Tag: authenticity

Navigating Grief: Choosing To Be Seen


It’s tempting to hide.

All I have to do is stay home or plaster on the “I’m fine” mask before I leave my driveway and venture out into the world.

Because, frankly, sometimes I just don’t want to explain why I’m crying again, struggling still, walking wounded and not “healed”.

But it’s not healthy.

I cannot selectively numb my emotions.  When I push down the painful, I slam the lid on all of it-joy and love included.

cannot selectively numb emotion brene brown

It takes courage to choose to be seen.

It’s hard to choose to walk honestly and openly in the world.

vulnerability brene brown

It’s risky to offer my authentic self up to an often inattentive, insensitive and critical audience.  

But if I am to be truly known then I must choose to let others see my struggle and allow them to witness my failures and heartache.  

courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen brene brown

Truth is, when I hide I forfeit real connection. 

There’s no authentic relationship without vulnerability.  

connection brene brown

I want deep and authentic bonds with family and friends.  

I don’t want to hide.  

I want to be seen.

Navigating Grief: Have a Day. It Doesn’t Have to be a Good One.

I don’t know about you, but I think of every day as a blank canvas and it’s my responsibility to paint something useful or beautiful or helpful on it.

I’m a list maker so each night before I drift off, I usually jot down 3 or 300 things I would like to do the next day.

I get up, get started and then (more often than I’d like to confess!) hit a wall.

hit the wall yoda

Sometimes it’s the wall of circumstance.  Things happen I didn’t expect and suddenly the hours I was going to spend cleaning the garage are spent cleaning a mess.

Sometimes it’s the wall of community. Someone calls.  Or a multitude of someones call. I hate to admit it but I’m really not a fan of the telephone.  Like Alexander Graham Bell, I consider it more of an inconvenience and interruption than a means of delightful connectivity.  Minutes slip by and I can’t recover them.

I love my friends and family. 

But I’d rather chat while we are doing something together in person than over the phone.

Sometimes it’s the wall of pain.  Rheumatoid Arthritis, like all autoimmune diseases, is unpredictable.  Usually I can tell in the early morning hours if my joints are going to cooperate on a given day.  But sometimes they surprise me and I find that all that yard work will have to wait.

Sometimes it’s the wall of grief or sadness or longing or any of a multitude of feelings.  I have gotten pretty skilled at steering clear of grief triggers when I know I have lots of things to do.  I don’t listen to the songs friends post on their timelines or read too many comments on the sites for bereaved parents.  But I can’t anticipate random sights, sounds or memories.  I’ve been working on a room, cleaning drawers, moving stuff tucked in corners and come across a Lego man or a pellet from the air soft guns they weren’t supposed to shoot inside the house (but of course did anyway) when the boys were young.  That does me in and I have to walk away.

Sometimes it’s the wall of “What difference does it make anyway?!!” This one I usually see approaching in the distance when there have been too many days and too little progress.  Or a string of gray, rainy mornings.  Or multiple failed attempts at fixing something.  And then I throw up my hands and decide my paltry attempts at controlling my corner of the world hardly matter, so why keep doing them.

So I give in and let myself just have a day. 

tired cat

It doesn’t have to be a good one or a productive one or even a cheerful one.  The glass can just be a glass.  I don’t have to pretend it’s half-full or declare it half-empty.

half-full

And after a rest I usually remember that what I used to find impossible is now possible;  what used to be hard, is often a little easier.

I am stronger and better able to carry this load.

Sorrow is no longer all I feel nor my son’s absence all I see.

And although THIS day may be lost.  It’s only ONE day.

It’s perfectly OK for me to sit down with a cup of coffee, a book or a movie and let myself off the hook.

The sun will rise tomorrow and I can start over.

I will start over.

have a day

A Prayer for the Broken-Blessing the Dust

There are many times in my life when I’ve felt small and unseen.

Many times when my spirit sank so low I couldn’t even remember “up” much less find it.

But there is no moment so humbling as the one when I came face-to-face with the undeniable FACT that my son had exhaled for the last time.

