Tag: #grief

Surviving After Someone’s Suicide

Surviving After Someone’s Suicide

This information is provided by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. I have simply copied and pasted here one of their documents available to the public. If you are a suicide survivor, I urge you to read through this.

You Are Not Alone If you have lost someone to suicide, the first thing you should know is that you are not alone. Each year over 30,000 people in the United States die by suicide, and it is the second-leading cause of death for college-aged students. The devastated family and friends they leave behind are known as “survivors.” There are millions of survivors who, like you, are trying to cope with this heartbreaking loss. Survivors often experience a wide range of grief reactions, including some or all of the following:

  • Shock is a common immediate reaction. You may feel numb or disoriented, and may have trouble concentrating.
  • Symptoms of temporary depression, including disturbed sleep, loss of appetite, intense sadness, and lack of energy.
  • Anger towards the deceased, others, or yourself.
  • Guilt, including thinking, “If only I had….”

These feelings usually diminish over time, as you develop your ability to cope and begin to heal.

Why Did This Happen? Many survivors struggle to understand the reasons for the suicide, asking themselves over and over again: “Why?” Many replay the individual’s last days, searching for clues, particularly if they didn’t see any signs that suicide was imminent.

Because suicide is often poorly understood, some survivors feel unfairly victimized by stigma. They may feel the suicide is somehow shameful, or that they, their family, or their friends are somehow to blame them for this tragedy.

Try to bear in mind that suicide is almost always complicated, resulting from a combination of painful suffering, desperate hopelessness and other complicated factors.

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One learns to live with the loss, the tragedy, the waste, and the gaping hole in the fabric of one’s life. There is no closure, nor would I want one. I want to remember her all my life, vividly: her laughter, the smell of her perfume, her moments of joy, her humility, and her integrity.

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Coping With Suicide Loss

  • Some survivors struggle with what to tell other people. Although you should make whatever decision feels right to you, most survivors have found it best to simply acknowledge that the individual died by suicide.
  • You may find that it helps to reach out to family and friends. Because some people may not know what to say, you may need to take the initiative to talk about the suicide, share your feelings, and ask for their help.
  • Even though it may seem difficult, maintaining contact with other people is especially important during the stress-filled months after a suicide.
  • Keep in mind that each person grieves in his or her own way. Some people visit the cemetery; others find it too painful to go at all.  However, some form of grieving is a basic human need for the healing process.
  • Each person also grieves at his or her own pace; there is no set rhythm or timeline for healing.
  • Anniversaries, birthdays, and holidays may be especially difficult, so you might want to think about whether to continue old traditions or create some new ones. You may also experience unexpected waves of sadness; these are a normal part of the grieving process.
  • Some survivors find comfort in community, religious, or spiritual activities, including talking to a trusted member of the clergy or a counselor.
  • Be kind to yourself. When you feel ready, begin to go on with your life. Eventually starting to enjoy life again is not a betrayal of the individual, but rather a sign that you’ve begun to heal.

For more information about survivors of suicide you can contact The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. This organization reaches out to survivors with two goals in mind: to offer the support that is so vital, particularly to the newly bereaved, and the opportunities for survivors looking to get involved in prevention and advocacy. Their website is: http://www.afsp.org/

Give each other grace

Give grace

My heart is tired.

There are so many people in my life who are hurting, grieving, struggling. The world is upside down and cruel and confusing. My head spins all day long and now it’s entering my sleep time.

I’m doing my best to check in with all those people in my life who need to be heard, who need kind words, who need a little extra love right now. However, I realized today that I need to check in with myself too and that means I may have to check out on helping others for a bit and focus on me. I’ve been focusing so much on the hearts of others that I forgot that mine is just as achy and needs a little extra care too.

Yet how do I do that? I can’t just walk away from others. How do I find balance? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? And I for real don’t have an answer.

Somehow I need to acknowledge my loss and my feelings. While other people have moved on, and I am stronger now than I was, I still miss Nikolai as much today as I did the day he died. The dreams don’t ever quit. The remembering is always there. I need others to also acknowledge my loss, even if they don’t understand where I’m at with it right now. Unlike physical pain, it’s very difficult for people to relate to emotional pain, and especially to talk about it. It’s hard.

