darkness

Traveling Bags and Broken Hearts — Week 9: One Year Later

August 23, 2025

Traveling while grieving can become a sick game of “how many places can I be sad in?” Each new experience serves as a reminder of how I can never share any of this with my mom.

Grief mutes the senses and dulls the atmosphere. It prohibits its host from experiencing anything to the full. The infamous brain fog clouds everything one’s eyes behold and rains on the memory of one’s newest experiences.

Traveling is helpful, I suppose, in that it requires a massive amount of focus from one’s mind — one must keep moving, walking towards the goal of his or her next destination. One’s loss can’t be at the forefront of the mind when navigating unknown places, but the ache is there. It’s always there.

The deeper horror of how my mother died resides beneath the exhaustion of traveling with grief. Death is such an unwelcome visitor, knocking on the doors of our lives and bursting them open despite our protests. Illnesses can creep in to poison one’s life, accidents can wreak havoc and destroy life, wicked people can barge in and steal life, but what is this?

What is this?

How terrifying that one’s own mind can betray itself and create death in a most unnatural way. How terrifying that we can’t even see it coming.

And then there’s the stigma: Stigma about grief, stigma about suicide, stigma about mental health, and the deep shame these stigmas create for people who struggle and for survivors left behind by those who lost the battle. Stigmas that prevent people from getting help. How can one reach out for help when everyone around them expects to have the answers?

Our church did not/has not publicly acknowledged my Mom’s death — my mom, a highly influential staff member of the church. What type of message does that send to the stigmatized? What message does that send to the thousand who attended her service and who are in deep mourning?

Maybe they don’t address it because they’re terrified of it, too. Silence always helps, doesn’t it?

Ignoring problems never makes them go away: Silence simply suffocates the suffering, and stigma shames them into solitude.

There should not be shame in “having demons.” Life is abundantly difficult and misery isn’t something to be ashamed of. There should not be shame for having a good life and still struggling with terrible intrusive thoughts. You should be safe to voice that. You should not be shamed or silenced for voicing how horrible life can be and how tormenting your own mind can be. Even God acknowledged that it was not good for man to be alone. Even Jesus acknowledged that life is troublesome. Even Jesus asked for a different way out.

I return home from a trip I aimed to keep very private — there’s a comfort in enjoying quiet and hidden moments after the world discovers something so deeply personal out about one’s life — but all I can think of is the fact that my Mom won’t be there when I get home.

She used to say that she couldn’t wait to get home after traveling because “there’s no place like Florida.” She loved its warmth and its beauty and its vibrancy. She loved that it was home, and she built her home in the loveliest ways.

I can’t reconcile how someone who loved life so much, and who loved me so much, could execute the cruelest action against all that she loved.

I wish she thought that she could get help. I’m sickened that she couldn’t verbalize her struggle. I hate the stigma, I hate the silence, I hate the finality.

If you have ever — ever — ideated, please speak out. Seek a professional counselor and share your ideations. Don’t let shame kill you. Don’t let shame destroy everything that you do love in life.

Be there when someone gets home. Be there when your friend gets home. Be there when your family gets home. Be there to welcome your loved one back. Don’t let stigma take that from all of us.

August 26, 2026

There are so many things that are simply eternally somber when you’re a survivor. Holidays, birthdays, travels, any new experience: everything happy eclipses with hollowness because of the life-sized void filling one’s life.

We survivors simply learn to exist with the void, to carry it with us like another piece of luggage. Sometimes we utilize tools that make the baggage easier to carry, other times it feels as though the weight encompasses us entirely.

This time last year, my sister and I travelled to London with little bags and breaking hearts but we had a lovely time despite the heartache. We conversed while we explored, we reason while we walked, we navigated foreign streets while seeing pretty new things. It was a precious trip and it was a sweet trip. It was fun, too. I look forward to our next trip 💗.

So much of surviving is learning to live with sorrow beneath happiness, to cling to the old and dead while experiencing the new and wonderful.