Walking into the sanctuary where his body lay still, unnatural and absolutely silent, my heart shattered into even smaller pieces.

So I understand Job’s cry.

I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer me; when I stand up, You merely look at me.

Job 30:20 HCSB

I know what it is to fall to the ground in utter dejection, complete hopelessness and pray, pray, pray that life leaves my body because the pain is unbearable.

That’s one reason Lent is a kind of relief every year.

It’s a season when others join me in admitting that from dust we came and to dust we will return.

Image result for from dust to dust

But it’s also a season of hope.

Because while Lent forces my heart to focus on my frailty, it points me toward my Savior.

The One who made us is the One who rescues us.

The One who saves us is the One who sees us.

The One who sees us is the One who longs to comfort us.

I love this blessing by Jan Richardson:

“All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.”

—Jan Richardson, Blessing the Dust, For Ash Wednesday

It’s no secret I am frail, prone to break-even shatter-into the tiniest bits of dust.

But that doesn’t stop my God from gathering what’s left to make something beautiful.

When I find myself face down in the dirt, no strength to lift my head, I remind my heart, “[Do] you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?”

An Invitation: Lenten Journaling Guide

I don’t know about you, but this year I feel especially beat up.  I’ve had personal circumstances and family circumstances that have once again plunged me beneath the heavy and impenetrable fog of grief. 

It will be an unbelievable twelve years since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven on April 12th. He died the Saturday before Palm Sunday and was buried the Monday after Easter. 

When the dates and days don’t correspond, I feel like most years I experience it all twice.   


Photo by Katie Jewell Photography

And even though I depend on the observance of Lent to walk my heart through this Season of Sorrow, I just don’t have it in me to look up verses, parse their meaning and try to derive some deeper spiritual lesson from any of it. 

But I want something structured to keep my focus from drifting away from the truth which keeps me anchored to hope. 

If that resonates with you, then this Lenten Journaling Guide might be something that helps your heart too.  I’d love to have company.

Before we start, I want to say this:  Lent is not about performance. It is an invitation to walk honestly with Jesus.

For those who carry grief, surrender can feel complicated.

Some days you may have many words. Other days you may have none.

Both are sacred.

This journal is a gentle companion — not a task list. Move slowly.

Skip a day if needed. Linger where the Spirit meets you. You are not behind. You are not failing.

You are walking a broken and sacred road.

Holding space for grief. Pointing toward hope.

~ Melanie

You can download the Lenten Journal Guide here:

https://www.heartacheandhope.org/_files/ugd/fc3456_75aa51759a284a54a56f1316980a3391.pdf

THIS Wednesday is Ash Wednesday and Lent begins on Thursday.

Navigating Grief: What is a Grief Circle?

Our family is navigating deep grief a second time.

In January, my granddaughter, Holly, was gathered into the arms of Jesus after only two weeks on earth-almost to the minute.

Once again my children are plunged beneath the flood of hurt, pain, questions and sadness of child loss.

This time my oldest son and his wife are the center of the circle. Their sons are the immediate next ring. My two other earthbound children, my husband and I are slightly more removed.

But distance from the center does not necessarily indicate the degree to which the same loss might reignite old feelings, trauma, anxiety and unwanted physical, mental and spiritual responses to grief.

A grief circle is comprised of those most closely impacted by a loss.

The world likes to draw it tight because even if it doesn’t represent the reality of those involved. Expanding the circle expands the need for compassion and compassion might well demand action.

Drawing it smaller also gives the curious permission to ask personal questions from those close to the loss (and who may have information they desire) without feeling guilty about asking the question.

May I give a piece of (unsolicited) advice?

Please. Don’t.

Please don’t ask my children how I’m doing.

Please don’t ask my son and daughter, the uncle and aunt of Holly, how their brother is doing or how I am doing.

Please don’t ask my son how his wife is doing. He is also a parent of a child he can no longer hold.

Please don’t assume that being slightly removed from the center of loss means being removed from the pain and damage such a loss entails.

