Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Today is the EVE of a New Year. 2026 And this comes with a pressure you didn't ask for and can't escape: the expectation of fresh starts, new beginnings, and transformation. Everyone's posting their year-in-review highlights. Their goals for 2026. Their excitement about what's coming. Their declarations of "new year, new me." And you're sitting there thinking: I don't want a new me. I want my old life back. I want the me who had a living child. The turn...
9 days ago • 11 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, It's December 23rd. Two days until Christmas. And if you've been on social media at all this week, you know there's a particular kind of torture you're navigating: the endless scroll of other families celebrating. The matching pajama photos. The family baking sessions with flour-covered faces and genuine laughter. The "our crew" photos with everyone present and accounted for. The holiday card photos where no one is missing. Every single post is a...
17 days ago • 9 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Maybe this is your first gift-buying season without them. Maybe it's your tenth. Either way, you're facing an impossible reality: your love for your child is still active, but all the old forms for expressing it are gone. The anguish of having love with nowhere to put it is one of the most difficult aspects of grief. The Questions That Haunt You Let me name the impossible decisions you're facing. Do you buy something for your child? Your body remembers...
23 days ago • 7 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, The holiday season is here. And if you’re grieving, it can feel like a nightmare unfolding in slow motion. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice, or simply acknowledge the turning of the year, this season carries an unbearable weight when your child is no longer here in physical form. Maybe this is your first holiday season without them. Maybe many years have passed. Either way, the sounds, smells, and expectations of...
30 days ago • 9 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, December is here. And I know that for you it might come with a relentless assault of festivity that feels forced for you. Thanksgiving barely ended, and the world has already exploded into holiday chaos. Decorations are everywhere. Holiday music is on a constant loop. Everyone is demanding festive cheer. You survived Thanksgiving. Barely. And now you're facing an entire MONTH of this. Christmas. Hanukkah. Kwanzaa. New Year's Eve. . Each one its own...
about 1 month ago • 9 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Mama, Thanksgiving is a few days away, and you might be dreading it. Maybe this is your first Thanksgiving without your child. Maybe it's your fifth, or your tenth. Either way, the weight of this day that's been building for weeks as the calendar marches relentlessly toward Thursday has been sitting heavy on your chest. Please know that it is normal to dread this day. Thanksgiving is designed for people whose worlds have not been shattered by loss. It's built...
about 1 month ago • 12 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, When you walk through the grocery store, no one sees the gaping wound in your chest. You sit in meetings at work and no one notices you're barely holding yourself together. You show up at family gatherings and people ask "How are you?" expecting you to say "Fine," not wanting to hear the truth that you're drowning. You post something on social media about your child and people scroll past it without acknowledging it, but when you post something...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, I know that it might not just the crushing pain of your child's absence—though that alone feels unbearable - that keeps you up at night. It's the weight of all the futures that died with them. You'll never see them buy their first house. Never watch them walk down the aisle or across a graduation stage. Never hold their children in your arms. You'll never witness who they were becoming, the person they would have grown into at 30, 40, 50. Their creative...
about 2 months ago • 8 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Last year, I read a comment from a mama who had lost her adult son and it really broke my heart. Her comment was one of the reasons why I decided to focus my work on maternal grief. "My heart has been shattered for 5 years and there is no sign of repair. No signs of changing. The pain is horrific. If I could leave this body, leave this earth, I would. It's a horrific tragic life. Nothing anyone can say or do. That's the reality. That's the truth, it's...
2 months ago • 23 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Maybe someone said it to you at the grocery store when you mentioned your child's name. Or perhaps it was a well-meaning friend who suggested you "get back out there" or "start living again." The words might have been gentler—"You need to find closure" or "They wouldn't want you to be sad forever"—but underneath, the message was clear: it's time to move on. And when you heard those words, something inside you recoiled. Maybe you felt anger rising in...
3 months ago • 7 min read