So much of suffering while surviving suicide is derived from stigma. I don’t know if my mother’s former lead pastor ever acknowledged her death publicly. Again, what type of message does silence send? It saddens me for the people who looked for the church to teach them to mourn and were greeted with silence and stigma instead.

I have a few people who seem to only reach out to me when I write something about that church — that feels icky too, as if they reach out to admonish me or correct my perspective. It amuses me how many congregants are quick to justify their pastors’ transgressions and rebuke the wounded for writing the truth.

Stigma scares people from getting help. It shames them from considering help and hinders the realization that someone may need help. Judgement kills emotional vulnerability and teaches people to keep to themselves. Isolation festers unhealthy thoughts and behavior, and a mind decayed wholly can no longer seek help.

Stigma is not talking about it. Stigma is pretending everything is okay. Stigma is spiritually bypassing. Stigma is dismissing the reality of mental decay.

If we could only teach people to speak instead of to simply obey and conform, perhaps then people would truly be healthy.

Photo by Karley Hope Photography

I’m Sorry for Our Loss — Day 28: One Year Later

July 19, 2025

I have a lot of unread messages and a lot of comments I haven’t responded to, but I see them. I like to save them for nights and when I can’t sleep.

I am grateful for your overwhelming support, for the food, the gift cards, the cards, the encouraging messages, the comments, the phone calls. Thank you.

It’s hard to fathom we’re all here. It’s hard to accept. I wish so badly it wasn’t real — we all do. I am so sorry, I am so sorry for our loss. I am sorry you’re hurting so much, too.

My Mom had a beautiful and vast influence. She touched the hearts of many, and now the many mourn. I am sorry we’re all working through the weight of this quizzical grief.

I’m so sorry for my mom. I am so sad for her. I am endlessly sad for her. This is not what she would have wanted.

I am so haunted by answerless questions, and I know we all are. After Patrick died, one of my professors said “Knowing ‘why’ rarely helps,” and I have wholly believed that for years. Knowing why would never be enough — we would all think “we could have worked this out.”

I loved my Mom so much. I know we all did. I know that, in her right mind, she knew that too. I am devastated that she did not leave earth feeling that love. Maybe, maybe in her last few moments she did. Maybe she felt it all as she drew her last breath. Maybe she did, I hope she did.

When Patrick died, I had this vision of him entering heaven with tears pouring from his eyes while he said “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” and Jesus held him and said “It’s over, it’s over. You’re home now.”

I haven’t gotten a vision like that with my mom. Truthfully, I haven’t been able to picture her much at all… I think it is too painful for my mind to recollect at this point.

I am so sad her mind lied so cruelly, and I will forever be sad of that.

I wish so bad I could hold her hand one more time and remind her how much we love her. I wish so desperately she wasn’t gone. I would have loved more than anything to bear our burdens together. I know we all would.

I know this life will be good without my Mom, and I know too well how God brings grace and beauty from horror. But I hate that I have to say goodbye, and I hate that it will be good without my Mom. It reminds me so much of Tolkien’s famous words:

Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it’ll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why.

Two Towers

I love you, Mommy. I’ll always love you.

Distraught. On Losing a Parent to Suicide— Day 26: One Year Later

July 17, 2026

Losing a parent feels like losing one’s foundation.

Losing a parent to suicide feels like finding out one’s entire life was a lie.

Distraught – that has been the word most on my mind today.

Suicide makes one relive and rethink every interaction with the lost loved one, and, today, it’s made me angry. I’m angry that my Mom is gone. I’m envious of everyone who gets to have a mom. I see a mother loving her young children, and I think of my mother and how much I know she loved me and our family. But I see a mom with her young children and can’t help but think how could you [Mom] do this to me?

How could she be so hopeless? She truly had so many things she loved, looked forward to, and enjoyed about life. She never uttered a word about hopelessness, but it was there. Maybe it was always there.