You are welcome to ask me anything. Both my experience and age mean I’m better equipped to answer or not answer as I am able.

I have found that Holly’s brief life and death have impacted me in ways I don’t understand and am still trying to process. She is my grandchild. I don’t love her less because her life on earth was brief.

Since I’ve walked this broken road, I am oh, so aware of what lies ahead for both my son and daughter-in-law as parents, their sons as surviving siblings and my own children as doubly grieved siblings.

I remember thinking when we gathered in the AirBnB the night after the long, long day Holly took her last breath how heavy, powerless and hopeless I felt.

No words could undo what had happened.

No hug could press the pieces of broken hearts back together.

No amount of wishing, wishing, wishing would turn back a clock that had relentlessly brought us forward to this very moment.

My family is knit together in ways and with bonds no one would choose.

We keep our phones with us “just in case”. We share travel itineraries, traveling companions’ contact information, and we answer phone calls from one another no matter where we are or with whom.

The grief circle is larger than most folks would like to admit and it remains intact over time and across distance.

There is no “fix” for grief.

No “getting over” or “past” loss.

There is moving forward and I am so, so proud of my family for choosing that hard path.

But here we are again.

And it is going to take more time than anyone outside our circle would like to admit.

Navigating Grief: Remembering All the “Lasts”

One of the things even the most uninformed person understands about loss is that the first birthday, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas and all the “firsts” after loss will be hard.

But one of the things no one tells you about is that a heart will mark the “lasts” just as much.

The last time I saw him.

The last time I spoke to him.

The last time I hugged his neck and smelled the unique fragrance that was my son.

missing child from arms

Every year as I approach the anniversary of the day Dominic left this life and stepped into Heaven, I also remember all the last times.

It’s hard on a heart to think about and wish that somehow I had made more of those moments.  I long to have just one more opportunity to say what needs to be said, to see his smile, hear his voice, and hug his neck.

But there’s no going back.

So part of the pain of marking the milestones is knowing there is no way to change a thing.  Not only the FACT that my son is gone, gone, gone.  But also the FACT that whatever I said or did or left unsaid or undone is utterly and undeniably carved in stone.

I don’t know why this anniversary is hitting my heart harder than last year.  Maybe it’s because I recognize how much life has happened since Dominic left us.  Maybe it’s because I think in terms of decades.  Maybe it’s because there are so many exciting family celebrations that he won’t be part of.

I have no idea.

But it’s nearly eleven long years since my son crossed the threshold of his family home.  It’s nearly eleven years since I heard that familiar deep “Hey!”.  It’s nearly eleven years since I waved him down the driveway and hollered, “Be careful!” as he drove back to his apartment.

I am thankful for the faithful love of my God and my family.  I am thankful for the compassionate companionship of friends.  I am thankful that I am still standing after the awful blow that I was sure would knock me so far down I’d never get up again.

But I miss him.  I miss him.  I miss him.

I will never be able to watch the early spring flowers bloom again without also remembering that it was those blossoms that heralded the good weather that lured him to take his motorcycle that night.

I will never hear Spring Break plans without counting the days between his last Spring Break trip and the day he met Jesus.

dom and julian spring break

I cannot step outside and smell the grass growing, feel the breeze blowing and hear the birds singing without my heart skipping beats and doing the math.  Today marks less than two months before the day he left us.

I understand that for others-if they remember at all-Dominic’s departure is a day circled on the calendar.

For me, it’s an entire season.

I mark every single day that led up to that day.  I remember every single conversation, meeting, text and phone call.  I remember all the things I did and regret all the things I didn’t do.

While the world is celebrating new life, I’m remembering a life that ended.

miss-you-every-day

Navigating Grief: Definitely the Worse for Wear

I shared this for the first time last year around this time. I’d had a difficult previous several months and my face showed it.

From February to the first part of September 2025, things were looking up.

I launched my “official” ministry: Heartache and Hope; was hosting monthly in-person bereaved parent support meetings; there were several opportunities to share with other groups around the country; and all four of my women’s retreats were fully booked.

