Sorrow

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.

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.

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.

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.

Survivors’ Isolation — Day 14: One Year Later

July 5, 2025

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 do not 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.

July 5, 2026

I don’t have much energy to add anything to this today.

Maybe these posts help people to be brave, maybe they help explain or empathize or realize one’s own emotions. Maybe they give people a glimpse into my life. Maybe they help people gossip. Maybe they make someone else feel less alone.

I didn’t want to wall myself off from the world this time. I wanted the world to know what it’s like, even if it’s just tiny glimpses of my mind and heart for one week at a time.

Everything is painful in this reality, and everything is complicated. I’ve been really frustrated about that lately.

Sometimes it feels like there are no good things — even good things are met with hurt and pain and confusion. That’s been the hardest reality thing to accept lately. It’s the type of thing that makes me want to run away, leave all this behind, and start a new life somewhere where no one knows my name or my story.

I’ve gotten to start over my entire life. Seldom staying anywhere for more than four years, and yet it’s hard, too, not to have any roots.

Grief isolates regardless of one’s best attempts to mourn in a community. It’s the nature of being a survivor — I survived. My brothers survived, my dad survived. My mother is “survived by” the four of us she left behind, and that’s it.

She left dear friends behind, a whole community behind, an entire world behind, but they didn’t survive. They aren’t on that short list of survivors, and that fact separates more than outsiders can fathom.

Grief isolates because it steals energy and capacity and time and color from the world. Grievers can barely reach out or respond to those around them, not because they don’t want to but because they have no energy or thought capacity to do so.

Only a shadow of the griever remains, and people have a hard time holding onto shadows.

We’ll get some life back, we survivors. One day. One day, it won’t take up all of our energy and we’ll be able to show up for our friends again. I’ve been a survivor for enough years to remember that, at one point, I was able to show up for friends again.

In the meantime, it just sucks. Even people closest to survivors weary of our lack of capacity, because it hurts them, too. It’s not easy when you’re supporting a survivor but you too need support. In fact, it’s painful. We can’t be what you want us to be. We can’t even be what we want to be ourselves.

I’m still half of myself, operating at 50% or less, and I’m tired of it, too.

* * * *

May the God of all peace comfort you with his love.

May others come beside you and support you in your hurt.

May an empathetic ear hear your pain and see you with eyes of compassion and love.

May you extend grace.

May your mind rest and slumber.

May you remember how loved you are, even when you can barely show up.

May someone love you in your weakness.

May you experience that love.

Dreams and Denial — Day 10: One Year Later

July 1, 2025

Day by day, more people leave, and tomorrow our last visitors will travel home. My nuclear family, all that remains, will experience one week together before some return home to North Carolina.

Then the “new normal” will really start to settle as we grasp for new routines.

My mind strives to protect me by covering me mainly in denial. Most of the time, reality feels miles away. I dream constantly of my Mother: dreams telling her why she shouldn’t leave, dreams of me finding her in witness protection, dreams that continue to deny reality. A properly-working mind knows when one has the capacity to wake up to reality, but for now my mind operates mainly from shock and denial.

I am anxious for when my mind will allow me to feel everything it must, for “pain demands to be felt,” and thus it’s only a matter of time.

Today, I am simply grateful again for everyone’s phenomenal support.

Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

The less decisions a person in mourning needs to make, the better. Mourning requires an enormous amount of mental energy, and helping make a decision alleviates a bit of mental fatigue.

July 1, 2026

My Momma was so excited about the mug pictured above. I got it for either Mother’s Day or her birthday 🩷. She eventually gave me one, too.

Gosh, I remember the intense denial. It was such a surreal feeling.

I remember the car ride down to the place that she died, moments after finding out, repeating “Scott, I can’t lose my Momma. I can’t lose my Momma too. Please God, not my Momma,” but it was too late.

I dreamed vividly, restlessly, for weeks. She was always just out of reach. My poor mind was working so hard to comprehend what happened to my Momma.

The only way that time heals, I believe, is through the new memories we make. The more memories we make without our loved one, the less our brain automatically looks for them in everything. The Grieving Brain comments that it takes an average of three years for the brain to process that someone is no longer a part of one’s life, and this is considered one of the only ways that time heals.

It softens the loss because, after about three years, the brain no longer assumes one’s loved one will be there. It takes a small piece of the mental load of grief and allows one’s mind to rest.

I do not dream everyday anymore, but I still often dream of my Momma.

My, how I miss her. I loved her so much.

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.

Daring to Live — Day 8: One Year Later

June 29, 2025

Funeral preparations cease but a few friends and family members from out of town remain close. Reality slowly creeps in as the whispers of finding a “new normal” lingers just around the corner. In a matter of days, most of the world will return to work while we begin to reorganize our lives.

