vulnerability

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.

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.

The Surreal — Day 15: One Year Later

July 6, 2025

It was real. She was real. She was genuine and she loved so much. She was kind, she was gentle, she was lovely. She was happy, she was strong, she was proud. She smiled brightly and shined iridescently.

She was my Mommy, and she was a mother and a friend to so many. I just miss my mom. Each day she feels just a little farther away. Each day it hurts just a little more. I hate this so much.

I experienced immense growth and healing over the past six years, and the past six months I had begun counseling to work through the traumas I had been stuck in. Life felt nearly perfect. It was so beautiful and so sweet. These past few years God taught me that incredible goodness transpires after formidable sorrow.

I wish this wasn’t happening, but I know that life will be good again. This sadness will always be with me, but a time will come when it doesn’t bring me to my knees every day. It will probably always bring me to my knees at random moments, but it won’t always be this horrible.

Mourning sacredly positions us between this reality and the metaphysical. Grief connects us closely to the next realm and forces us to think of a lifetime of memories, teleporting our minds into the past.

Our past was real. It was sacred, it was sweet.

I don’t know what the future holds, and if I’m quite honest, right now I am anxious about it: Am I doomed to the same fate? Is my family? Loss instantly makes one so afraid of more loss. I have reason to be anxious, but I likewise have reason to hope.

Sorrow and joy have eclipsed my life for so long. When Mom died, it felt like all the brightness vaporized from my whole world. She was so bright and so optimistic and so full of light and life. Losing her has left such an enormous void in my life and in the lives of so many others. She was light in so many ways🤍. Right now, life feels so dark, but light will return to our eyes.

I am experiencing a depth of sorrow I never imagined possible and never wanted, but I know I will grow and heal to experience a happiness and a joy I could never before comprehend.

Loss has changed and shaped my life in unimaginable ways. In ways I never wanted, but this isn’t the end.

This isn’t my family’s end. This isn’t our end.

My Mom was a glorious light, and she was one of the best parts of my life. She gave me life, not just in my birth, but in all the joy she gave me. In all of our wonderful memories, in all of our laughter, in all of our joy. She made my life fun. She made everything fun.

I don’t know how to do this without her. I don’t know how to be bright and fun and loving, not like she was, but I want to honor her. I barely know how to laugh without her. It’s so dark without her right now, but the light is coming. I want to make her proud. I want to dance in the light she had, in a way she always wished she had.

I loved my Momma. I always will.

Thank you, Momma, for being the brightest light in my life.

I love you forever,

I love you for always.

On earth or in heaven,

Your baby I’ll be.

July 6, 2026

A chasm, a deep and rich valley, seems to separate me from my mother now. I feel such a vast distance from her. It seems like ages since she left, but these surreal feelings remain.

Strangely, it’s as if she was from an entirely different life. It feels unbelievable that I really had a Momma, and that now she’s obliterated.

It’s difficult to explain, but it often feels like she couldn’t have been real. My mind has a hard time reconciling that she is and then was — there’s a cruel dissonance.

How could she be all of these wonderful things and yet no longer be?

How can she affect every fiber of my being and yet not be in this world any longer?

Sudden, unexpected deaths transpose survivors between the worlds of “is” and “was,” leaving us in a liminal space between realities. It’s not an obsession with death or loss, it’s a new perspective forced upon us the moment they breathed their last breath

She gave me no reason to mourn while she was alive, she gave me no indication of her life being close to death. How long did she plan to leave me?

I wonder what she would say to me now. I wonder if her eyes would well with heavy tears.

I wonder if she would do it again, knowing what she knows now. Or maybe I don’t want to know.

She was real. It was all real. This life and this death of unfathomable depths confronts every layer of perspective. It stitches to each layer, a cord of red — the color of blood, the color or life poured out — and sews depth and love and loss into the fabric of my tattered and strewn life.

A necklace of tears my friend Kelly gifted me 🤍

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.

Who is God? — Day 9: One Year Later

June 30, 2025

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

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

Our Father in heaven,

your name be honored as holy.

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

Matthew 6:9-13, CSB

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

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

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

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

I’ve said this so many times — I believe that God can do all things, but I fear what he will allow to happen. This is precisely why: I have now experienced twice how despair and hopelessness kill those whom I love, and those who legitimately love Jesus.

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

Tips for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

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

June 30, 2026

God is faithful. His faithful love endures forever.

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

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

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

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

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

Kindness, compassion, and love change the world.

Kindness, compassion, and love nurture healing.

Above all, God is love.

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

The God who Heals — Day 6: One Year Later

June 27, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

Be well tonight and get some rest 💙 Live loved.

June 27, 2026

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

Those memories haunt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God Can’t — Day 5: One Year Later

June 26, 2025

I’m 27 years old: I thought my family was supposed to be growing at this point in my life, not shrinking, but I’ve lost a brother, a mother, and we can’t get pregnant. We’ve been “trying” for two years now, for all you well-intended people that keep telling us we need to have kids. I don’t like to talk about it, it’s deeply personal. But today? It’s just another wound in a long list of hurts.

It’s hard to trust God in times like these — life can be so cruel, and this feels devastatingly horrific. I see the support of God in the provision for my family, in the food at our table, in our ability to have my remaining living family here, in the friends that hold us, clean for us, and provide for us. The support is palpable, but it’s still hard to trust God. I so often say “I know God can do anything, but I am also vividly aware of what he will allow.” Here we are again, harrowing in what God will allow.

Our table felt so small after Patrick died. Our immediate family of six became a family of five, and now our family of five becomes a family of four. Oh but wait! “They’re always with you!” No, there’re not in the empty chair. It’s still just as painful without them in it. When I was a child, I used to think families of four were so little. Family of four? We had four kids in ours! And it was loud. Now, it’s so quiet. So somber. So mournful. It should be — we loved our Mommy.

