life after death

A Family Fractured, A Truth Exposed — Week 11: One Year Later

September 6, 2025

I began writing these posts to bring awareness to grief, loss, and surviving suicide.

I lost my brother to suicide when I was 21: back then, very few people in my life had experienced any type of familial loss. I lost my mother to suicide when I was 27, and, still, few people in my life have experienced familial loss.

A majority of people my age haven’t experienced loss, and a majority of people who have experienced loss have not experienced suicide.

Most people reading these posts know me and my family, and have thus now been affected by suicide.

These posts are meant to bring awareness and to highlight a community of mourners. I try to write about my individual experience with grief and it seems that many have found solace and community from these words.

A few weeks ago, I wrote how many have experienced me at my worst while I have experienced them at their best — their tenderest, their most thoughtful, their most considerate, their most generous. It has been beautiful to see people show up for me and my family.

I would be remiss not to mention how this brings out the worst in us, too. Unexpected loss makes people quick to anger or irritation as the brain tries to process a world that no longer makes sense.

Suicide loss forces people to try to find meaning behind a senseless and terrible loss, and this can turn people against one another in the vilest ways. Endless questions of Why did she end her life? exhaust survivors’ minds and, too quickly, the community that should rally to support one another the most instead turns on each other.

In trying to find meaning, survivors can all too easily blame one another — It must have been her job stress. It must have been the church. It must have been her family. It must have been her parents. It must have been her kids. It must have been her spouse. It must have been her sibling. It must have been her friends. It must have been myself. You should have seen the signs. I should have seen the signs.

Do you see how damning those statements are?

Damning.

Those statements destroy, and, yet, those who should support one another the most can viciously accuse one another with similar statements.

People think it. Some people say it. All survivors feel it.

The truth is that all of this is horrific. The truth is that no one on the planet wanted this. The truth is that any of us would have done anything to prevent this outcome. And yet, people still whisper accusations about survivors and can scream them at her closest friends and family members.

Nobody wanted this. Nobody caused this. Don’t blame her community. Don’t blame her friends. Don’t blame her family. Don’t blame yourself.

Don’t add more hurt to the most painful situation imaginable.

September 6, 2026

Ah yes.

This is the post that cost me my grandparents and aunt. Or rather, it simply exposed the rotting beneath our fragile relationships.

I’ve already written of their audacious accusations and the intriguing lengths they went to communicate the misinformation — the hate mail, the phone calls, the texts . I’ve notated how my mother’s church harbored them at our expense, indulging their sinister fantasies, and pretending that I blamed their organization . As classic abusers do, my mother’s family urged people “not to mention anything to ‘the kids’ [me & my brothers] to protect our relationship,” which is really ironic because my aunt was barely involved in our lives. We maybe exchanged one phone call a year.

I don’t blame my aunt for our emotional distance — we’d been long distance family my whole life — but to be so uninvolved with my life, and then to start saying wicked, wicked, wicked things about my Dad and my family right after my mother’s ghastly death?

Oof.

At the time I wrote this post in 2025, I didn’t know half of the insane things my aunt and grandparents were saying. I suspected something because things were just… off, but I couldn’t imagine the things they would do or say.

I should have been able to imagine it, though. They did the same thing to my Momma after Patrick died. They told her she was a terrible parent and that they should have taken Patrick away — they claimed it was Mom’a fault he died.

Despicable.

I’d like to claim that I’ll never understand why my mom allowed them back into her life, but that would be untrue. Love, oh it can be so powerful. It can be so dangerous.

When you love someone, you can let them abuse you again and again and again and you can want them back despite all the atrocious pain they intentionally inflict upon you.

It’s heartbreaking when someone you love mistreats you. Forgiving someone can bring them closer, but when the patterns persist the hurt will repeat.

I understand now that, a year ago, I was writing about a pattern that had already happened to my mother and that I didn’t yet fully recognize was happening to my father again.

I confronted my grandparents after I wrote this post, detailing that I suspected they were saying unkind things.

I asked them to stop.

I told them I loved them.

They didn’t respond.

One year ago, and I never hear from them.

