Jaletta Albright Desmond Grief Support Specialist

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Mother's Day Manifesto
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I am a bereaved mother. But I am still a mother. My child died, and this is my reluctant path, but it's one I must walk mindfully and with intention. It is a journey through the darkest night of my soul, and it will take time to wind through the places that scare me.

There are times when it feels like every cell in my body aches, longing to be with my child. On days when grief is loud, I may be impatient, distracted, frustrated, and unfocused. I may get angry more easily, or I may seem hopeless. I will shed many, many, many tears. In the beginning, I won’t smile as often as my old self. Most everything hurts some days, even breathing.

But please, just sit beside me.

Say nothing.

Do not offer a cure.
Or a pill, or a word, or a potion.
Witness my suffering and don't turn away from me.

Please be gentle with me.
And I will try to be gentle with me too.

I will not ever "get over" my child's death so please don’t urge me down that path.

Even on days when grief is more quiet, when it isn't standing loudly in the foreground, even on days when I am able to smile again, the grief is just beneath the surface.

There are days when I still feel paralyzed and in disbelief. How is this my life? My chest feels the sinking weight of my child's absence and, sometimes, I feel as if I will explode from the grief.

Losing my child affects me in so many ways: as a woman, a mother, a human being, spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally. There are days when I barely recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

Grief is as personal to me as my fingerprint. Don't tell me how I should or shouldn’t be grieving or that I should or shouldn’t “feel better by now.” Don't tell me what's right or wrong. I'm doing it my way, in my time. If I am to survive this, I must do what is best for me.

My understanding of life will change and a different meaning of life will slowly evolve. What I knew to be true or absolute or real or fair about the world has been challenged so I'm finding my way, moment-to-moment in this new place.

Things that once seemed important to me are barely thoughts any longer. I notice suffering more- hungry children, the homeless and the destitute, a mother’s harsh voice toward her young child- an elderly person struggling with the door, an animal being hurt. There are so many things about the world that I now struggle to understand.

There are some questions, I've learned, which are simply unanswerable.

So please don’t tell me that “God has a plan ” for me. Those platitudes slip far too easily from the mouths of those who tuck their own child into a safe, warm bed at night. Grieving families won’t wake up one day with everything ’okay’ and life back to normal. We have a new normal now.

As time passes, I may gain gifts, and treasures, and insights but anything gained was too high a cost when compared to what was lost. Perhaps, one day, when I am very, very old, I will say that time has truly helped my broken heart. But always remember that I am always aware of the presence of my child's absence, no matter how much time has passed.

So this year, on Mother’s Day, don’t forget that I am a mother and I have a child, whose absence, like the sky, is spread over everything as C.S. Lewis said.

Don’t forget to say, “How are you really feeling this Mother’s Day?” Don’t forget that even if I have living children, my heart still aches for the one who is not here —for I am never quite complete without my child.

My child may have died; but my love - and my motherhood - never will. And being a bereaved mother is the hardest job of all.
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(c) 1998, 2008, 2019
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Special love to the mamas who have no living children. Our hearts truly truly go with you today, and always.

For all your precious children, and for all the children missing their own mama, who are missed always in all ways.

As a therapist, our community member had spent her career helping people survive unimaginable things. She believed — professionally, deeply — in the capacity of human beings to heal after trauma.

Then her son died by su***de.

She searched for a therapist. She tried several. One said nothing after listening to her story. One canceled their first session. One deflected every time she tried to talk about her son.

What she needed, she writes, was someone willing to stay fully present with the weight of what had happened. Someone who believed she could survive it. It took time to find that person.

“As our relationship developed and she continued to be able to stay with my pain, I gradually began to think that I might, after all, survive.” - A Wounded Therapist

Her experience of searching, as someone trained to help others, speaks to something many survivors feel: that even the professional world is sometimes not quite prepared for this particular loss.

👉 Our community at forum.allianceofhope.org is open 24 hours a day, every day.