My Daddy, of course, will have the most significant adjustment for his day-to-day life. Already, he sleeps without my Mom, but he has not had to experience a “typical” day without her. They were partners, they were friends, and they were lovers. I always thought they really would be that couple from The Notebook: I never thought this could happen.

Their relationship was an anchor in my life. They endured and overcame agonizing trauma together again and again and again, and they were the best of friends. Growing up, I always wanted a marriage like theirs. Since getting married, I still wanted a relationship like theirs! My marvelous husband and I watched their love for one another with reverence and admiration. They were such an amazing team. They loved being together and they loved each other well. It’s difficult not to be really angry with my mom when I think of their truly inspirational marriage… and then it’s really, really, really sad.

As my brother Luke reminded, my siblings and I had never known a world without Mom until eight days ago.

Rehabilitation — that’s the word that keeps bustling through my mind. Learning to live without Mom feels like rehabilitating back into normal society: walking, driving, talking, biking, writing, smiling, and so much more, feels so foreign and unnatural. I feel as though I can barely hold a thought or concept in my mind.

Denial persists more than anything right now, a dull ache thumps within me at all times, but most of the time I can’t believe my Mom’s gone and I can’t believe my mom left me feels like a distant thought and not an annihilating reality. My Momma, I still mumble in shock. Moments of mayhem pierce me to the core, preparing me for when the shock wears off and when I’ll have to truly face this menacing reality.

My Mom grounded and anchored my life, creating stability and safety. What now?

Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

I have provided many things not to say — all of which from comments multiple people have made, not just one-off comments as to not single anyone out — but there are so many good things people say as well.

“I’m sorry” feels like such a weak thing to say, but it encompasses a tremendous amount of emotion and care. The short phrase empathizes with the mourners and often creates an understanding between two hurting people.

Future Ways to Help

Small tasks are incredibly helpful — doing a load of laundry, wiping down a counter, calling to set up a dental appointment. Sometimes it’s hard for me to even remember to put a pair of shoes on – it’s invaluable to notice those little things that may be neglected and to help one another out.

We’re a grieving community, and we’ve got this 💙

June 29, 2026

What happens when you lose an anchor in your life?

You simply keep living, limping, breaking every day.

My parents had a beautiful marriage, and facing the world without their partnership in it is strange and unnerving.

I’m not sure if “new normal” ever actually arrives. There is nothing normal about my life and there never will be.

Losses like this aren’t normal. They are tragic. They take people’s breath away. No, I don’t believe “new normal” ever arrives. I think I simply keep on living in the liminal spaces, mind and heart forever fixated on what is and what was.

Two things can be true: I had a mother who loved me, and I had a mother who did the most unloving thing imaginable. She murdered. She killed. Not only herself, but her entire family unit.

My dad lost his wife. My siblings lost our mother. Our family, as we knew it, ceased to exist because she murdered it.

A year later, and most of the shock has worn off.

* * * *

It dawns on me how few people truly have compassion.

Everyone pities the griever, until he or she does something they disagree with.

Everyone claims to support, claims to be there, claims to honor, claims to befriend the griever… until the griever does something they cannot understand.

After that, other people’s feelings somehow become the griever’s fault.

It’s the griever who has to consider them.

It’s the griever who should have anticipated someone else else’s thought.

It’s the griever who should have considered everyone else before they choose to live their life.

We survivors have one responsibility: to survive. For suicide survivors, specifically, the risk of survival far outweighs the likelihood of their own suicide. In my family — with double suicides — we are more likely to kill ourselves than we are to life a full life and die a natural death.

When we choose to keep living, when we begin to find new life and try to start moving on, we are met with an anger. We are met with calloused behaviors if we aren’t moving on fast enough, and simultaneously we are met with silence and judgment when we dare to build a new life.

It’s impossible to be a griever. It’s impossible to be a supporter, too. Everyone gets it wrong. It’s such a sensitive area that both grievers and their supporters often unintentionally hurt each other and lack the grace and compassion to reach to the other side. This perpetuates immense pain and creates situations that grievers and supporters would not have seen coming.

My responsibility — and my father’s and my brother’s responsibility — is to live. My responsibility is to survive. My responsibility is to find new joy in life and to attempt to create a life that’s worth living, because the life that I was dealt by someone else’s choices isn’t worth it. The life my mother handed down to me, full of anguish and pain, isn’t worth living. It’s the life I dare to create and in wake of her decision that makes life worth living.

We are punished for grieving, and then we are punished for living.

We are punished if we do not seek healing, and then we are punished when our healing manifests in new ways that others were not ready to accept.

Supporting survivors requires more courage, more compassion, and more grace than many are even to provide. I do not fault anyone for their limits, but I do not understand when people choose to judge me or my family members for daring to live.

Life should be celebrated. Newness should be celebrated. Daring to live should be celebrated.

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 💙