I also don’t want my loss to be a central focus of my life, but it is a huge part of my life and I can’t ignore it. And especially in seasons like Christmas, my feelings are bouncing all over the place – like a pinball machine. I can’t help it. Someone is missing from my season. I don’t care whether this is your first holiday without someone you love or the 20th, it still hurts.

While I try to help others, I feel myself sinking in the muck. I’m biting back tears constantly, forgetting things, snapping at people and acting sometimes in a way that I often regret. I ask you to grant me some mercy. Overlook it. My emotional tank is so empty right now and many days I feel like I’m going to shatter like a glass ball falling off the Christmas tree.

I try not to talk to people about my feelings because I feel like either they don’t want to hear it, they have their own grief they are drowning in, or they don’t know how to handle it and it just becomes awkward for everyone. The few times I thought about starting a conversation, I held back because I just don’t want to bring a room down, you know what I mean? After all, it’s the most joyous season of the year, right?

All of this leads me to the same question… how do I balance reaching out and loving others while simultaneously taking care of me? I still don’t have any answers except that maybe we just extend each other some grace right now and know that we are all in a tough spot. Maybe we lavish love on each other through prayer and forgive someone when they don’t reach out when we think they should.

Hebrews 4:16 – Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Grief and the holidays

Grief during the holidays

Here we are… it’s the Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s holiday season. Again.

Last week I tried so hard to write a blog piece about all the things I am grateful for, a thankful post of sorts. As you can see, I didn’t do it. Let me rephrase that: I couldn’t do that. And not because I don’t have a million things to be thankful and grateful for, it just felt forced. This is our second holiday season without Beans. Throw in some COVID-19 lockdown and limited time with extended family and BOOM, you have a storm of emotions that I simply didn’t have control over.

Grief on a normal day is hard; however, grief during the holiday season is something else entirely. It’s wanting desperately to hang on to the memories and keep everything the exact same, while realizing that it won’t ever be the same. It’s experiencing crushing sadness in the midst of pure joy.

I don’t know if this will help you or not; however, here are a few things that I tell myself, not just through this holiday season, but throughout the year:

Let yourself feel. Last night my family watched “Elf” and if any of you know me, you know this is my absolute favorite movie of all time – like, I could watch it in July it’s that good. This movie brings me absolute pure joy. Last night, while my heart is bursting with joy, I started to cry during the end where they all have to “sing loudly for all to hear” to make the sleigh fly. I don’t know why, it just hit me in the feels. This is the feeling I’m talking about where I literally seem to float between joy and sudden sadness. And that’s OKAY! You have to allow yourself to feel the full range of emotions. The sounds, sights and smells of the holiday season may trigger feelings of sadness, loss, emptiness and anxiety. I read in an article a while back that “time doesn’t heal the pain associated with a loss; it’s what you do with that time that matters. Grief is the process by which you heal.” Rather than try to ignore the grief, we should embrace it.

Set boundaries for yourself. Last year we had plans to meet friends for drinks one evening. The whole day leading up to that singular event was excruciating. I knew I couldn’t do it. My heart hurt too much and I really just wanted to stay home and cry a little, snuggle with my husband and just feel. I tried to bury those feelings all day but in the middle of getting a car wash on our way to meet them, I looked at my husband and he just knew. He texted our friends and cancelled on the spot. This was a lesson for me to make sure that I’m setting boundaries for myself. You are not obligated to do anything, go anywhere or see anyone if you aren’t feeling it.

Honor your memories. Memories are the very thing that keep you solidly connected to those you have lost. It is so critical to continue to talk about your loved ones and cherish all the amazing memories you shared with them. It helps keep them alive so to speak. Christmas was always Nikolai’s favorite holiday and I love that even at 14 he would get up at 3 a.m. to see what Santa brought him and then go back to bed and lay awake anxiously for everyone else to get up. I love to picture his face on Christmas morning. I have a million memories of Nikolai at the holidays and my family will share them, talk about him, remember him and honor all of those memories.

