friend.

So, let’s break the cycle.  Truth is not powerless. Isolation, shame, and fear are powerless.