Then September 14th my father suffered a life-altering stroke and I became his full time caregiver for three months. In December, my sweet granddaughter Holly entered the world a little early and after only two weeks on earth joined Dominic in Heaven.

I look at my face now and there are more lines than ever. My body screams every morning when I call on it to get up and get going.

But if I’ve learned one thing on this journey, it’s this: Make memories and TAKE THE PICTURE!

Every photo is precious when you can’t make any new ones.

❤ Melanie

I have never been one of those women who lied about her age.

My weight…well, you will have to threaten me with something that matters to get THAT number out of my lips.

But I’ve noticed this year more than others since Dominic left us that the wear and tear of years and tears and life and loss are showing up on my face as well as my hips.

I am definitely the worse for wear.

I’m sixty-two and for the first time in my life I am religious about applying under eye cream and moisturizing lotion to my face each morning and night.

who wants to look young

I don’t want to be the sore thumb in the family pictures!

I’m not sure it’s working.  I’m not sure anything can erase or roll back the marks that life and love and loss have etched on my face.

I’m not sure I want to.

Because each wrinkle, each line, each saggy, baggy skin flap says, “I loved, I lived and I am surviving-even though it’s hard.”

Before Dom left I was camera shy.  I still am, a bit.  But I’m trying hard to suck up my pride and my insecurity and let those flashes pop.  Memories are made one day at a time and photos help preserve them.

So whether I’m at my best, at my worst or somewhere in between, I won’t say no to a Kodak moment.

I wish I had more of them from “before”.

Dominic and family at PRSSA banquet

I wish I hadn’t’ been so darned particular about what I looked like, what I was wearing and whether or not my wrinkles or big butt showed.

Worse for wear?

Who cares?

This one wasn’t made to last.  

For instance, we know that when these bodies of ours are taken down like tents and folded away, they will be replaced by resurrection bodies in heaven—God-made, not handmade—and we’ll never have to relocate our “tents” again. Sometimes we can hardly wait to move—and so we cry out in frustration. Compared to what’s coming, living conditions around here seem like a stopover in an unfurnished shack, and we’re tired of it! We’ve been given a glimpse of the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies! The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.

2 Corinthians 5:1-5 MSG

Navigating Grief: Why Am I Still Writing?

I ask myself this question often:  Do I want to keep writing in this space?  

Sometimes the answer is a resounding, “no!”. 

Because while I love to write, some days it’s hard to put together words in a way others can understand.  Sometimes I’m tired, or rushed or just tired of thinking about how grief and loss impact my life.

And then I ask the follow up:  Do I still have anything to say?

That’s the one that keeps me here. 

Because as soon as I think the answer is “no” to that question,  a conversation or a comment thread or a personal experience brings up something that I feel I need or want to write about.

So I sit down and begin again.  

your-story-could-be-the-key

I made a commitment in the beginning to be as honest as possible and I’ve done that the best I know how while protecting identities of those who are part of my story but who have their own stories to tell (should they choose).

I also promised to be transparent about my thoughts on God, on faith, on life everlasting.  I feel like I’ve done that.  In fact, I’m pretty sure some of my rambling has shocked friends and family from time to time.  But I’m not afraid of shocking God.  He knows my frame, knows my heart and cannot be made small by my questions or doubts.

I try to do research when appropriate to bring together resources and ideas for bereaved parents in one place. 

One of the most frustrating things to me in the early months of missing Dominic was how hard it was to find good resources.  The Internet is not your friend if you are looking for local and accessible help for practical problems.  It was over a year and a half before I found a closed group of like-minded bereaved parents.  But once I did, oh, what a difference that made in my journey!

So if you are interested in finding a safe, closed group, ask me.  I know of several.  

And then there’s the sweet comments that (usually) mamas send my way-either through Facebook or here.  When someone writes that looking for the blog post each morning helps them get out of bed-well, that’s both encouragement and a serious responsibility.  I don’t want to not show up and disappoint a heart.  Even when all I have to offer is only my words.

