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...
5 days 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...
13 days ago • 7 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Your heart might be hurting today. You're looking at a picture of your baby, your little baby. You can see the individual hairs on their head but you can't touch them. This feels so cruel. Maybe your child transitioned during the holidays, or maybe it was another time, but as soon as summer ends, grief hits you like a sledgehammer. You withdraw, you lose weight, you can't sleep. You are lost. Completely lost. You want a magic pill to make it go away....
19 days ago • 6 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Has a mental health professional looked at you with concern and used words like “complicated grief” or “prolonged grief disorder” because your loss doesn’t fit their textbook timeline for “normal bereavement”? Have they suggested your ongoing anguish years after your child’s death means you’re somehow stuck, unable to process your loss properly, or failing to “move through” grief in the expected stages? You’ve been told your grief is “complicated”...
27 days ago • 6 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, I know that there are moments when you catch yourself laughing at something funny, only to have the laughter die in your throat as crushing guilt floods in. You find yourself monitoring your emotional state constantly, policing any flicker of happiness or contentment that dares to surface. When a beautiful sunset takes your breath away, the guilt follows instantly: "I shouldn't be able to appreciate beauty when they'll never see another sunset." When...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, I see you staring at the ceiling at 3am, asking "What's the point?" about everything. The job that once felt important now seems trivial. Hobbies that used to bring joy feel empty and pointless. The future you had mapped out in your heart—all those graduations, weddings, and grandchildren that were supposed to be—now feels like a cruel joke. You might wake up each morning and everything feels flat, colorless, meaningless. People go about their daily...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, You sit surrounded by the boxes of your child's belongings. Their clothes still smell like their cologne, their paintings lean against the wall half-finished, sketchbooks filled with ideas they'll never develop. That novel they were writing sits on your kitchen table, 200 pages of dreams and talent that will never reach its ending. You hold their favorite sweater and wonder: Do I donate this so someone else can feel its warmth, or keep it because...
about 2 months ago • 9 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, Today might be really hard for you. You think you've never felt this depressed in your life. You're scared of having a long life because you don't think you can handle living years missing your child this much. You're not planning on ending your life, but at the same time you don't want to keep living this way. It hurts too much. And you don't want to live with this much pain for the next 20+ years. The thought of decades ahead filled with this crushing...
about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, I hear you talk about the bone-deep weariness you feel from constantly holding everyone else together while your own world has completely shattered. Family, friends, and colleagues still look to you for support as if your child's death somehow made you stronger rather than breaking you completely. I see you carrying the burden of maintaining the appearance that you "have it all together" when you can barely function, when what you desperately need is...
2 months ago • 9 min read
Letters to A Grieving Mama Dear Reader, I hear you talk about those moments when you mention your child's name and watch the conversation suddenly shift. The awkward glances exchanged, and the palpable discomfort that fills the room. The way people quickly change topics, offer hurried condolences, or worse—remain silent as if you've said something inappropriate. The subtle but unmistakable message that your child should be relegated to the past, their name spoken only in hushed memorial...
2 months ago • 5 min read