Maybe every day for the past 51 years was a blessing, maybe every day was one more day than she thought possible. Who knows? We’ll never know, so it almost doesn’t even matter.

I am distraught. I am distraught that my mother had these thoughts. I am distraught that she couldn’t think of all the beautiful things she had to live for in her last day on earth. I’m distraught because, as hopeless as she clearly was, she did have so much that she loved and so much that she did look forward to.

I am distraught because I am angry with my mother for choosing this. I am angry at God for allowing it — which is likely bad theology, honestly. God gave man the power to choose, and my mother chose poorly on that day. I am distraught because I have to have all of these thoughts and think through all of these things. I am distraught because every day feels like I’m learning something tragic I didn’t know — as if my life hadn’t had enough tragedy in it already.

Thanks, Mom.

I am distraught because I loved my mom. I loved her so much, and any of us would have done anything for her. I am distraught because she hurt immeasurably bad and there is nothing I can ever do about that, ever. I am distraught because I will carry this devastation with me for the rest of my life.

I am distraught because I know that God is good, and that God will bring good and beautiful things into my life — things I will never get to share with my mother, whom I loved so much.

I am distraught because I have to watch my Dad and brothers not have a wife and a mother. I am distraught because I have to watch my husband and my in-laws not have their mother in law. I am distraught because I have to watch her friends not have their friend. My beautiful Momma.

I am distraught because she did this. I am distraught because, in her mind, she had to do this. I am distraught that people’s minds can do that to them.

I am distraught that little things in my house get messy — my bathtub needs cleaned, my library has books and pens that I don’t know what to do with because I’m still using them and still reading them.

I am proud. I am proud that I am brushing my hair every day. I am proud that I am getting up every day. I am proud that I am leaving the house every day. I am proud that Dad and I are going on bike rides every day. I am proud that I am eating every day. I am proud that I am showering [almost] every day — sometimes I don’t remember if I have or haven’t showered, but I know I’m brushing my hair and teeth each day. I am proud that I am exercising every day. I am proud that I am going to therapy. I am proud that I am doing the bare minimum to at least be physically okay. I am proud that I started reading my Bible each day. I am proud that I am letting people help and support me. I am proud of a lot, and I am thankful for a lot.

Parents really are foundational. I feel like a house whose foundation has cracked in half. Restore me, Lord, for my foundation crumbled.

I have enough without my mom. My life is still good without my mom, but, God, I wish I had my mom to share my life with.

July 17, 2026

This post resonates with me deeply.

I vividly remember the utter anguish of those mere 26 days after suicide destroyed her. Back then, it was unfathomable to imagine living without her. Now, I’ve already grown accustomed to her absence, but all of life remains foreign to me. Existential dread fades to a quieter, guttural anxiety; no longer the terror of losing her, but the constant ache and exhausting reality of living without her.

I’m still distraught about everything mentioned a year ago, and I always will be. I’ve learned how to carry the anguish, the disappointment, and the horror of it all.

* * * *

The American Society for Suicide Prevention asserts suicide is not a “choice” that its victims make. Our laws even protect people by means of an insanity defense: defendants admit their actions but cannot be found culpable because of their severe mental impairment (illness).

I’ve read that calling suicide a choice is both inaccurate and increases the stigma around it. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Refusing to label suicide as a choice destigmatizes survivors — no one looks at the survivors of those who have died of cancer and blames family members. No one questions, “what did they do to them?” when someone dies of an illness. No one thinks their family is better because disease takes the life of someone else’s family.

In the same way, I suppose it does destigmatize those who died by suicide — no one calls those who died of an illness cowardly or selfish. No one claims it’s a person’s decision to have a fatal disease.

If we understand mental illness for what it is — an illness — they’re right. Rational people don’t make irrational choices and, ultimately, suicide is quintessentially irrational.

Maybe the act of suicide itself, like every other illness, is not the choice but the consequence of what happens when someone does not seek proper medical treatment and intervention.

The knowledge of having an illness or disease, however, provides the choice [and the responsibility] to seek treatment.