Create new traditions. This one is tough for me as I’m not a lover of change. I thrive on tradition. However, over the course of time, new traditions just start to naturally emerge and someday I will be okay with that.

Ask for help. Last December I was in the absolute darkest of places, a black hole of sorts that I literally could not pull myself out of. I have a dear friend who literally said to me one day, “either you make an appointment with a therapist, or I’m making it for you.” We need these people in our lives. No one ever likes to ask for help. And this is one of the biggest hurdles we as humans must jump over if we are going to make change in this world. We need to admit that we can’t do everything ourselves. It’s okay to ask for help. People, by nature, want to help – it’s who we are. It doesn’t have to be a therapist, it could be a friend or family member. The point here is to reach out. Make the call. Ask for help.

This holiday season is no different than my every day, in that I will always choose joy while recognizing that I won’t always experience joy. I have much to be grateful and thankful for; however, I can also sit in the space of sadness once in a while and grieve my losses. We all feel broken sometimes. Just hold on, joy will always eventually shine through.

What does your story look like?

Write your own story

I was listening to a podcast recently and the guest speaker, Lori Gottlieb, said this, “Part of getting to know yourself is to unknow yourself. To let go of those limiting stories that you’ve been telling yourself about yourself so you can live your life and not the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life.”

I feel this quote in my soul. This process of getting to unknow myself began the day Nikolai died. When your child takes his own life, you can’t help but to evaluate your own story. What kind of parent was I? Was I the kind of person I really want to be? Could I have acted or done something different? What if I had just done this or just been this kind of parent/person, maybe things would have turned out differently. This is guilt talk telling me that I wasn’t good enough.

Over the course of several months after Nikolai’s death I felt more and more broken. Broken to my very core and guilt ravished my brain. And then I just started to get mad.

When I began the work with onadragonflyswings community, it quite literally stemmed from a guilt complex I just couldn’t let go of – that feeling of I was not enough for Nikolai and so I owe it to him to do this thing, to put myself out there and become very uncomfortable. Insert therapist here and I began the hard work of letting go of this self-loathing that was devouring me. At the same time, I started to really research, read and listen to everything I could get my hands on about mental health and suicide. I participated and spoke at several suicide prevention trainings. This is when I discovered that it wasn’t that I wasn’t enough, it was that I didn’t know enough. And, that my friends, is the shift in my story.

Stories are the way we make sense of our lives. The guilt I felt then is something I will continue to feel, possibly for the rest of my life; however, the heaviness of it is so much less now. This isn’t the story I want for my life and I’m sure that it isn’t the story that Nikolai would want for my life either.

Before Nikolai died, I set the first meeting for a book club called Girl Stop Apologizing (The GSA Club). This book club was made up of myself and six other women who all shared a passion for Rachel Hollis and her new book “Girl Stop Apologizing.” That first meeting was delayed for a couple of months until I felt the timing was right to get back to living. I wrote these six women into the first chapter of my healing and my transformation. And there isn’t a chapter in my story since that doesn’t include them and the power they have wielded to help me change who I am and realize who I want to be. They have shown me that I can choose to play the hero or the victim in my story. I will choose hero every day.

I am a changed person and I don’t mean that subtlety – I mean like a whole 365-degree change. I question everything. I try to view every person and situation with compassion and kindness. I thrive on my faith and my God. I have tightened my circle, yet at the same time completely opened it up. There is movement in my soul, and I love this person I am evolving into. This is my real story. This is the story I want to tell.

You choose your narrative. Make sure it’s the story you want to live.

Why are we so impatient with grief?

Why are we so impatient with grief?

I often hear the phrases “grief is different for everyone”, “grief is not something you get over” and my personal favorite “there is no time frame for grief”. Yet, the same people that say these things really do just want you to move on and get over the grieving already. When you are not in the season of grieving the death of someone close to you, it is difficult to understand or even be around someone who is sad. I get it. I really, really do. Yet, if you are going to be an active participant in someone’s life and grief just happens to be a part of their season, then freaking show up for them!

