Together, we drove from Minneapolis to Fargo, North Dakota to scatter her husband’s ashes, and during the four-hour drive, we spoke about her years growing up in North Dakota. Often her stories were different from those my mother had told me, as sibling stories often are.

A gift of that fall weekend is one I am still struggling to see as a gift, though I know it to be one. On our last day in Fargo, my aunt insisted on taking me to the University of North Dakota library to visit the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection—where, I learned, the stories of many of my ancestors were housed.

Although I’d heard in passing about some of my ancestors coming from Russia, it was never really part of the narrative of my past, so going to the library and looking up some of my ancestors began to reorder so many stories I’d heard in my own childhood. I felt confused and slightly tipsy from this revelation. No one had ever told me my ancestors lived in Russia. We were German, of German descent, and that was the story I knew. I even lived in Germany for the summer between my junior and senior year of high school, believing at the time that I was going to the country from which my great-great-grandparents had emigrated.

But it turns out they emigrated from Russia. We were Germans from Russia, not Germans from Germany—at least as far back as the mid-1700s. Maybe this was assumed knowledge for most of my relatives. Maybe it was a part of our past they didn’t want to talk about for reasons unknown. Maybe I forgot the stories they told. Maybe this was the first time I was supposed to really remember.

The point is, we didn’t talk about it much at all. And I found a kind of grief welling up in me for all the lost stories I never received.

So much of my past is shrouded in mystery simply because we didn’t speak about the past, as if speaking of it would dredge up the stories that my ancestors wanted to leave behind.

But I have always been hungry for the story: the story of the person who died too young, the story of how we arrived in the places we lived, the story of how my mother met my father, the story of how my father died, the story of the two teenage cousins who were killed in a car accident while drag racing, the story of how my father’s father died, the story of how my grandmother and grandfather met, the story of how most of my family moved from North Dakota to California, the story of how my aunt decided to finally leave her husband after years of emotional abuse, the story of how my uncle decided to move to Florida, the story of how my mother learned that my father had cancer, the story of who was with him when he died.

Tell me your story.

And I will tell you about the day I woke up in the middle of the night realizing that I hadn’t felt my baby move in a really long time and how I woke up my husband and how I drank juice and jumped up and down and prayed to a God I hadn’t spoken to as much as I should have and how the technician at the hospital told me she was dead in the way that she looked at me and how pieces of me shattered that day in ways that would change me forever and how I was certain that I wanted to be dead even though I had other children who needed me and how I was terrified to hold my dead baby after I gave birth to her and how I was certain that I would never feel joy again and how I felt a kind of loneliness for months and years afterwards that almost broke me and how that loneliness didn’t break me and how I wanted more than anything to be a mother my whole life so that I could try and love my children the way I wanted so desperately to be loved as a child and how I thought for the longest time that God was punishing me by taking my child and how all I ever really wanted was to love and be loved and how the death of my child felt like the end of everything I knew to be true.

Tell me your story.

And I in turn will tell you how beautiful you really are.

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I was getting ready for a trip, which means I was also preparing for my death. Does anyone else do this? Suddenly all the projects I’d been holding back on, became critical to try and finish before leaving. Just in case I don’t return…just in case my plane crashes, I have a sudden heart attack and my life ends, just in case…and on and on go the stories inside my head—I don’t want someone to walk into my house and find an unfinished project if they have to clean up after me.

So I try impossibly to do ALL THE THINGS before I leave on a trip.

But that morning was different.

We’ve been cleaning out our basement for the past four months—it has accumulated 30 years of living in one house—and now that the kids are gone, now that we need to do some remodeling, now that I have a bit more time—I felt the need to clean and organize the basement. It’s exactly what you think an unfinished basement might be: a concrete floor with unfinished walls and an unfinished ceiling. It’s dark, cold, dusty, and feels damp. I hate it.

But over the years, every box filled with childhood toys that we’ve been unwilling to let go of, goes down there. Containers filled with Christmas and Halloween decorations go down there. Camping supplies. Unused bedding. Broken chairs. Discarded playhouse. Old taxes with receipts. The list goes on and on. Essentially our basement became the repository for everything we weren’t emotionally ready to part with.