Languishing Between the Lands of the Living and The Dead — Week 10: One Year Later

August 29, 2025

This has been one of the hardest weeks to get out of bed. Perhaps it’s a mix of jet lag, allergies, and grief. Perhaps it’s simply reality sinking in deeper and deeper as the days pass away, each new day taking me farther away from my mother.

I woke up at 3 am other day with the slightest fever and spent the next few hours weeping and feeling the weight of this catastrophic loss. I want my Mommy, I yelped again and again and again. She always made sure to stop by if I was sick, even if it was just for a quick hug or to play with my hair, but mainly just to make sure I was okay. She’d bring medicine, ginger ale or Gatorade, maybe some soup, and all the compassion in the world.

But no more Momma.

I’ve gotten out of bed every day since she passed. I’ve brushed my hair and my teeth each morning and each night without fail. Last week, I finally started putting some jewelry on… it’s funny the little things you do or don’t do in deep grief… but this week I have not wanted to get out of bed at all.

Several grief books discuss the experience of derealization and depersonalization — the out-of-body feeling where one can’t ground oneself to the present moment. The sense that the griever is observing oneself from outside one’s most often in large groups and, hence, I am a bit uncomfortable and almost alarmed amidst them. These group activities become a source of anxiety and tension, where I end up spending an inordinate amount of energy on pretending to be normal or pretending to have fun.

The good thing about pretending, though, is that it can often result in positive experiences, but at the cost of an exponential amount of energy.

I think I am pretty spent from the few social activities I have mustered the courage to participate in. I’m not quite sure how one finds balance in this. Maybe I need to plan more one-on-one activities with patient listeners, eager to indulge me with their empathy and kindness. Buuut scheduling that is exhausting, too.

Thus, in the end, everything is simply hard. So excruciatingly difficult and sad and painful.

I’m still getting out of bed, I’m still brushing my hair and my teeth each morning and each evening, but this week it’s seemed to require so much more from me than past weeks.

Friends have done their best to help ease the suffering and mental load, showing up with kindness by bringing me soup, dropping in just to give me a hug, and so much more, and I’m so grateful for that. More grateful than I can probably communicate, but…

It’s a living nightmare, and that’s the reality of living with pain that cannot be fixed. Time and new memories will heal, but not today, not this week, not anytime soon.

August 29, 2026

Observing one’s feelings is far easier than feeling them. To be aware of one’s sadness is different than experiencing one’s sadness poignantly, deeply, despairingly, sharply, harrowingly.

The ache in one’s chest, the heaviness of her shoulders, the oblivion fading into her mind.

I spend week after week going through my mother’s and parents’ old things. While peers enjoy their summers and plan for their futures, I sort through the past and try to organize all that’s been left behind. With each weekend I clear corners of my house, bit by bit, covered with artifacts of the dead. I clean out the dead, trying to make space for the living. Empty space for the living, really. I don’t want to fill the space, I just want to clean the cobwebs the departed left behind.

Anger tempts me as of late, as I think about how little I have the capacity to engage in. I have little mental energy or desire for most things, but I’m sad about my existence on the fringes of society.

I exist outside, veiled by a shroud that obscures me from the world of normalcy. The cloth borders me from the world and keeps me entangled in an unending void of grief-related tasking: organize this, declutter that, find a space for this, make room for that, forever part with this. Items that once held little significance hold the weight of a life once lived and left behind without a single goodbye.

It’s exhausting, and it’s my everyday reality and responsibility.

I began the process of attempting to reintroduce myself to society, but engaging in more than one social activity per weekend leaves me entirely spent. I hardly have the energy or the courage to endure it. Yet I want friends, I need them, but how can I be maintain friendships when I live like this? I lack the bandwidth to live any other way.

So, in the margins I exist. Not because people are unwilling to support me or because I don’t want to engage with them, but because I can barely manage to occupy my own home. It’s filled with too many relics of a dead life, and I’m swimming through its River Styx attempting to separate the living from the dead while wandering the borderlands between them.

Last Year of My Twenties — Week 8: One Year Later

August 15, 2025

Happy birthday to me… 🎶

I’ve been dreading this day for the past six years, since my four year old nephew looked up at me and said “28. Hopey, are you going to die when you turn 28?” Because his uncle, my brother, died when he was 28 and that didn’t make sense.