When you ask how they are doing – make sure that when they say “I’m sad”, “I feel broken”, “my heart hurts today”, make sure you are ready to sit back and listen. And for those of you sitting in the back row seats, here it is again: STOP GIVING ADVICE!!!!! I don’t want your advice. I don’t want you to tell me that maybe I’m sad because I feel like I should be. What? I don’t want you to try and explain it to me or offer an empty gesture about the future state of my grief. STOP IT! Just please stop it. I know it’s awkward for you to sit in silence, to not be a helper, but guess what? It’s not about you.

I read something recently that summed this up nicely for me:

“The world is impatient with grief — married to the narrative of “getting over it,” enamored with the idea that grief can be sliced up into five stages that always ends with acceptance and “moving on.”

So I guess once you are through those five stages you are good to go then, huh? What if a person doesn’t go through all five stages? Then what? What if they skip around in the five stages? This is not conventional grieving. Gasp. Now what do you do as a helper?

Let’s go back to that statement, “grief is different for everyone.” Let’s sit on this for a hot minute. So if grief is different for everyone then that means some people may go through the five stages and others might not. It also means that some people sink so low into their grief they become depressed and sometimes suicidally so. It also means that some people are able to focus on the deceased person’s life more than death and find joy easier than others.

Here is what it doesn’t mean – you just stop grieving. I believe (at least in my own experience) that I will always grieve the lost life of Nikolai. I will grieve the person he could have been, the family he might have created, and I will mourn forever that he is not a physical part of our life. However, I also believe that life is more full of joy than grief. Life does move on and those of us grieving will find a way to move through the grief to also experience the joys of life. It does not mean that I won’t suddenly have a moment or day or week of utter sadness. It’s okay that I do. And, luckily I have a husband and an intimate group of friends who allow me that sadness yet also won’t let me unpack in that space.

It’s really quite simple: we love deeply, therefore we grieve deeply.  There is no right or wrong way to grieve. You do you and turn a deaf ear to the ignorant who simply cannot sit in the awkward silence with you. It’s hard to do and even though I’ve had a year to practice, it’s still hard to tune it out sometimes. Just remember… other people’s opinions or thoughts about how you feel are none of your business.  

The last of the “firsts”

The last of the firsts

It’s here. The last of the “firsts”.

People keep telling me that the second year is actually the worst. Why they would tell me this I don’t know. I mean, I guess thank you for the head’s up?  It has something to do with the fact that you are mostly numb the first year – sort of in a state of disbelief, like your loved one just went on a vacation for a year and you suddenly realize they aren’t coming back. I’m sorry, but that’s just dumb. And don’t anyone say that to me. Ever.

We have been through all the holidays that start with “happy”, Memorial Day weekend, St. Patrick’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day tomorrow, your birthday… yep, we’ve done them all, without you. We finished out last summer with hot baseball tournaments and mini vacations. We entered Fall and then winter. We did snow hiking and snowball fights with the dogs. We have been through the rainy spring, the blooming of new flowers and buds on the trees and a quarantine. And today, ironically, is the first day of summer. Another summer.

Throughout this past year it has become painfully clear to me that life moves on. We still have jobs we have to go to everyday, bills that still need to be paid, and other kids to parent. The world continues to move around us as if nothing has happened. Only something did happen. Some days I want to look at people and ask them, “don’t you know what has happened to me?” I still have this pent-up scream stuck inside of me that I swear someday I’m going to let loose and it will be unholy from the bottoms of my toes.

June 20, 2019 was a normal day. I came home from work and had to leave at 5:30 to volunteer at an event in the park near our home. You were hungry, so we had a quick dinner together, just you and me. You sat across from me. You had strawberries – those were your favorite. We talked about our days. You asked if you could have ice cream for dessert and I said how about you wait until I get home and we can have some together. You agreed without a single complaint. That should have been my first clue that things weren’t quite right. You had cleaned the kitchen and loaded the dishwasher before I got home from work that day. It’s my biggest pet peeve if that isn’t done, and it never is, and I always have to yell at you and Reilly to take care of it. This night it was all done before I got home from work that day. That was another sign. You did all the things to make me happy that night.

