There are so many life circumstances that plunge a heart into darkness.
Child loss is certainly one of them, although not the only one.
And when you’re in the dark, stumbling around, trying to avoid the sharp corners and looking, looking, looking for a tiny sliver of light to guide you out, it is terrifying.
If you don’t have a pocket full of matches or a flashlight or a lantern, you are at the mercy of whoever cares enough to come back for you.
I am so thankful for the friends and family who never tire of my fearful cries when I find myself in dark places.
I firmly believe that our friends and extended family want to reach out, want to help, want to walk alongside as we grieve the death of our child
I am also convinced that many of them don’t because they don’t know how.
It may seem unfair that in addition to experiencing our loss, we also have to educate others on how to help us as we experience it, but that’s just how it is.
The alternative is to feel frustrated and abandoned or worse.
I’m no good at what feels like self promotion in an age of influencers and social media personalities chasing after likes and shares. I subscribe to the George Mueller philosophy of ministry which is to take your needs and heart’s desires directly to the Lord.
But I also know that if people aren’t aware of what the Lord may be doing in a particular area, they may be unaware of how to participate in that work.
So in the hopes of giving folks that opportunity, I wanted to share a bit about what’s been going on lately with Heartache and Hope (the ministry) and with the blog.
Soon it will be ten years since I began writing here.
Since that time, The Life I Didn’t Choose has been viewed over 4,250,000 times. There are more than 3,500 entries and some posts have been shared in the tens of thousands. According to WordPress it has been accessed in every country around the world except North Korea. There is no way to calculate the number of individuals and families impacted reflected by those statistics.
I founded heartacheandhope.org in September, 2024 to expand the ministry begun through the blog and to reach out in different and varied ways to bereaved parents, their families and those that love them.
Since then, we’ve hosted four in-person support group meetings including a special “Blue Christmas” memorial service in December.
I’ve hosted and facilitated two bereaved moms’ retreats (three more scheduled for this year) and traveled to Chattanooga to share with a group there.
Through those contacts and events over forty families have been encouraged to hold onto Hope and wait well, leaning into the promises of Jesus that their pain will be redeemed.
We will continue to host the monthly meetings and hope to add a monthly virtual meeting beginning in March. I will travel to Virginia to share at the Our Hearts are Home Spring Conference in April.
I’dLOVEthe opportunity to meet with pastors, chaplains, social workers and those who tend to be with families at the point of hearing “the news”. I am available and willing to meet with others-just message me.
I’ve developed downloadable, printable resources that are available free on the website.
I know everyone reading this is not a bereaved parent but I promise you KNOW a bereaved parent (even if you think you don’t). I also know that both the blog and the ministry have been helpful to other hearts who are living with intractable unsolvable-this-side-of-eternity pain.
I am so, so thankful to every single person who has prayed for me in the more than ten years since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. Coming up on another anniversary is hard no matter how long it’s been.
I cannot say enough about those who have chosen to walk beside me and who have encouraged me to share my story in hopes of encouraging others. I couldn’t do it without you!
I appreciate the many tangible donations (monetary, time, materials) that have been made to facilitate this work.
You are making an eternal difference, friends!
Lighting a candle is never in vain.
And lighting the way to Hope always bears fruit.
If you want to know more about the ministry you can find that here:
In the last post I shared the difference between mourning and grief. While the outward ceremonies have long passed, the inward struggle to embrace and understand the pain and sorrow of losing my son continues.
If you love someone who has lost a child, perhaps these thoughts might help you understand a bit of their pain and how completely it changes the way bereaved parents encounter the world.
Please be patient. Please don’t try to “fix” us. Please be present and compassionate. And if you don’t know what to say, feel free to say nothing-a hug, a smile, an understanding look-they mean so very much.
❤ Melanie
A bereaved parent’s grief doesn’t fit an easy-to-understand narrative. And it flies in the face of the American “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality.
You can’t beat it–it’s not a football game-there is no winning team.
You can’t lose it–it’s not the extra 10 pounds you’ve been carrying since last Christmas.
You can’t get over it–it’s not a teenage love affair that will pale in comparison when the real thing comes along.
You can only survive it. You can heal from it, but it will take a lifetime and require very special care.
In all fairness, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had no idea her research would be taken out of context and plastered across professional literature and media outlets as a definitive explanation for the grief experience.
But she didn’t mind the notoriety.
And ever since, counselors, pastors, laypersons and the general public have come to expect folks to politely follow the five (sometimes described as six) stages of grief up and out of brokenness like a ladder to success.
It doesn’t work that way.
❤ Melanie
Sometimes those that walk alongside the bereaved are biding time, waiting for that “final” stage of grief: Acceptance.
And some therapists, counselors and armchair psychiatrists are certain that if the grieving mother can simply accept the death of her child, she can move on–that she can get back to a more “normal” life.
But this notion is as ridiculous as imagining that welcoming a new baby into a household doesn’t change everything.
A funeral or memorial service seems like a final chapter. We close the coffin, close the doors and everyone goes home.
But for bereaved parents and their surviving children, it’s not an end, it is a beginning.
Much like a wedding or birth serves as the threshold to a new way of life, a new commitment, a new understanding of who you are, burying a child does the same.
If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. —James O’Barr
I grieve because I love.
My tears are a gift to the son I miss. My sorrow honors his memory. My broken heart gives evidence to the ones walking with me that my love is fierce and timeless.
It’s nearly impossible for anyone who has not lost the earthly companionship of a child to know how desperately I long to hear Dominic’s name spoken aloud.
There are days I walk around my home and think silently and even whisper quietly, “You existed! You exist!” just to remind my heart he is real.
You may hesitate to bring him up because you fear my tears. But any tears his name might evoke will be tears of gratitude as well as those of longing.
Please say his name!❤ Melanie
I know you are afraid.
You think that speaking his name or sharing a memory or sending me a photo will add to my sorrow.
I understand.
But even when it costs me a split second of sharp pain, it is truly a gift to know that Dominic lives on in the hearts and minds of others.
Before I lost Dominic, I know that I, like others who had never experienced the death of a child, undoubtedly said and did things that were hurtful instead of helpful.
Loss will enter everyone’s life at some point–there is no escape.
We educate ourselves (as we should) on so many issues–work hard not to offend, to understand, to reach out. Bereaved parents don’t want pity, they would like to be better understood.
We did not choose this journey, it was thrust upon us.
I am well aware that not everyone is blessed by an outpouring of love and support in the wake of child loss. In fact, depending on the circumstances, some families are practically shunned.
It breaks my heart every time I hear of such an experience.
Because if there is one thing I’ve learned in this Valley, it’s this: when a heart is shattered my ONLY job is to show up and do whatever is helpful-even if that means sitting silently and holding a hand.❤ Melanie
When I asked other bereaved parents to share the things people did that blessed them in the wake of losing a child, I didn’t expect so many stories of extravagant love–of acts surpassing anything I could have thought of or imagined.
“After my daughter passed, which was minutes before Mother’s Day 2012, outside the hospital room-
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