People who ideate — people who think things like “I’d be better off dead,” “they’d be better off dead,” “if I could just die and go to heaven, it wouldn’t have to be like this anymore,” “it would be easier if I were gone” — have the choice and the responsibility to seek treatment. These are neither normal nor safe thoughts: they are clear indicators that you are suicidal. Wishing away your life in the hopes of heaven isn’t faithful, it’s suicidal.

I think some people may not realize how mentally unhealthy they are because it’s common for people to joke about death. I hear phrases like “kill me now,” or “shoot me if ___ happens” or “it’s so boring, I’d rather die than sit through ___” weekly, if not daily, laughed at as sarcastic comments. These phrases normalize suicidal thoughts. Some churches unintentionally perpetuate this in their messages on heaven and Christ’s return — longing for Christ’s return as if He didn’t already bring salvation to earth. It’s not a healthy teaching to preach people to wish their lives away; it’s not preaching salvation, it’s preaching suicide.

Maybe people do not ultimately choose to die by suicide, but many have the opportunity to choose treatment and help for their mental illness.

Whether or not my mom chose to die by suicide, she did choose not to seek treatment. That feels personal. That hurts. That is part of what makes surviving suicide so terribly complex.

* * * *

I choose to live.

Despite the pain, despite the tragedy, despite the judgement, despite the cruelty, despite the anguish, despite the horror, despite how hard it is to carry the weight of what I’ve lived through.

I choose to heal.

To prioritize my mental health, to seek the treatment Mom wouldn’t, to live a full life.

I am so proud for the choices I’ve made and the person I have become since Mom’s life ended in ruins. I’m proud of the truths I’ve been seeking, and the lies I’ve rejected; truths built on fear aren’t truths, they’re distortions hiding insidious motives. All those little things, like brushing my hair every day when breathing felt impossible, have added up. I’m proud of who I am becoming and how I’m healing.

May we seek help when we need it.

May humility guide our thoughts and our beliefs.

May we see God.

May we know his compassionate love.

May We Love — Day 19: One Year Later

July 10, 2025

Today was hard.

I’m not really sure what to type today, but I set out to write and publish 30 days of thoughts to give people a glimpse into the world of a survivor.

“Suicide,” “murder,” “survivor” — these are all words I never thought would be so incredibly personal and defining in my life. I remember the first time I really learned in-depth about suicide the was in an eighth or ninth grade English class, studying Thirteen Reasons Why. I didn’t care much for the book then… I detest it even more now. I had no idea, back then, that suicide would claim as least a third of my family.

It’s so dark, so horrific. I observe that most shy away from the topic. Families have been shamed, judgement often cast at survivors. Survivors — what a heavy title. Institutions often choose not to address it corporately. I assume so few understand the depth of the concept, and people often flounder when they are unfamiliar with something so dark, so scary, and so sensitive.

The band Twenty One Pilots engages in the conversation. Their song “Neon Gravestones,” discusses how culture has glorified suicide, stating it’s “further engraving an earlier grave is an optional way.” Contrasting the idealized perspective, the band ends the song with the following lyrics:

Find your grandparents or someone of age
Pay some respects for the path that they paved
To life they were dedicated
Now, that should be celebrated!

The beginning of the song highlights a dangerous mindset:

“Keep your wits about you while you got ’em
‘Cause your wits are first to go while you’re problem-solving”

This is a dark post, but I do want to bring awareness to this epidemic.

For those who are struggling, ending your life does not solve the problem. Your pain and your hurt are real. It may feel absolutely impossible, but you can heal. Your life can be redeemed. This pain, it will be redeemed.

This is not the end of our story.

July 10, 2026

Today was a hard day too, but not one fraught with many tears.

“Tears are a gift,” my therapist once explained: “sometimes you’re given them, other times you are not.”