It’s so tense and so stressful and so sad. A myriad of emotions waiting to burst from our eyes or escape from our lips.

Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

Just… be so gracious. As you can read, I’m a little snippy today. I need a lot of grace. Don’t be surprised if someone deep in mourning gets a little snippy with you. It’s not you, it’s all we’ve got going on.

I know many of you reading this are likewise deep in mourning — be gracious with yourself and with your family. I’m sorry if those around you haven’t experienced much grief — it’s incredibly hard to fathom a grieving mind if you haven’t experienced a deep personal loss.

Future Ways to Help

Lawncare: My parents’ have a beautiful lawn, with gorgeous trees and plants. A lawncare service would be very helpful. Beyond a lawncare service, weeds grow so fast here — if you drop by, maybe scan the lawn before coming inside and pick some weeds if you are willing and able to.

Gift cards: Right now we have plenty of food, but in a few months, making dinner every night will feel overwhelming.

Any little act of service helps. All those small little normal tasks feel like such monstrous feats when your heart is hurting.

If you can’t physically help but still want to do something, please consider the GoFund Me: https://gofund.me/6617c101

Thank you, immensely, for everyone who has shown up to help, who has given, and who has prayed. Every little bit helps 💙

June 26, 2026

I’ve pretty much given up hope that our family will grow.

I think many people dream of a family to heal the wounds they inherited from their family of origin. I dream of being a mother who watches her children grow old with my husband, and a mother whose children grow up and live full lives — my dream is the bare minimum — I just want everyone to live. But thus far, it isn’t possible for me to create life, let alone sustain it.

* * * *

My mindset about what God “allows” significantly shifted after reading Thomas Jay Oord’s God Can’t. Christians often acknowledge God’s limits (ie: he cannot sin, lie, manipulate, etc), but seldom do many apply this to what God can and cannot allow. Man cannot have free choice if all his actions are predetermined by an outside source.

I believe that God gave life, life in abundance, and life in fullness. What some have done with life is heartbreaking, but I do not blame God for that anymore — I blame people.

People, in need of desperate grace. People, in need of radical compassion. People, in need of healing.

Drowning in Tears — Day 2: One Year Later

June 22, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s excruciatingly painful. Incommunicably hard.

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

I loved my Momma.

June 22, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ground Zero — Day 1: One Year Later

June 21, 2025

Ground zero.

I’m always amazed how much pain people can endure when faced with suffering.


I woke to notes of encouragement, sorrow, and prayer. My breathing fails, my eyes swarm with tears, and my body heaves with the weight of my mind.

“My Momma. My Momma. My Momma. I loved my Momma,” I chant in a voice choked by emotions and tears — words barely able to escape my mind and reach the outside world.

My Momma is gone, and she’s not coming back. My Daddy, my Daddy. My Daddy☹️ I can barely move. I don’t know how to function, “My Momma. My Momma. My Momma,” I mumble.

How do I reconcile this? It doesn’t make any sense. I know I’ll be angry with God for that sometime later, but today I’m just trying to survive. All I want to do is be with my Daddy and my brothers.

I can’t walk 20 steps without sobbing: “My momma, my Momma, my Momma.”

All I want is my Momma.

One Year Later

June 21, 2026

Photographs poured in from across the globe, beginning the day after she died. It was loud back then, with the whole world feeling ripples from the explosion that was the epicenter of my family’s universe.

It’s quiet today and still: we live among the ashes.

Interestingly, I did not become angry with God like I had predicted one year ago. That surprises me — I was very angry with him after Patrick died — but I suppose I outgrew that perspective.

This time, anger at God was not a battle I needed to wrestle through. I haven’t written much about God, but I’ve talked about him with many.

I’ve come to view God as far more compassionate and loving, and remembered Christ as he was known — as a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. God as the savior who heals, God as the creator who gave abundant life, Christ who came to demonstrate a greater way to live on earth.

This life — my beautiful, tragical, emotional, unforgettable life — is such a gift. My family is everything, my relationships are everything, my experiences are everything.

I sat by one of my nieces this week and allowed a tender tear to grace my cheek, simply in awe of the fact that this precious little life loves me simply for being in her life. It’s an overwhelming amount of love. The joy and the beauty of simply being together, surrounded by my sweet family, thinking how wonderful it is to love them and to be loved by them.

I cannot imagine walking out of my nieces and nephews lives like my mother, aunt, and grandparents walked out of ours. They’re withholding and missing out on so much love.

That’s not God’s fault, it’s theirs.

We each have choices of whether to harm one another or to love one another, and unhealthy thought patterns ultimately lead to death in one sense or another. We are free to make our choices, for better or for worse.

Now, I’ve walked miles without sobbing “My momma, my Momma, my Momma.” I knew it was possible back then, but it was incomprehensible at that time.

It is astounding how much pain people can endure; it’s unbelievable how much pain I have endured. People often try to comfort or maybe explain [I think??] by saying “She [Momma] was in so much pain,” but her pain didn’t end: it transferred to we who survive, giving us a trauma she did not have to live through.

Love is eternal, and so is loss.

Perhaps there is a grand reunion in the afterlife, but we living will carry Momma’s loss until we too take our final breath.

Her love endures. Her loss endures. In some ways, she endures too, her blood coursing through our veins.

Her loss is irreconcilable, and it isn’t meant to be. Mommas aren’t supposed to leave their babies. People aren’t supposed to choose their deaths.

Life is hard, but our endurance should be celebrated. Our lives should be celebrated.

One year later, glimpses of life flutter from ground zero. All that is gray and dark does not last forever.