I’ve called it my “Patrick Birthday,” and I knew it would be difficult, but I never imagined it would be this terrible. A few months ago I imagined the birthday as a source of solemn strength to mark how much I have grown, and to mourn that I would now be “older” than my oldest brother. That alone would have made today painful.

I’ve been dreading this day, and I’ve been mourning it all month.

Birthday.

I used to thank my mom each day on all of our birthdays, praising her for the fact that it was her birth day — the day she did all the work and a day that changed her life immensely. I just showed up.

But now there’s no Mom, and that sucks.

So many people want to celebrate with me, which is sweet and I feel loved, but I don’t want to celebrate. It’s difficult to celebrate with sorrow seeping from your eyes.

Mom made each birthday so special. Most years, she made us us a delicious cake and made the day a big deal! She was a thoughtful gift giver and she was always so excited.

This birthday is special, I suppose, in a different way. It’s sacred: I’m surrounded by people keenly interested in trying to make my birthday magical and sweet, perhaps more so than I have ever experienced before. It’s a day filled with love and gentle care and sweet reminders of my friendships and of those who love me. I won’t forget this birthday, and I will remember all the beautiful acts of kindness so many people have bestowed upon me.

It’s my Patrick birthday. I am 28. I feel old, though so many people still tell me I’m such a baby, ha.

One day, I’ll probably have a Harmony birthday. I’ll turn 51 — “fifty-fun” as we briefly called it — and I’ll be older than my mom. The solemn knowledge of that pains me. I’m not yet ready to be excited about the future, but today I do have hope.

I am loved, I am seen, and there is life and goodness all around me.

One day, I’ll be able to participate and experience the fullness of life once more. Today reminds me that life is a gift, that I am loved, and that the sun still shines.

Thank you to everyone who’s making today special 💙

2019 – Patrick’s 28th and Final Birthday

2024 – Hope’s 27th Birthday, My Last Birthday with My Mom

August 15, 2026

The fresh weight of loss nearly crushed me when I woke up on August 15, 2025. This year, the heaviness encroaches beside me as my eyes open and my heart aches for the Momma who birthed me all those years ago today.

I’m 29 today—I have got to be the most excited person to be leaving her 20s behind. Let’s have an abridged examination:

20 — Walter, one of my closest friends, drowns. I graduate college two weeks later.
21 — Patrick, my brother, dies by suicide. I move to Florida eleven months later.
22-24 — These are quiet, restful years. They are slow and healing, allowing me to rebuild my life after catastrophic losses. By 24, I am learning to feel happy. It is possibly the only time in my life that I experience unreserved happiness.
25-26 — Scott and I buy our first house together. We marry, and I’m still learning to be happy. The days feel easy, soft. Carrie’s husband is murdered six months later.
27-28 — My momma dies by suicide. I turn 28 two months later, and I lose my grandparents one month after that.

I’ve lived three lifetimes since I turned twenty.

I’ve died three times, but cats have nine lives, right? I’m regenerating my world for a fourth time now. I wonder how many more lives I have left.

Surely, my thirties have got to be better than my twenties. But who knows?

Maybe the rest of my life won’t be so hellish, but maybe it will.

All I know is that today, I’m 29. I’m celebrating — I’m thrilled that this decade from hell is almost over. I’ve lost many, but the precious few who remain are dear to me and celebrate with me.

I’m hopeful this year, despite all the turmoil, horror, heartbreak, tragedy, and terribleness. Somehow, Hope remains: she’s the hardest thing to kill.

Life has potential. Birthdays are a beautiful reminder that not every ending is tragic—some are to be celebrated and honored and enjoyed.

Cheers to 29. Cheers to the last year of my twenties. Cheers to happy endings and hopeful beginnings.

Ghost Stories — Week 6: One Year Later

August 1, 2025

I know pain, I know it well. I am friends with sorrow and companions with anguish. I’ve made a home with sleepless nights and solitary mornings. My eyes sore and strained, my lungs feel heavy and weak.

I have known sorrow for years, it has always been with me. It resonates throughout my mind, into my chest, and it overflows from my eyes.