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If you use humor to process difficult or painful feelings and emotions this maybe very helpful. If you don’t, maybe better to skip it but know there’s truth here.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXAJOCuEbl-/?igsh=MWtnbTV0ZHk0dnI4aA==

Now if you could just flip to Page 2…. (Hi, I’m Rio, a grief and trauma recovery therapist and sometimes we use humor here to name the ridiculous) #grieftherapist #earlygrief #griefhumor #livingwithloss #griefandlosssupport

Natural transitions remind us that our seasons of suffering are not permanent states. They are passages - difficult ones - but passages nonetheless.

When grief feels overwhelming, when challenges seem insurmountable, the natural world continues its reliable cycles. The night sky, no matter how dark, inevitably yields to dawn. The desolate landscape of winter always surrenders to spring’s gentle renewal. And the rainstorm eventually gives way to sunshine.

When navigating the painful journey after su***de loss, this truth can be a small anchor of hope. The darkness may feel endless, but the light will return. Different, perhaps, than before, but it will return.

👉Find support and connect with others on our Community Forum at https://forum.allianceofhope.org/(or (https://forum.allianceofhope.org/(or) LINK in BIO).

❤️‍🩹Access healing resources in the Find Support section of our website, https://allianceofhope.org/find-support (or LINK in BIO)

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“Empathy meets expertise.
Every single group is facilitated by a hand-picked member of our Support Group Facilitator Corps. We're all long-term survivors of su***de loss ourselves--we know personally the pain and questions and complexity of losing someone to su***de.”
And as facilitators we see the power of peer group support…the deep connections built through shared compassion and pain. Join us this summer for 10 weeks with others who understand your loss.

Support Groups | Su***de Loss | Coping After Su***de Professionally facilitated peer support groups for su***de grief, loss, and bereavement.

It still has travelled with me for 14 years.

Grief after su***de loss can feel like being in a room where no one speaks your language. The loss sits differently than any other, and some people around you may not understand. That silence can be its own kind of pain.

But there are people who do understand. Who are living it too. And that changes everything. You don’t have to explain yourself here. You just have to show up. 

👉Connect with others who understand at forum.allianceofhope.org (or LINK in BIO)

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You were doing your best with the information and resources you had at the time. It’s different for everyone. You may have been struggling with incomplete information, a lack of available or effective treatment options, someone working hard to hide their intent, or something else.

You were responding to what you could see and understand at the time. Only after a loss do the pieces appear to fit together.

Please hold yourself with the same compassion you would offer someone you love.

👉Access support resources: allianceofhope.org/find-support (LINK in BIO)

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Sometimes we feel we don’t have choices. We do. And it may take a lot of time to realize that and work through the choices. Those who die by su***de sometimes feel they had no choice. Please remember that those who live life after a person dies that way is living proof that there are other choices for most of us…live life fully in their honor rather than deciding not to truly live it, even if you remain physically here. We can make the choice to live fully to honor the life they could be living.

“Working as a psychotherapist, I have often helped clients to recognize that we always have some element of choice, even if sometimes it feels as though we don’t, and even if none of the options open to us are ideal, or even very palatable.

“Why? Because it really does help, when we’re suffering, to know that we do have options, at least in most situations. The feeling of being forced into one way of being contributes to the stress we experience in difficult circumstances. It’s easy to feel trapped, without any choices at all. But the truth is, most of us are lucky enough to have some level of control over at least some aspects of our own lives, and perhaps most importantly, we also have choices about the ways in which we respond to difficulties and adversities, large and small.

“So, when my son died by su***de, what were my choices in this overwhelmingly horrific situation? Did I even have any? It certainly didn’t seem that way to me.

“That first night, I beat my fists against the kitchen cupboards in shock, anger, and denial, shouting ‘No! No! No!’ over and over again. I collapsed on the living room floor. My whole body began to shake. Night after night, unable to sleep, I went downstairs to sit for hours alone in the dark at the cold kitchen table. I made bargains with a God I don’t really believe in, offering my life in exchange for my son’s, pleading with God to take me instead, so my son could have another chance at life. I screamed ‘Why?’ and ‘How could you?’ loudly or silently into the empty space in front of his picture. begged him, beseeched him, to return to me....” ~A Wounded Therapist

(☟Read the full essay on our blog.)

https://allianceofhope.org/choices/ or (LINK to BLOG in BIO)

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