My post Words of Life & Death — Day 18: One Year Later elucidates to the incredible power of words. Words can encourage, they can build, they can affirm love, they can cultivate safety, they can bring healing. Or they can discourage, tear down, destroy love, prompt fear, and bring suffering.

Words and relationships can rapidly turn from compassionate and loving to judgmental and criticizing.

People, with their words, shame and criticize survivors long after the day of death. Common phrases contemptuously uttered, such as “well, if I were you,” “you should have,” “I would have,” plague survivors. Phrases bolstered with pride, uttered harshly with intent to harm, and claimed with little experience.

Judgement and shame seldom soften hearts — they simply teach those around you to hide from you.

Condemnation doesn’t change people: it prompts them to deny, suppress, and withhold pieces of themselves.

Life is harsh. Words can make it harsher.

The reality of surviving suicide means an exposure of your life for everyone else’s judgements: nothing we do is right, nothing we did is right.

If we say too much, it’s inappropriate. If we don’t say enough, it’s inconsiderate.

Love doesn’t judge — love demonstrates compassion and mercy. Love doesn’t condemn— it comes alongside and restores.

Love frees. Love builds. Love heals.

Love conquers the bleakest moments, and its love that makes life worth living and relationships worth keeping.

May we love one another freely, earnestly, and healthily.

May we care for our own mental health and processing. May we refuse to implement our needs and our perspectives onto another.

May love and humility guide our words and soften our hearts.

Who is God? — Day 9: One Year Later

June 30, 2025

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 now 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 💙

June 30, 2026

God is faithful. His faithful love endures forever.

I’ve grown through the year — not that suffering is meant for one to grow, but that God can bring the blessing of growth and new perspective despite suffering. I reject the notion that anyone “needs” suffering to glean a cosmic understanding, but I acknowledge that committing to healing and renewed life can provide a beautiful glimpse into ethereal understanding.

It is better when people dwell in unity, and I miss the moments when I perceived my mother’s church as a safe place to attend. Maybe that safety was real, maybe it was an illusion. Maybe catastrophic loss changed things for the worse or perhaps it revealed a truth that was always there.

This particular Sunday was one of the most influential in my memory because of the sweet group of friends that continued to meet my family exactly where we were at. Their profound generosity and kindness shines brightly in my otherwise darkened memory: they provided for us for months. They gave sweet notes and gift cards that lasted until I returned back to work. The profound sadness and stress of losing my Momma was/is horrific to bear, but they eased that burden by ensuring that I did not need to worry about returning to work. I did not need to worry about what we would eat or how we would make it — they met those needs in the most incredible ways.

I think some supporters can feel an element of guilt because they are not sure how to support, nor do they feel that their support is enough, but support as detailed above enables more healing than supporters can imagine. People who acknowledge the loss, empathize with a griever’s perspective, and provide physical support for things we grievers can barely think about are earnest. There is nothing to be guilty about here, in fact, it’s something a griever cannot “repay.”

To a supporter, it may seem trivial that they had one honest and empathetic conversation or provided money towards a gift card or a meal while expecting nothing in return, but to a survivor this is the bread of life. This is the kindness that kept us from sinking, this is the provision that kept us eating, this is the support that allowed our mind to focus on healing from the loss instead of focusing on how we are going to afford to survive.

Kindness, compassion, and love change the world.

Kindness, compassion, and love nurture healing.

Above all, God is love.

* * * *

A deluge of questions barraged my mind back then. What was a flood dwindled to a trickle of ever-present drops of questions, much less intense but nevertheless constant. Healing harvests new worldviews, and these are my new perspectives on those old questions:

• Good fathers are supposed to protect their family. Why don’t you [God] protect mine? God is love. Love protects, but love cannot control all outcomes. My perspective on the idea that God “allows” certain outcomes was most challenged by Thomas Jay Oord’s book God Can’t, as I have previously mentioned. I believe that God gave people free will, and that people harm one another. In this specific case, it was my Momma who harmed our family [not God]. Individuals are accountable for their actions because of their free will. God is love, and love protects. If God could protect from this harm, He would.