I was just getting used to happiness. Laughter and joy, for what felt like the first time, finally took residence in my soul. I was healing. I wasn’t afraid of the worst case scenario anymore. I felt freedom and enjoyed the good gifts I had. I felt plenty in my abundance, and I felt safe with my family.

We were building a home here, we were building a life here. Our days were filled with sunshine and laughter. My only concern was what joyous outing we would participate in over the upcoming weekend.

I thought we were in this together.

I thought we loved this life, and maybe we did. I thought we were all healing and moving forward after catastrophe. But while I flourished, part of her soul was dying.

She couldn’t tell me. She couldn’t tell anyone. That will never make sense to me. That will always haunt me. That will always terrify me.

Some days it feels impossible to truly smile. How many days did she feel like that, too?

Every day of this nightmare, it’s like I discover something new. Something new about my Mom, something new about my reality. I’m forced to process a complex piece of information day after day, thought after thought, moment after moment. It’s exhausting. It’s haunting.

Maybe ghost stories were never really about apparitions but about the horrors left behind by the deceased. The painful thoughts they force you to think, the painful loss you have to shoulder. The painful dreams that wake one up in the middle of the night. I feel haunted by my mother and haunted by her actions.

I can’t feel a mother’s love from the grave. Not like this. Not when she leaves me with all this. All I feel is the pain and abandonment from being left behind.

The saddest part is that she never would have wanted that, but she doesn’t get to influence or comfort me anymore.

August 3, 2026

I often think about the line I can’t feel my mother’s love from the grave. It’s still true.

* * * *

This week, Carrie took me to New York for my 29th birthday 💜. We went in February 2019 and had such a delightful time that we wanted to do it again!

Nostalgia, though, delivers a collection of recollections. February 2019 was a mere three months before Patrick (Olivia’s father) died. Olivia was nearly six years old, but she and Carrie were separated from Patrick.

Since that February 2019, Carrie married and got pregnant. Her sweet husband Josiah was murdered during her pregnancy. They had a beautiful baby girl, Josi Faith, the February after his death. Then, my Momma died. Nostalgia no longer carries only happy memories. Instead, it has become an archive of grief and ghosts.

Perhaps we are haunted not only by their deaths but also by the way that loss is tethered to our memories of life.

Three deaths, one birth, all within seven years. It’s a lot to remember. We are tormented by the choices my brother, my mother, and a stranger made. I wrote last year that my mom “couldn’t” tell us about her demons, but, realistically she wouldn’t. She — and Patrick — had the power to share the truth before longing for death overwhelmed their will to live. Each person had the power to make a different choice that would have preserved life, but each chose death instead. That is haunting.

Shrouded with death, we try our best to live. Ever haunted by the past, we step forward into our new lives.

It was a beautiful trip to New York. It was sunny and glorious and fun and wonderful. We laughed, we hugged, we played, we explored.

We live this beautiful mosaic life: we’ve been building it from the shards of glass that shattered from the gunshots that haunt us. Their ghosts, ever with us, and ever reminding us of their absence from our new reality.

May we continue to build beautiful lives.

May life refill us.

May new memories create safe places.

May our nervous systems find rest.

May we always love.

An Elegy for My Momma — Day 30: One Year Later

The sorrow that I dreaded has made its home in my heart, where it will forever languish.

I am so sad, forever.

Perplexing thoughts cross my mind and the minds of many as people try to make sense of this cataclysm, but it is truly senseless. My mom’s death highlights mental illness — mentally healthy people do not and cannot end their own lives. There is no reason, there is no “why,” there is nothing to blame or to conclude about this situation other than the advancement of mental illness. My mother hid it extremely well. She knew well what mental illness is, and perhaps she did not realize the depth of her own struggles until her mind was too impaired.

She didn’t do this to us, she didn’t do this at us, she didn’t do this in spite of us.

There is much we don’t know and won’t understand, and, to a point, it doesn’t really matter: nothing will bring her back.

My Mom’s death doesn’t forfeit her love, it doesn’t forfeit what she believed, and it doesn’t forfeit all she strived to do and who she wanted to be.

