Sam's body was discovered on November 13th, 2022, and his funeral was on the 20th.    The anniversary of losing a child never gets easier.   The trauma lives in our bodies.   

In today's episode, I share memories and thoughts from that impossible week, my struggle with grieving alone,  and my heartfelt decision to bring a 4-legged companion back into my life.

The triggers and grief of losing a child are profound, relentless, and never ending.   When I lost my beautiful standard pup Luna 14 months ago, I felt the bottom drop out of my world again.   She had been my constant companion and support, she was even by my side at Sam's funeral.   

I am grateful that I have taken an enormous step toward healing by allowing myself to love another dog. 💕 

As I struggle with the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Sam's death, I am trying to stay grounded by remembering how difficult the end of his life was.   The only time I ever felt "safe" from potential bad news was when I was out of cell phone reception.   It felt normal at the time but it was far from it. 

Sam didn't leave a good life behind, he left pain, suffering, anxiety, and a crippling addiction that he could not see his way out of.  He had given up. As his mom,  even in my deepest grief,  I can't wish he were back in such agony.   

Sometimes it's important to be realistic.   I lost a wonderful son who had become incapacitated by the same drugs that are causing a worldwide epidemic.    

The anniversary of losing a child is so much more than just a date.  It involves too much familiarity with everything about the season,  recognizing the before and after, and the vulnerability of life.    One minute our children were here, the next they were gone.   Often, as time goes on,  we learn to partially escape the excruciating daily pain with the changes of seasons and activities, but only until our season comes back around.   And it always does.

This episode is about dealing with the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Sam's death.    My thoughts, feelings, and how I am trying to support myself through this time of year.   

I am just crawling back out of one of my darkest times.   We are nearing the 3rd anniversary of Sam's death and my heart felt unbearably heavy and sad.   It felt like it was almost time to give up and succumb to a loss I cannot change.   To lie in bed and ruminate my days away again.   But, then I realized that while I can't bring Sam back, it will always be up to me to find my way back into the light.    I think this is true in all areas of life.  Ultimately, we have to learn to depend on ourselves.    

It's easy to get stuck in the rut of pain because we are creatures of habit and tend to fall back into the same grooves every day.    If we take in the same ideas and allow ourselves to become stale in our daily activities, we stay stuck.   Our brain cannot override what our body and mind are succumbing to.   

To effect change and move forward, we have to be willing to change our forcus and behavior, even in the smallest ways.    It starts with the content we allow into our lives and how we choose to spend our time.    Same in, same out.   If we want different outcomes, we need to plant new seeds.❤️

In today's episode, I discuss my decision to feel better after falling back into a dark and oppressive state of mind and the steps I took to do so.

Sam told me he would never forgive me for turning him in when he robbed a bank but I was positive he would.    I knew that as soon as he got sober, he would understand that I did what I had to save his life.   I wish I could say that I was successful, but he died first.   

This episode is about living with unresoved conflict when we lose a son or daughter to addiction.    

When we no longer have the opportunity to work through these struggles in realtime with our child, it's important that we use common sense to resolve them within ourselves.💕

Gratitude is most important during the times it's the hardest to feel. such as during great loss and tragedy.   However, finding gratitude for what we once had, and what we still have now, is a scientifically proven tp create a profound difference in our life by the simple act of shifting our focus.     

In this episode, I talk about why gratitude is important, how it has helped me in my grief, 3 specific reasons it's important, and 2 ways to tap into a gratitude practice of your own.

Gratitude doesn't diminish our grief or our child's death,  it simply means that we are choosing to look through a lense that not only honors our loss, but also acknowledges what we still have to be thankful for.

We aren't seeking to replace our grief with our gratitude, but rather to support it.💕  

I recently heard a metaphor that I want to share:  Life is like ascending a spiral staircase and because of this, we keep revisiting the same core problems and  issues time and again.      They may not always look the same, but they often hold the same roots.    Consequently, when we see ourselves faced with the same type of issues over and over, it's often easy to miss how much we have grown, and it's also very important not to.    

The grief of losing a child becomes our deepest wound and one we will never, or never even ever want to, walk away from.     As we face this trauma over and over again,  there are going to be times that we feel like we have not moved forward at all.   

This episode is about keeping faith in the process because as long as we are taking the correct actions, we are moving forward, even during the times we don't feel it.💕 

When I started this podcast, my intention was to talk more about Sam's addiction and death than I have, but that was before I realized how important my focus is as I move forward with grief.   If I zero in on the tragedy that I cannot change or undo, I am surrendering the valuable time I have left here, whereas If I focus on healing, knowing that I will ALWAYS carry this grief, I am developing the tools I need to make the burden of losing Sam lighter.   

What we focus on is crucial to the future we create for ourselves.    If we want to feel better and become stronger, we need to focus on what we can control, which is how we choose to live the rest of our lives.   

Our grief of losing a son or daughter takes up tremendous amounts of energy in our lives, whether we are looking directly at it our not.  When we shift our gaze forward, we are not escaping our grief,  we are arming ourselves to live with it.💕

Losing a child is such a torturous journey that If we wait until we feel like moving forward into healing, some of us may never get there.    This is why I believe that instead of waiting until we feel like it, we should wait only until we are capable, whether we feel like it or not. 

In this episode, I talk about why we need to push ourselves into the process when we can and three specific reasons why this will benefit us in the long run.💕  

When Sam died, I was surprised to notice all of my relationships were  shifting.   Some became closer and some more distant.   At first I felt hurt and misunderstood but I have learned quite a lot in the past 33 months.

In this episode, I discuss why our relationships naturally change when we lose a child, my perspective on this shift, and how I choose to approach it.  I also talk about how my family of origin has felt the pain of losing Sam and of watching my family grieve and how they have shown up for me in exactly the way I have needed them to.