I wish I had known that was the last time I would see you alive. I wish that I would have hugged you tight instead of yelling out as I walked out the door for the two of you to be good, see you in a bit and I love you. At least I said the last part.

Your oldest brother stopped by the park that night to bring me a coffee because it was cold and rainy. I bought him some food. And I bought him an ice cream cookie sandwich to give to Reilly. I wish that I had bought you one too instead of deciding to wait and have ice cream with you at home like I had promised. You might still be alive if I had. The ice cream would have been melting and your brother would have given it to you right when he got home. If I had only bought you an ice cream.

Your brothers were amazing. They did all the right things that night. They can’t unsee that night and I can’t imagine the pain of what their vision of that night looks like. All I know is that the call I received and the urgency in which I drove home, and the remainder of that whole night was a parent’s worst nightmare.

We held your hands when you slipped away at the hospital. I brushed your unruly hair out of your face and whispered I love you one more time. Your dad talked to you gently in your ear in a long-distance call from California. It’s surreal, even today, I cannot believe it. Yet, I can still relive every single minute of that night in my mind. The screaming when I got to the house, the tears, the doctors trying so hard in the ER to revive you, the look on your brother’s faces. Images I wish I didn’t have.

That was the worst night of my life. And every “first” we have hit since that night is so hard. Every 20th of the month is so hard.

I will live the rest of forever without you.

I will live the rest of forever wondering who you would have become.

There are a million things I would have done differently. But it’s too late and I can’t change anything. All I can do is live joyfully, as you would have. And I promise you that I will do what I can to make a positive impact on the lives of others. I will be kind and empathetic. I will listen and I will love. And I will be an instrument of change we so desperately need in this world.

A year. One full year without you.

We miss you.

God may have you in heaven, but I have you in my heart. Always.

Happy Birthday Nikolai

Happy birthday

Today is your birthday. Your sweet 16. Or for boys is it more like stud 16? I don’t know.

Remember that birthday when you begged for hot dogs for your birthday dinner and I decided to make it extra special and go to the A & W Rootbeer Stand in Ortonville for a coney dog and mug rootbeer? And then we get there and everyone orders coney dogs BUT you – lol! Seriously a burger? I couldn’t believe it. I think I brought this story up every birthday thereafter because I was so annoyed and you thought it was so hysterical. Guess what… today we are going to that same A & W Rootbeer Stand and I am getting a burger. Just for you.

Quarantine or no quarantine, we probably wouldn’t be going to Secretary of State today for a license. I know you were so mad at dad and I for not allowing you to start driver’s training when you turned 15. I needed you to show us more responsibility and maturity before I was ready to risk your life and those of other people on the road. I know you get it. I also know you were mad as a hornet about it.

I miss you.

I wonder what you would have wanted for your birthday gift this year. New bike maybe. You were really getting too big for the one you had, although I know you loved it. Maybe some new kicks for summer? I bought you a dragonfly for your grave. It’s really more for me than you, I admit.

Your favorite birthday treat always seemed to be a slushie, whether from Mr. C’s or Dairy Queen. You weren’t huge on ice cream, but an ice slushie was high on your love of yummy things. And the brighter the color the better so you could wear it as a mustache for days!

I miss you.

I wish we could take you to ride go carts and play mini-golf today. Or maybe a friendly family tennis match or bowling. These are all things you loved to do on your big day.

I love birthdays. I love celebrating people and the amazingness they bring to the world. You brought a lot of amazingness Nikolai. I wish you could have seen that. I wish I had told you that more often.

Thank you for letting me pick the movie on your 13th birthday. You wanted to go to the movies and that was the day that Wonder Woman came out – June 2, 2017. You knew how much I wanted to see it. I think you did too; however, I also know you let us see it because of me. You were selfless. Always wanted people around you to be happy.

I miss you.

I’m sorry.