In her right mind and in her fullest, she loved life. Her laughter filled the room and bellowed from every conversation. Her smile beamed brightest around her family and with her friends. She loved getting to discover the depth of others by asking provocative questions and teasing the answers out of one another. She loved Jesus, and she wanted to experience the fullness of life that God promises, but she may have missed that He promised that life here on earth (John 10:10). She was passionate about mental health and desperately wanted to see others healed on this side of eternity, and I think she believed that wholly for herself, too.

Mom fought a horrific battle that she could not share with us, and while that hurts us more than anything, these facts detail a torment she kept in the shadows. If only, if only she had applied her studies and reached out in the way she encouraged others to do. Maybe she spent so much time encouraging others in the hopes that she, too, would find the courage to reach out.

She wanted to make a difference, she wanted to heal. She wanted so much from this life that gave her so much. Her life was beautiful and full of laughter and love, and, in her best moments, she felt that wholly.

My mom did not die because of any one thing: she died fighting an unspeakable battle, one we’ll never know how long she fought. This painful reality scorches my heart and sometimes it feels impossible to believe that my life is good and beautiful and kind, when all feels so dark and grotesque and cruel.

But I know — I know, somehow, there is grace in this. My family and I have so much life left to live, and our lives will be filled with laughter and love and goodness and opportunity that we cannot begin to imagine right now. We are blessed. We are blessed with each other, we are blessed with our outstanding community who supports and mourns with us, and we were blessed with my Mom.

My Mom was a light and a gift that I will never have again, and her absence brings tumultuous tears to my eyes each day. While this is so dark, my Mom was not all of the light in the world.

I will carry this grief with me forever, but this sadness and this grief does not dismiss the many years of joy and abundance still to come.

Grief gifts us with a new understanding of God and life and the universe. It strips us bare of any preconceived ideas rooted in anything but truth, and the fire of affliction will bring about unimaginable glory.

Right now, it’s physically impossible for us to imagine or even desire a good life when my Mom was what made our old lives so good, but we will experience blessing and healing and a new good life.

July 21, 2026

I’ve written about 80 posts since my Momma died. Sigh.

I love her, and I miss her every day.

Some of you have been reading along since day one, some joined later. Some who never met my Momma joined because of their own similar loss. I’m sorry for your losses, too.

Mourning both isolates and attaches people to a silent and somber community.

I never would have imagined how small my world would get after those first thirty days. It’s quieter these days. It’s as if my family members and I have become myth — whispered about but rarely seen.

A strong urge persists to shut the entire world out and enjoy the bliss of anonymity: you can’t hurt me if you can’t find me.

Rumors I’ve heard about myself and my family initially fill me with anxiety because they feel dangerous, but once the fear settles, I find myself laughing softly. I laugh not because they’re harmless, but because they’re so detached from reality.

So maybe I’m an oracle uttering insights that glistened through my tears. Or maybe I’m a muse, breathing life into myths and legends of a veiled existence. Maybe I am the whispers you hear, and the stories you trade in hushed voices. Or maybe I’m so much more.

Living through Repeated Suicides — Day 27: One Year Later

July 18, 2025

Heart pounding. Body trembling. Eyes crying. Terror, sheer terror, in the middle of the night. Can’t sleep, can’t stop thinking, can’t breathe.

It’s not like this every night, but it was like this last night.

We spent the past six years since my brother’s suicide saying: “Please, no one else do this. We’re going to make it. We can do this”

We said it regularly. We said it on anniversaries and at random. We said it again and again and again.

We didn’t make it. She didn’t make it. She smiled and shook her head affirmatively as she said it, but she didn’t make it.

When someone in one’s family dies by suicide, all family members instantly fear another suicide. It’s horrific. It’s horrifying — it’s so horrifying it will make you cry until you can’t breathe and scream until you can’t speak.

That was our reality. That was what my family lived through. That’s the pain we lived with for years, and the fear we lived with for six years. And then it happened again.

Again and again and again, we pleaded that none of us would do this. We encouraged honesty, we checked in on one another, and we regularly had this discussion.

It had been six years. I thought we made it. I thought we were all safe. I thought my mom was safe. She said she was safe.

One third — one third of my family has died by suicide. That’s one out of three so far. Do you know how absolutely horrific that is? No, I get it, you “can’t even imagine that,” and I’m honestly grateful that you can’t. It’s a terrifying reality.

