I’m sitting at 10 years since the shattering, untimely death of my beloved, eldest son.

At the time of his death, I held only fragile, largely theoretical beliefs in a spirit world. These beliefs came not from religion (I was raised by two atheists) but from reading about near-death experiences and researching reincarnation. I found the evidence intellectually compelling, but it had not reached by body or heart. I believed in theory, not in lived faith.  Emotionally, I was unconvinced.

My heart was absolutely shattered.  

Before his death, I had been present and available to him, ready to support him in every way I could. Yet, during his illness, he rejected me.  From a distance, I sent him love, imagining him surrounded in golden light.  I prayed that, with time, he would return to me. 

He did.

But it was after death.

Those first few years were unbearable.  I cried daily, submerged in a grief so intense, it felt physical. my heart ached.  I felt shattered.  I was so upset, angry, and devastated, at times I wanted to scream.  Tears overtook me several times a day, always when my small children were unable to see.  I cried on the way to work, on the way to pick them up, and on the way home, quietly, invisibly.  

My body ached for him.  My chest hurt.  My breasts hurt.  Even the deepest parts of my body, the places that create life,  ached and sometimes burned.  It was a brutally painful grief, one that lived not just in my mind but in every cell.  

In some ways, I was fortunate.  As a therapist, I understood grief: how to allow it, how not to suppress it, how to keep moving through life while carrying it.  I knew how to protect myself from clinical depression, how to do things to lift my spirits.  I remember playing tennis in the street with my younger children, my daughter placing her hamster to run up and down my arm, my children curling up on my lap to snuggle.  Somehow, they sensed that I was hurting even more deeply than they were.  They had not grown up with him since he moved out before they were born, but they knew their mother was brokenhearted.

Over time, the grief softened slightly, losing some of it’s intensity and persistence.  It loosened its grip. Grief no longer seized me for hours every day.  Sometimes, it gave me days off.  Yet, even then, it returned with force around his birth and death anniversaries, reliably casting a shadow over every summer and fall.

I have shared my grief journey here in the hopes that my raw honesty might help others walking this harrowing journey.  Finding someone who understand the depth and egregious horror of losing a child is hard to find.

As I stumbled through my aching, all-consuming loss, something unexpected began to happen. I started noticing my son’s communication, clear, personal, and undeniable. Over time, these experiences convinced me, not just intellectually, but to the depths of my heart that a spiritual world exists.  If you read my earlier blogs, you will walk with me through these moments, through astonishing, loving ways he reached me, and through the gradual shift from belief to embodied faith. You can experience with me the amazing miracles he created for me, and for all of you, to learn to believe, and find heart-felt faith.

In May of 2025, nearly 10 years after his death, I learned something deceptively simple but profoundly transformative: the importance of embodying gratitudes and affirmations. I had practiced and taught these tools to my clients for years, but I had not consistently allowed myself to embodying the feelings associated with them.

I had not become clinically depressed after my son’s death, but I had lost much of my joy.  Not long after he died, my parents passed away as well, severing my relationships with my sisters almost completely. Then another one of my children became seriously ill.  I was functioning. I was coping. But I was not happy.

I began practicing embodied gratitude several times a day.  I took mindful moments upon waking, a crucial time for neuroplasticity, and three to five additional times throughout the day.  I found joy seeping back into my day.  At firs, it lasted only part of the day. Old irritations still surfaced, especially when I returned home  to adult children who were not doing their share.  But, by late fall, the seas of ease and lightness spread throughout the entire day.

I now find humor in situations that once would have irritated me.  My grief has reduced considerably.  I still miss my son deeply.  I still grieve.  But, with EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), meditation, and embodied gratitude, the grief is now brief and tolerable.  I can return to joy and appreciation more quickly and more gently.

In finding meaning from his death, I found relief.  

In finding gratitude and love, I found joy.

A Note for Those Early in Grief

If you are reading this in the early days, months, or years after the loss of your child, I want to speak to you directly.

What you are feeling is not wrong. It is not excessive. It is not something to “fix.” The depth of your pain reflects the depth of your love. This kind of grief is not meant to be hurried, bypassed, or compared to anyone else’s timeline. There may be days when simply breathing feels like an accomplishment—and on those days, that is enough.

You may hear well-meaning people suggest that time heals all wounds. In my experience, time alone does not heal this kind of loss. What time can offer—very slowly—is space: space for the sharpest edges to soften, space for moments of rest between waves, space for meaning to emerge when you are ready, if it ever does.

Please know this: you do not have to feel hope right now. You do not have to believe in anything beyond what you can survive today. Even if joy feels impossible, even if faith feels inaccessible, even if the pain lives in your body as much as your heart—you are not failing at grief and you are not alone.  I was there too and many others are walking that horrific road with you.

One day, far in the future and without your forcing it, something may shift. The grief may still be there, but it may no longer consume every moment. Love may begin to coexist with sorrow. Breath may come a little easier. And if that day does not come for a long time, you are still exactly where you need to be.

You are not alone on this path, even when it feels unbearably lonely. Your love for your child did not end with their death—and neither did your right to live, to heal, and eventually, to feel moments of peace again.

Be gentle with yourself. You are carrying the unimaginable.

#grief #childloss #worstgrief #griefprocessing