So for now, at least, I plan to stay.  

When my life circumstances make it impossible to carry on or I run out of things to say (which my mother will swear won’t happen!) then I’ll quit.

I send each post into cyberspace with a prayer-even for my readers who don’t believe in prayer: 

“Father God, help each heart hold onto hope.  Send a ray of sunshine into every cloudy day.  Bring someone along who will listen, who will care and who will offer a hand to the one who is too weary and broken to take another step.  Help them believe that they are seen, they are loved and that they matter.  Overwhelm them with Your love, grace and mercy.”

You DO matter.

I DO care.

If you need to talk, message me. 

If you need a safe space, I’ll direct you to it.  

I’m not going anywhere.  

compassion and stay with you

Navigating Grief: Bringing My Emotions to Jesus

“Emotions are real, but they can lie.”  

I repeat that to myself often.   

In everyday life I can interpret another person’s silence as a snub when, in fact, they simply were so distracted they didn’t see or hear me. 

t

Now, I know God is never asleep or distracted (see Elijah vs. Jezebel’s “priests”).  

But I know sometimes He feels distant or silent.  

He’s not.  

Jesus promised to never leave nor forsake me.  

And He hasn’t.

When I can’t feel or hear Him, it’s usually because my emotions are running so high the noise drowns out His still, small voice.

So I bring them to Him as a sacrifice and trust Him to help me bear them and to align them with the TRUTH that what I am currently suffering is not the last word.  

My story will be redeemed.  

My unfathomable loss will be restored.

His promises never fail.

Navigating Grief: Understanding “Acceptance”

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 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.

And new parents have months to prepare.

I had the brief millisecond between the words leaving the deputy’s mouth and my ears hearing them for my mind to comprehend.   

And I admit, there were moments in the day, even a few months afterwards, that I found myself saying out loud, “How can Dominic be dead?”

But those have mostly passed.

I accept that my son is dead.  He will not return to me in the land of the living.  He will not walk through my front door and he will not grow older, marry and have children of his own.

Every now and then, I do see a shape in a crowd, the shoulders set just so and for a moment my heart leaps.  But my mind quickly remembers that Dominic is not here.

So, acceptance means that I understand that things are the way they are.

Acceptance does not mean that I have to like it or that I don’t wish some things were different.

Acceptance means that I comprehend the future will not include new memories with Dominic as part of our family circle here on earth.

Acceptance does not mean that I never look back fondly and with yearning for the years we spent together.  It does not mean that I don’t grieve the years we won’t have.

I accept that I have a life to live even though part of my heart is no longer with me.

But acceptance does not mean that the life I live going forward is not impacted by my loss or that it isn’t framed at the edges by grief.

I am now what losing a child has made me.  

Acceptance means that I will offer up this new me, just as I have offered up every new me in the past, to the God Who made me, to use me according to His plan and for His glory.

The people of Israel were shaped as much by what they lost as by what they gained.

A group of Israelites, led by Ezra the scribe, returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, and were charged with rebuilding the Temple that had been destroyed many years earlier.

A few among them had seen with their own eyes the glory and majesty of Solomon’s Temple, but most of those returning had been born in captivity.  To the older men, this new temple paled in comparison to what they had lost.  But to the younger, it represented a new beginning and a brighter future.

Many of the older priests and Levites and the heads of families cried aloud because they remembered seeing the first temple years before. But others were so happy that they celebrated with joyful shouts.Their shouting and crying were so noisy that it all sounded alike and could be heard a long way off.

Ezra 3:12-13 CEV

The grieving were sad, but they worked anyway.

Acceptance acknowledges loss, but is not immobilized by it.

So how to love me and others well in this phase of our grief journey?

Understand that acceptance involves both of us:  while I must accept the fact that my child is dead and that my life is different than the one I would have chosen for myself–others must accept that I am who I am and I will never be the other me–the one before losing a child, again.

My life as a bereaved mother is always going to be a mixture of sorrow and joy.

It will always include looking back and looking forward.

It can’t be anything else.