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In early summer, my youngest son and his best friend spent two days helping me clean out the basement of things we could take to the dump. It included things the former owners left behind decades ago—an old countertop, the original kitchen cupboards, old tools, discarded carpets, and more. If you own a craftsmen home built in 1911, apparently every light fixture, counter, door, drawer pull and old chair gets stored in the basement.

So we finally cleaned it all out and three truckloads of junk went off to the dump. Afterwards, I felt lighter, as if the weight of the things in the basement fell off of my shoulders as well.

But what we left behind, what I didn’t sort this summer were the boxes of memories, the Christmas lights, the legos and bey blades and dollhouses, and…and…and…the list goes on.

So when I ran down to do some laundry last week, I thought I’d just open one box and sort through it before I left for the holidays. It will kickstart my energy to go through all the containers when I return. Or so I thought.

Grief is a lot of things, and one thing it is not is organized. It is messy and cluttered and filled with all kinds of broken items.

So when I opened the box only to find a stack of unused, unworn, newborn outfits, I was fully unprepared for it.

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

While this six-word story is incorrectly attributed to Ernest Hemingway—and there is no author that can be found—it is a reminder of the overwhelming anguish a parent can feel.

When I opened the random box, I was immediately greeted with a bundle of pink outfits—never worn— and it brought me to my knees.

I was flooded with the grief of a new mother whose baby didn’t come home from the hospital, and who instead carefully folded the gifts from family and friends and tucked them into a dark corner.

Twenty-two years and those emotions were as fresh and raw as they were on the very first day.

My reaction was visceral. I wanted to burn the clothing, throw them in the trash, discard them. And eventually I did.

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At first, though, the good girl in me kept telling myself: You should donate them. Give them to someone who needs them. At the very least, give them to a thrift shop.

But every grieving person knows that nothing about grief is logical, and I’m pretty sure that 22 years ago, I wanted to throw them away but either I couldn’t or the good girl in me tucked them into a box. More than likely, I was frozen and simply couldn’t make a decision.

This time the anger rose, and I let it stick around. I sat with the clothing for a while, until the pain eased up enough for me to stand. I left the clothes on top of the box in the basement for a few hours while I went upstairs.

I hemmed and hawed about what to do. But the idea kept tugging at me to just throw them away. Toss them. Because I could. Because it would feel good. Because I didn’t have to do any logical thing with them.

Our baby daughter Grace never wore them. She couldn’t. She was dead. And I didn’t want anyone else to wear them either.

And so in the end, I threw them away. Finally.

I didn’t feel relief exactly. But I felt something shift—the weight of carrying around someone else’s expectations of how I should grieve, what I should do, who I should be in my sadness. Twenty-two years, and I gave myself permission to sit with the anger. To choose what felt right, even if it wasn’t neat or charitable or good.

Grace deserved that from me. And so did I.

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But it isn’t my sadness that makes me feel lonely and empty and confused at times. It’s the hidden nature of my sadness for so many years that makes me feel all of those things.

Inside of me is a box of sadness that, more than fifty years later, still feels confusing and hard and dark.

It’s a different kind of sadness than the sadness I hold for my daughter. I have daughter sadness and dad sadness, and they feel different. Let me try to explain.

For years, I used to think having a dead daughter was so much harder than having a dead father. And it was. But also, it wasn’t.

Because when our daughter, Grace, died, we talked about her. We missed her and longed for her and pined for her and wailed for her. We walked around with everyone knowing, and we didn’t pretend. Well, there were certainly a few times with our living children when pretending was the only way to get through a moment or an afternoon. But for the most part, even our children knew their sister wasn’t coming home from the hospital, that mama was sad, and no amount of hugging could seem to make her less sad.

My grief for Grace felt, in many ways, like a relief—because I didn’t hide it or hide my love and anguish at missing her. We spent years living our grief out loud, looking for her in spaces and places where she didn’t exist, and then we’d talk about it. Sometimes my husband and I would fight about our different ways of grieving. But at least Grace was present even in the most difficult times.

One day, while driving our kids home from school, our oldest son brought a friend home with him. They started talking about his sister Sophia, who was three years old at the time. But then Carver said, “I have two sisters.”