• If Jesus is the abundant life, how could my mom die? She loved him. How much we love God and/or others does not cure, manage, or heal mental illness. People who love Jesus can be suicidal. People who love Jesus can be delusional. One’s love for God and other people is simply not enough to keep him or her alive. There is no relationship between theological beliefs and mental illness — belief or love of Jesus does not fix mental illness at all. In fact, people can put their entire hope and joy in heaven and begin to loathe this beautiful life they were given. I call this idea Christian Escapism: the belief that one’s life is altogether terrible and it would be better to unite with Christ in one’s idealized imagined heaven. Life is always a gift, life is always a blessing. We were not given the gift of life simply to die.

• If he [God] knew what Mom needed, why weren’t her needs met? Mom’s needs could have been met. She was an educated white woman in America, with more friends and connections that most people have in their lifetime. She had the resources available. She had the support available. She was capable of having her needs, whatever they were, met. Mental illness creates delusions — delusions that choices are limited, that life is altogether horrible, that our pain will always be all-consuming. It isn’t God’s fault that my Mother did not pursue life and healing, and I believe that it is as tragic to God as it is to us.

I do not fear what God allows anymore. I fear what man is capable of, and what man will choose to do with his or her freedom. I fear what people will do with their brokenness and hurt. I fear what people will do with their anger and frustration. Emotions offer so much insight into who we are as individuals: they reveal what is important to us and help us experience the fullness of life in its brevity and elation. They are a gift, but a gift that requires nurturing and tending. I fear what people will do when they do not tend to their emotions and when they do not pursue healing.

The God who Heals — Day 6: One Year Later

June 27, 2025

This surreal week will haunt me for the rest of my life, and yet I’ll remember your kindness vividly in the days to come.

Love permeates everything and its warmth reaches my deep wounds. Tonight, I remember that the New Testament word “Salvation” is the same Greek/Hebrew word for “Healing”. Jehova-Rapha: The God who Heals, written throughout the Old Testament. The God who heals broken hearts and broken minds. The God who binds our wounds and holds us up. El Roi: The God who Sees. The God who sees me — who sees us in our pain.

I live amongst a community of mourners: I know you’re hurting too. I know you loved her, and I know it’s so hard to fathom life without her. She was such a light, such a joy, and so… “sparkly” as my Grandpa, my mom’s dad, described. I love it – she was so sparkly.

Life is so confusing right now. It still doesn’t feel real, until it hits and it hurts excruciatingly. I don’t want it to feel real, I don’t want it to be real. None of us do.

Thank you for being here, for watching, for reading. For holding my hand, playing with my hair, and hugging me. Thank you for loving my mom.

Be well tonight and get some rest 💙 Live loved.

June 27, 2026

The mind works restlessly to comprehend catastrophic loss. In early days and weeks — perhaps even months — after Mom died, I vividly dreamed of her but could not reach her. I knew she was dead during each dream, then I would wake up after a fitful hour or two of sleep and blankly stare into the darkness

Those memories haunt.

We became a community of mourners that day, ever changed by a choice we were powerless control.

Kindness powerfully redeems and heals wounded hearts and minds, but individuals must take ownership of their healing.

Admitting sadness isn’t enough. Admitting depression and anxiety isn’t enough. Admitting isolation isn’t enough. It’s a massive step in the right direction, as many [like my Momma] refuse to admit or acknowledge it to begin with, but saying it aloud isn’t enough to heal someone.

Coming to terms with the reality of one’s own mental fragility can be incredibly painful, vulnerable, dark, and frightening. Yet it is in this darkness that seeds of healing begin to grow when watered with kindness and compassion.

I have been amazed at people’s kindness and cruelty amidst this horror, but I believe that there have been far more kind actions than actions meant to harm. It’s unfortunate that the cruel actions cause such rippling dramas, but it is the compassion that acts as a raft to carry us through.