When you turned 12 you had an orchestra concert on your birthday and your teacher called out your birthday on stage. It was awesome! You turned three shades of red but I know you secretly loved it.

Are there birthdays in heaven? Make sure you whoop it up no matter what. Make some noise, as only you can.

Happy birthday Beans.

We love you.

Don’t forget

Don’t forget him

I’ve been thinking about Beans a lot lately. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him a dozen times; however, the last few weeks have been consuming. I don’t know if it’s the season I’m in right now or if it’s because we are coming up on the milestones of all milestones… his birthday and his death date, all in the same month. All I know is that my heart seems to hurt a little bit more right now.

Did you know that Nikolai’s favorite color was red?

He loved tacos and donuts.

His favorite cake was white cake with white frosting.

His favorite author by far was Rick Riordan and he read every single book of his a million and a half times.

He doodled more in school than he did actual work.

He struggled his whole life with math and writing.

He had a frequent flyer card to the ER because he was so curious and literally fearless!

He loved riding his bike more than just about anything.

He could burp the entire alphabet.

I write these things out because I am afraid that we will forget who he was. I don’t want Nikolai to be forgotten. I have big memories and stories that I love to share. Yet some days I feel like the everyday “normal” moments that we often take for granted are starting to slip away – memories lost. Little things like how he used to meet me in the garage every single day when I got home from work to ask me how my day was. Seems ordinary, but to me, looking back, those were special moments that I can’t ever get back and I don’t want to ever forget.

The world around me has moved on from Nikolai’s death. I know this. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but he wasn’t part of your day-to-day so I get it. That’s why these memories have become so precious. Things I can share with the world so no one forgets him. Nikolai isn’t just another suicide statistic. He was a 15-year old kid who lived and loved. He was my kid.

And while I could live the rest of my life with what if’s and coulda, woulda, shoulda’s, I can’t change anything. So instead of focusing on the things I can’t change, I choose to focus on the memories of an amazing kid who lived with more joy in his heart than any single human I’ve ever met.

If you knew him, keep talking about him. Keep his light on for the world to see.

Happy GOTCHA Day!

Gotcha Day

Today is Nikolai’s GOTCHA Day!

For those of you who don’t know what that means, it’s the day the court in Kemerovo, Siberia, Russia gave Joe and I full custody of Kola. We always knew adoption was part of our plan, yet it still amazes me that God knew that halfway around the world there was this little baby boy destined for our hearts and our family.

This wild, goofy, smart, funny, kind-hearted, frustrating, loveable, handsome, force of nature child that we so desperately needed in our lives. Nikolai was full of life.

The process of international adoption is often long and when you decide to adopt from a country like Russia, you are also dealing with massive expenses and a corrupt system. However, that being said, Kemerovo was surprisingly pro-American and truly wanted what was best for the orphans. And, considering I was also pregnant with Reilly, we needed a region like this to push the adoption through with some urgency.

We traveled for the second time to Russia in April of 2005. Armed with a few bribes and a great translator, we stood before a judge on April 7 and asked to formally adopt Nikolai. The judge approved and we drove straight to the orphanage to pick up our second son.

GOTCHA day! It’s incredibly special for adoptive parents and children. Every April 7 Joe would go to a local Russian market and pick up all the fixings for a Russian dinner, complete with candy specially from Russia. We always let Kola decide on a special dessert – usually yellow cake with white frosting and sprinkles.

This GOTCHA day is different.

We are still honoring you today with your special Russian dinner and your crazy sprinkle cake. But instead of spending the day doing fun things with you, we will visit your grave and pray. I will talk to you as I do every day. I will remind you how very special you are. I will tell you again the story of your GOTCHA day and how on that day you were not born from my body but from my heart. I will tell you how desperately we all still love you and how much we miss having you being a physical part of our lives.

There will be tears of sadness that you are gone yet tears of joy for having had you in our lives for 15 years.

We love you Kola!
Happy GOTCHA Day – celebrate huge in heaven with Jesus today.