Now here we are again, and I am mortified. One in three… one in three… what does that mean? What does that mean for my nieces and nephews? What does that mean for us survivors?

The horror… the sheer horror.

My mother lived a beautiful life. Though she endured significant trauma, she overcame so much. She was excited about life. She had multitudes of plans and dreams. She loved her life, and she didn’t? How on earth am I supposed to reconcile that?

How horrible. With all the beautiful, wonderful, incredible things Mom had going for her… how horrific that she still desired to die more than to live. How absolutely terrifying that, in that vital moment, she could not see the beauty of life. She could not remember her beautiful plans. She could not feel how wonderful her life was. In that moment, she wanted to die more than she wanted all the amazing things she had to live for. I know she loved so much and she was looking forward to so much. I know that. But for some reason, none of that mattered in that moment.

That is absolutely horrifying, and, now, I can’t trust the rest of my family. I can’t trust the other survivors who say they’re not going to do it, because she said that too, and I believed her.

I believed her. I believed her. I believed her, and she’s gone.

I am in anguish. I believed her.

July 18, 2026

I wonder every day whether suicide will take another life from my family. I wouldn’t necessarily characterize this as anxiety, but more as an awareness of a very real possibility for my family members.

“Trust God,” people say. It’s interesting that they assume I do not because I speak plainly of pain’s realities.

I trust God, but I know what human beings are capable of — regardless of what God wants for their lives.

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.

Rebuilding the Universe — Day 21: One Year Later

July 12, 2025

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 snuffs our smell, it hastens 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.

July 12, 2026

Grief mirrors us to the reality of our finiteness and forces us to confront our limits.

Never are we more weak and yet never are we more attune to our ability. They call it “brain fog,” this incessant cloud of grief, and it strains the universe before our minds.

Our eyes reflect the past. The sacred becomes our focus, our happy memories become our horrors, our hopeful future becomes our nightmares. For a time, we lose the ability to remember and the gift to dream. We eternally exist in the present, and we have no way to see beyond this holy place.

We are close to death — closer than ever, because it passed right before our eyes and out of our hands.

Galaxies rupture before us and leave us spinning, spinning, spinning into the abyss of a life erupted from the universe.

Maybe we are time travelers, in this odd and sacred space. Days don’t feel like days and minutes don’t feel like a mere collection of brief seconds. They stretch on, stitching new realities into the fabric of our lives. Each moment since that wicked day, our minds reconstruct the world. We begin to build or we begin to destroy: the choice lies within the survivor.

When we choose to heal, we plant seeds deep into the core of our being. And how do we heal?

We speak. We let all the darkness within us escape from our mouths and drain from our eyes, allowing the toxins and traumas to exit with every exhale. We do this in a safe space, free of judgement and expectation. We allow empathetic witnesses to our death and regeneration — because who we are died entirely on that day, too. That person, that version of oneself is obsolete.

We walk. We move, we stretch, we lift, we run, we honor the heart that beats in our chests and fills our bodies with life. Because life is precious, and each breath is a gift.

We pause. We allow our minds and our bodies to rest from rebuilding the universe. We honor the work we’ve done and celebrate how far we’ve come, because every single day feels impossible until we look back and see that we’ve made it through another moment.

We read. We seek to understand the incomprehensible, and we come to the conclusion that we may never understand, but we can learn how to carry the unfathomable.

One month to a survivor — a survivor, not a friend of the deceased, but to a survivor — can feel like a year. We do not measure time by the calendar or by the hours, but how much of the universe we have rebuilt. If you haven’t been a survivor, you can’t know what it’s like to rebuild an entire galaxy.

You can’t imagine the breadth and depth of the worlds we rebuild, nor can you fathom the work it took to get there.

When we choose not to heal, we bring chaos to ourselves and everyone around us. Those around us pay the price for our unhealed chaos, and are often blamed for our own negligence.

Healed people reflect a new and beautiful and tragical reality. They exhibit radical compassion, because they know what it’s like to start from the dust of life and watch seeds spring to life little by little. They’ve watched the world be reborn, and they’ve chosen what to plant and what to bring into their sacred universe.