He is the God who heals and the God who sees, and this healing and seeing often comes from people who peer into our lives to offer compassion.

Thank you for joining me on this lonely and isolating journey, and making me feel less alone 💙

Details of Death — Day 4: One Year Later

June 25, 2025

My mind is… occupied. Lots of people coming into town, lots of arrangements to be made, lots of logistics to coordinate, lots of thoughts to think.

I started to get snippy today and short-tempered. I don’t like that, but thankfully I have a lot of wonderfully gracious people to talk things out with.

There are so many details in death. I feel so much older than I am.

Be in the youngest in my family, I will likely be involved in the funeral planning of the majority of my family, so I guess I am really learning how to do this by myself one day. I just hope it’s not anytime soon.

Anxiety starts to mature within me. Who’s next? I ponder as I look around our table. It’s scary.

I’ve been here before — it provides a nice kind of structure of what I think the mourning process will be like over the next few months, but it also brings a sickening dread — How much will it all hurt when everyone leaves and life goes back to “normal”?

I miss my mom. Sometimes it’s a searing pain, sometimes it’s a dull ache. It will be like that forever.

Thank you to everyone who has reached out — I have an abundance of messages I cannot keep up with, but I do enjoy reading them and appreciate your encouragement and support. I read them in small doses when I want a distraction.

Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

Saying “Your mom is always with you,” is not helpful. Perhaps it will be in the future, but in the first few days it’s more of a reminder of the chasm between my life and my mom’s death.

June 25, 2026

I’ve mostly accepted the fact that my youth died ages ago. I don’t ever remember feeling young, but these deaths make me feel half a century older than I am.

I remember watching Patrick [high] in a hospital bed, crying alone and thinking how much that had aged me. I felt much closer to fifty than to twenty-one.

Then Mom died, and I feel older and older and older.

I’ve never been “young and full of energy.”

It feels like I never experienced youth, and now I’m starting to age out of it anyway.

My sweet friend Lauren left me this basked on June 25 last year. She flew into town immediately, and she and our friends Gabi and Laura Kate provided the gifts.

There is no sweeter gift than showing up for one’s friend, physically or emotionally, during crisis and suffering. These little things imprint on one’s heart and ease the endless ache.

June 2026

Drowning in Tears — Day 2: One Year Later

June 22, 2025

I answered most of my messages sometime between 3 and 5 AM, messages so sweet and so thoughtful, and then I fell asleep once more and woke drenched in tears.

There’s a difference in seeing support and experiencing it: meal after meal delivered, my home cleaned by sweet friends, people hugging us through tears.

We went to church today, twice actually, and it was so sweet and healing.

My mom devoted herself to her family and to so many — we’re benefiting from all the lives she touched. She loved them well, and now they’re loving us well.

People brought us meals immediately, but to be held by so many filled me with thanksgiving and sorrow.

I’ve always loved alone time, but right now it’s too hard — I took a bath today, thinking it would be relaxing, but I rushed out of it because the quiet was too overwhelming. Did she know I loved her? Was I a bad daughter? Too many thoughts haunt me, and my tears seemed to drown me in the tub.

“My Momma, my Momma, my Momma,” I can’t stop mumbling.

It’s excruciatingly painful. Incommunicably hard.

We feel so supported and we feel so loved. We’re all saturated in tears.

I loved my Momma.

June 22, 2026

Oof, it’s ironic to read this one. That first day back at church was sweet — it was one day of corporate mourning, never spoken of again from the pulpit.

It was nearly one year before I heard from the church’s executive staff — they sent a thoughtful card and flowers last week, which was kind.

I’ve regained my love for solitude and can process the pain in silence now. I remember how scary and painful that first bath was. It is really impossible to communicate the sheer horror of surviving suicide. I have never experienced a more poignant fear than the fear of living through suicide.

When I was young, long before death arrived my doorstep. I used to ponder the verse about how God records our tears in a bottle (Psalm 56:8). I imagine that I had one of the largest bottles imaginable that was a naïve thought, there are many with pain beyond my own imagination, but back then I couldn’t imagine anyone was more pain than me.