Have Faith

Have faith in God

Friday was March 20. This date marks 9 months since Nikolai left this physical world. Every month when the 20th rolls around I brace myself for an emotionally draining day. You would think I could better prepare myself for it. I know it’s coming. The 20th happens every single month. For me it marks another month gone without our Beans. It’s the countdown to that dreaded year marker.

This month though everything was different. The past week has been the most mentally exhausting for me since the week of Nikolai’s funeral. I found myself bouncing between desperately trying to find moments of joy amid all the worry, anger, sadness and tears. Oh the tears this week.

My job is communications for a hospital. While I am able to work from home and not be on the frontline, it was a whole different level of Hell. I was scared for my family – would we have enough food, would our power stay on, would my oldest son and his pregnant girlfriend still have jobs, my parents who are two hours away (but thankfully near my sister), my friends, my co-workers who literally are on the front line every single minute trying to save others while trying to calm their own worries about their families.

Imagine all of this and then on top of that having to be the calm and comfort for not only your immediate work family but for the thousands of people in our communities who need information and comfort from the hospital.

When I was at my most vulnerable is when I had to step up the biggest for others. A friend told me that God put me in this exact place because He trusts that I could and would say just the right thing. Joe told me to simply write from my heart. Write what I need to hear. So, I did. I took a deep breathe and wrote exactly what I needed to hear. I can only hope that it was enough for others.

Before the 20th came, I was destroyed. Every night last week I spent falling asleep in Joe’s arms crying – no, sobbing.

This weekend, I have finally been able to decompress. Joe made sure that our house was filled with food as well as my oldest son’s refrigerator. We cleaned, did laundry, did a puzzle, read, took a 5-mile hike in the woods with our youngest and one of our dog’s. I have been able to really take a good hard look at this past week. Now that I am in a better place mentally, I can honestly say, the things I put into place in my life last week literally saved me from a total breakdown.

I kept to a pretty strict schedule every single day. I didn’t dare fall into any “traps” that didn’t seem part of my “normal”. So, every single day I got dressed first thing. And after I closed my laptop at the end of the day, I did what I always normally do – I worked out, made dinner, watched a little TV or read and went to bed at 9:30, my normal bedtime. These are all things within my control. I needed to keep things consistent to help me through my day.

It’s the little extra things I added into my day, that when it comes right down to it, really saved me. All of these were God things, or at least that’s what I like to call it. My friend Greg started a 7am prayer service every day. It was less than 15 minutes long and I never missed it. Not a single day. That afternoon walk I took with Daisy at lunchtime, was my time to cry and pray out loud about anything and everything. My sister sent me a playlist of comforting Christian music and I put it on loop in my headphones while I worked. God saved me this week. When I fell into the darkest of places, is when He lifted me up.

By the time I got to Friday, the 20th of the month, I actually was in the best place I’ve ever been on the 20th of any month. I woke up that morning and felt as if something very heavy was being lifted off of my chest. I could breathe a little bit better. And I don’t have to ask why, I know why – God was lifting some of that burden I was carrying. He had my back.

I don’t know if any of you have watched the Amazon Prime show “Hunters”. If you haven’t, it is a really good series (only one season out right now). Last night we binge watched the last four episodes. The second to last episode included a scene between two parents and their son who had died as a young child 30 years earlier. It was the absolute most beautiful creation of heaven. In this scene the son assures his parents that he is happy and doing well. This was absolutely what I needed to see. After a heartbreaking week and a 20th, this was the reassurance I needed for all things. I faithfully believe this scene we watched was God sending us a message.

Have faith, rise up, go hard and believe with all your being – God will not abandon us. God will save us. Do not be fearful. Let go and let God. He is talking to you. He is talking to me. Every single day He is speaking to us in so many different ways. Be still and listen.

I know this past week was one of the most trying for all of us. We each had our own struggles with moments of joy and heartache all mixed in. We have no idea what this next week will bring. We have no idea how long this quarantine will last. However, I do know one thing – my God, your God, He loves us and will help us through it. You just have to let Him in.

I wish all of you a blessed, joy-filled week. Spend it doing all the things that light your heart on fire and let God carry your fears.