Sorrow introduces a cleansing clarity that exposes away presuppositions and toxins. Healing washes these away and enables us to cultivate new life.

May we dance when grass begins to grow upon the withered landscape of our lives.

May we celebrate the world we’ve begun to create — this world we’ve only had to build because our old universe imploded.

May we rejoice with one another, and if we cannot rejoice together, may we gracefully say goodbye to people and things that belong to the former universe; Not everything or everyone from there belong here, no matter how much we want them to be here.

May we love one another well. May we love.

Metabolizing Grief — Day 13: One Year Later

July 4, 2025

I screamed a lot in my car today. Just… screamed. “Mom!! Why did you do this?” Through sobs, “Mom, please come back, please come back!”… “Mom!!” I cried out in anguish.

But it’s useless, she’s gone.

My mind really does not want to believe it. I meet her in dreams, only to wake and feel her light snuffed out of the world. She was sitting on our living room couch in last night’s dream, and I was asking her why she wouldn’t join us at the table. I don’t remember what she answered, I just remember telling her that it did not make sense and that she should join the rest of us at the table because we love her and want to be with her.

Denial’s amazing protectiveness still shields me, for the most part, but everything feels so heavy. I feel the horror and the sadness deeply about once a day: I’ll cry, I’ll protest. I really wish this was not a part of my life. I wish this was not the end of hers. I wish it so badly that denial and numbness creep back in and calmness returns.

I feel like an outside observer to my own feelings and my own thought process. I feel them, objectively define them, and then move on.

Each day, the sadness grows and strengthens. I feel the denial slowly slipping away, and I fear when my mind allows me to fully grasp the situation. How much is this really going to hurt when my mind finally lets me feel it? It already hurts so much, but the pain will become vivid soon, and it will never, ever end.

I have so much life left to live. It feels like my life has only begun, and I will feel this sorrow for all of my days.

I’m not angry with God, though I would like to be. Anger is such an easy emotion to experience — anger is easy to fuel and easy to calm — it’s not as ambiguous as sorrow. It feels like it would be easy to be angry at God, but my every need has been met. People have been so generous and caring and kind — I can’t be angry when I perceive such marvels from God amidst all this pain.

I am confused: I will never understand why God allowed this nor why God did not intervene, but perhaps God had intervened several times. I will never know how many times my mother was close ending her life but chose not to because someone intervened. I just wish she would have told us, as I am sure we all do.

She had so many people who loved her deeply, and she could have reached out to any of us. That is a collective hurt those closest to her bear and must work through for the rest of our lives, and many of us have so much life yet to be lived.

Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

Presence is best 🤍. Be here, share here, create space here.

Love each other well.

We used to love sharing a Chili’s molten lava cake

July 4, 2026

My mind has done an incredible job “metabolizing” this grief. I’ve often said over the past few months that Mom’s death has been “easier but more painful,” than when Patrick died.

Easier, because I have significantly more support, better tools, and more experience than I had when Patrick died. More painful, because of the compounding grief and unimaginable complexities that occurred as a result of Momma’s choice.

I’m amazed at and proud of my resilience through this unbearable loss, and I’m thankful for how I have chosen to process and to pursue healing. I miss my Momma every moment of every day. There’s not a second I don’t think of her.

I never did have a massive moment when the reality of her death hit, at least not like how I envisioned. I thought it would be a debilitating day where everything came crashing down and I spiraled out, but it wasn’t like that this time.

I’ve certainly had days and moments when the weight constricts my breathing as if a true weight was placed on my chest, I’ve had moments where I scream and cry and fall apart for a bit, but I’ve been more surprised by the calmness of this grief.

It’s steady, constant, ever-present, heavy, and sad, but I’ve accepted it. I’ve nurtured it when I need to, I’ve acknowledged when it’s affecting other relationships, I’ve notated what’s triggering or when I’m emotionally activated.

The part I’m having the hardest time accepting right now is that my Mom’s death seems to cause drama with even happy life changes. Her death makes everything complicated, always, and I hate that. I don’t want to accept that every milestone forever will be twinged with sadness and, often, somehow produce more drama.

I don’t think it will always be dramatic, but it will always be sad, too. I hate that.

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.