My mother did not take kindly to my tears, so I had to hide them from her. Perhaps one’s inability to allow another’s crying and natural sadness is one of the first signs that someone is mentally unwell. I had to find places to shelter my sadness. I often called them my “crying corners.” if you went to middle school or high school with me, he probably remembered one of my crying corners at home, I would sit in the corner of my tiny closet and put the clothes over my face to muffle my tears.

I have a walk-in closet now, and though I do not need to hide my tears from my husband, my closet remains my favorite place to the to allow my emotions freely flow. 

Scott began this puzzle on June 22, 2025, and now it’s finished and hanging in our living room. These simple things mark the passage of time and the new lives she’s forced us to build without her.

I will cry for these things forever, and my tears are proof that she existed. They are proof of her love, and proof of my love for her.

A Stolen Life

Oh how beautiful this life would be
if only you chose to stay with me.

Instead, in solemn sorrow you lost your mind
and chose to leave this weary world behind.

Violence overtook your meekest soul
and love was lost with this beautiful life you stole.

Week 27

“Merry Christmas!” “Happy Holidays!” “Joy to the World!” We proclaim in the darkest season, with the brightest lights illuminating our obsidian neighborhoods. The most light-centric and joyous holidays amidst the coldest and darkest moments of the year — it’s a beautiful tradition. Warm hot chocolates in our hands and cozy candles on our shelves, and sorrow in many of our hearts.

Yes, firsts are hard. First Christmas without Mommy. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. Holidays are particularly difficult because they are family-centric: extended families gather and honor traditions. Most of our siblings have kids… all my nieces and nephews have a Mommy. My husband has a Mommy, and his Momma has a Mommy too. Everyone has a Mommy… except me and my siblings. “Why don’t I get to have a Mommy?” I ask Scott, through reddened eyes. Most of us have a spouse, too, except my Daddy. She’s gone now. Holidays and family gatherings like these amplify the isolation we already feel. The void my mother left companions us always, but holidays can make it feel as though a spotlight highlights the void.

Togetherness, though, feels like medicine for this severing pain. When something like this happens to one’s family, uniting with surviving family members is like taking aleve or ibuprofen: we’re all fully aware of the gaping wound, we all still feel it, but there’s a measure of relief in each other’s company. Days leading up to the reunion pass slowly and agonizingly. We hold our breath until we can hold each other in our loving arms, united by our terribly sealed past and fighting to press on towards a healthier future.

There’s ease with this reunion. There’s a peace in shared pain, an unspoken understanding, and a space to speak about a pain only we few understand. It provides a chance to process together and to share our pain… togetherness brings healing.

This Christmas, this thought assails me: two-thousand years ago, a baby lived and died and changed the world. Six months ago, my mother died because she wanted to meet that baby. She didn’t want to wait any longer to meet her precious Jesus. These days, I often wonder if my family would have been far better off without the Church (global, not any specific church). The idolization of heaven has killed two of my family members. That’s not what Jesus wanted, I know, but our pain-saturated culture seems obsessed with this unobtainable paradise.

The point of life is not to get to heaven, and heaven is not our home… at least, not yet. Heaven may be God’s dwelling place, and it may be the land of the dead, and it may be a place of renewal and eternity, but heaven isn’t everything and it’s not the point of our existence.

Jesus came to restore the earth. Jesus came to heal the earth. Jesus didn’t come so that we would scorn and leave the earth, and Jesus didn’t come for Christians to wish their lives away hoping in heaven. On my Mom’s best days, she knew that. She taught that, she lived that.

I’m not sure if my family would have been better off without the Church, but I think dreams of heaven are dangerous to those who suffer from mental illness.

Bring heaven to earth. Bring healing to earth. Bring joy to earth. Bring peace to earth. Isn’t that why Jesus came?

Your kingdom come, Your will be done

On earth as it is in heaven