One of my biggest struggles in grief is my intrusive thinking. I have largely been unable to untangle my grief over losing Sam and my own thoughts of self-blame. The problem with this mindset is that it is unreasonable and it also challenges our healing.

Today's episode is about my experience with intrusive thinking, 3 reasons I believe it is destructive and unproductive, and how I have recently learned to stop my intrusive thoughts before they take my time and energy and pull me down.

Thank you for listening.

We cannot tolerate our city officials simply giving up a certain demographic of it's population. Mayor Perris of Lancaster, CA, stated, in front of the city council, that perhaps the answer to the city's homeless crisis is to give them all fentanyl. A big Purge. He is talking about humans.

Is an actual mayor of a city suggesting that people like my son don't deserve to live? We cannot tolerate this ignorance in the people we elect. He needs to step down.

I know the water around him is getting hotter but let's get it boiling. Please pass this information on to anyone who has the power to vote in the recall efforts.

Every city deserves better than this. We need officials who care, not ones who hold disdain for our hurting people. Hold Mayor Rex Perris accountable and remove him from office. It's the only answer.

When Sam died, I felt no hope and no joy. I felt like my life was largely over because I couldn't see past my pain.

Hope is a complex topic when talking about losing a child. Just What exactly are we hoping for? How can hope make this better? For a long time, I couldn't see it or imagine it but now, I am finding it again.

Today, I feel more hope and joy than I have since I lost my boy, nearly 2 1/2 years ago, and I hope that this week's short episode of reaching a place I never thought I would be again inspires other grieving parents that they can feel better in time as well, if they are willing to take the necessary steps to do so.

Thank you for Listening

One of the biggest burdens I was left with when Sam died is guilt. When we hold onto guilt for a situation we can not/could not solve, it's unreasonable and can also harm our healing.

In this Episode, I discuss why we need to challenge our guilt and rumination with reason and logic by talking about 4 ways/reasons that guilt can harm our healing and why it doesn't make sense to accept it. I also discuss 4 ways that I have discovered I can help myself when guilty feelings take over again.

Fortunately, if we take the right actions, we can confront our guilt, lessen it to a great degree, and perhaps one day even move past it. Thanks for listening.

When I lost Sam, I was determined to live through my grief the way I needed to and also that I would never go back and judge myself for it. I stand by that today. Recently, however, I was asked what advice I would give myself if I could talk to the back then.

In today's episode, I share 6 pieces of advice I would lovingly pass back to myself and anyone else who asked.

I watched a special on the Vietnam War recently and I was struck by the similarities between those parents, the ones whose kids were sent to fight the war, and us, whose kids fought the war here at home. (The war on drugs.) This episode is about those similarities.

Time doesn't heal all wounds, it doesn't even come close. What time does is dull the intensity for those further removed while living on forever in those of us up close. Before losing Sam, I had no idea how many people are so deeply affected by grief, now I see it everywhere.

The many past generations of unresolved pain, especially that of losing a son or a daughter, is something that I have never considered until now, because I didn't have to. I used to feel removed from mom's of the past but this one singular thread, losing a child, weaves us together through all time.

Specifics don't matter when you watch your child live a life of danger that you have no control over and no ability to stop. Unfortunately, epidemics and wartimes have negatively impacted the lives of parents and future generations since the beginning of time.

Thanks for listening.

In today's episode, I am discussing losing my dog Luna and why I think my experience was different because of Sam.

Sam's death was so painful and unbearable that I was convinced I would never feel grief again like I had in the past. I believed that my son's death would put everything else into perspective and nothing else would matter, baring the worst, and I could not have been more wrong.

Luna's death not only shook me to my core and put me into a tail spin, it opened my eyes to some new aspects of grief. Every relationship in life ends at some point but I was not ready or prepared for how difficult it would be to say goodbye to my sweet girl and number one supporter through my darkest days.

Nearly 2 1/2 years after losing Sam, my life got completely out of balance and my grief took a huge hit. In today's episode, I talk about my grief spiral, what caused it, and what I have re-discovered about the importance of keeping balance in my life. I share what balance looks like in my own life and encourage you to create and commit to your own idea of balance.

I also discuss how I handled my own spiral and why I believe that our connections with the right people can help pull us back up to the surface during the times that our lives become out of balance and we face plant back into our heaviest grief.