The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

Triggers in grief become a part of your "new normal", as if there is anything normal, now, about living without your child.  Triggers are going to happen, and we expect them...for the most part. Some of them make sense, some of them do not. Some can take moments to recover from, some can take hours.  I had a scare with my dog this week. I won't go into the details, but for a minute, I thought she might be hurt. My adrenaline spiked and fear rose up inside me to a place I haven't visited for a while. When I had the situation under control, I sat down, and I sobbed. Uncontrollably. I could not stop. For hours. My stomach shook, tears fell. I could not get ahold of myself. I asked for prayer.  Yes, I love my dog and wouldn't want anything terrible to happen to her. But it was John's loss that was triggered.  She was with him when he died.  She laid beside him.  She was there when he took his last breath.  He wasn't alone because...

An article I wrote for Her View From Home To the Grieving Mother: You Did Everything You Could Dear Mama  – I understand how hard this is for you, as much as one bereaved mother can relate to another. I know your walls are up and your heart is broken.  You’re doing your best to get through each day when you’d really just like to just lay down on their grave or crawl into the casket and die too.  The pain is unbelievable, unbearable, beyond description. This type of loss is a little different. You’ve lost a child, but you’ve lost him or her to a darkness that’s spreading across our land at an alarming rate. It’s consuming our children.  It’s a war.  An epidemic.  A plague. You’re living part of a horrible history in our country and frankly, you cannot believe this is your life.  You’ve asked why a thousand times.  You’ve gone over every detail trying to figure out if you coul...