“No you don’t, you have one sister,” the friend said. “Your sister is Sophia!”

“Nope. I have two—Sophia and Grace. But Grace died so she can’t be here,” Carver said.

His friend became quiet, just for a moment, as I held my breath and gripped the steering wheel tightly. I kept thinking: I’m going to have to call his mom and apologize for my son talking about his dead sister. My old tapes kicked in: Don’t talk about the dead person.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s sad.”

“Yes,” Carver agreed. “It is sad.”

And then they went on to talk about other things.

I exhaled and watched them through the rearview mirror for a few more minutes. Carver was just a year older than I had been when my father died. But the rules were different. In his world and his house, we talked about his sister, Grace. How could we not?

The grief of my childhood was silent and hidden. The grief of my childhood was contained inside my five-year-old self as the rules of my new grief quickly became obvious to me through actions and interactions. It’s okay to talk about.

My childhood grief had different rules.

Rule number one: Don’t make Mom cry.

“Don’t say anything about Dad,” my brother whispered one night. “You’ll make Mom cry.”

We didn’t talk about our dad. We didn’t ask questions about our dad. We practiced not making our mom sad.

Rule number two: If you put a smile on your face, you’ll feel better and no one will ask you questions.

We are fine. Everything is fine. (Except, of course, nothing was fine.)

We got dressed in our best clothes and went to church with smiles on our faces.

Rule number three: Stay busy.

Make sure you have a lot of jobs.

Soon after my dad died, my mother—who had been a stay-at-home mom—started working three jobs. It was both the means to keeping us afloat, but more accurately, I think it was a means to keep her from grieving out loud, and to keep her from being with her emotions.

Rule number four: Don’t ask for help. It’s a sign of weakness.

Becoming independent and doing things on my own is how I learned to survive in my childhood. Don’t show your emotions, don’t ask for help, keep it hidden inside. I can do it all by myself became my six-year-old mantra. I took those cues from my mom.

I recently found some letters in which my mom was offered a great deal of generosity by people, but her pride and her unwavering belief—as a German North Dakota farm-raised child—in the independence of someone to rise up from the ashes on her own kept her from receiving that help.

I think about that now—how some things may have been different if she had opened herself up to receiving help. If she’d set aside her pride. If she allowed others in.

Rule number five: Telling stories was akin to having emotions and feeling things you aren’t supposed to feel, so don’t tell the stories.

Remove the memories from the walls and counters and put all the things inside of a hope chest.

At the foot of my mom’s bed was a hope chest with a lock and key. I never went into that chest until right before she died, though I knew in many ways it contained the secrets of things that were lost, memories that held stories which would never be told.

If you don’t talk about it, it doesn’t exist, right?

Wrong.

It’s there. It’s always there.

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Obviously, this didn’t work well. My childhood was filled with stomachaches and shame. And that box of sadness grew and grew until it burst open in unhealthy behaviors and reactions to the world around me.

I was angry most of the time. I was confused. I was heartbroken.

In my fifties, I still struggle with that box of sadness. It’s still there. But I tend to it now in ways that help me cope. I have learned how to be more open with my grief. But there is still more work to be done. There always is.

Mostly, I miss knowing more about my father. I miss having memories because any memories I had of him disappeared into the void of not sharing our stories. My mind is blank when I try to conjure him up. I stare at pictures with no recollection of him being in my life.

His absence is the largest hole inside of me. It is my black hole. My darkness. It bends and distorts my light at times.

And then I remember that it’s never too late to find ways to meet him still. To talk to him, to ask other people about him, to find a way to remember that I was a light for him in his darkness. That I was the gift that arrived in time for him to know joy even as his own light was being extinguished.

Too soon. Too quickly. Too forever.

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It’s been a year and a couple weeks since the last death occurred in our family. To catch you up and remind you: In 2024, my mom died, my mother-in-law died, my dog who was the best dog I ever had, died, and I had a total hysterectomy and my husband had surgery as well. Oh, and our last child left for college. So we both became orphans and empty nesters in 2024. Right, my position at work was eliminated too in early 2025, but that seems like an afterthought that I keep forgetting about. I haven’t really had much time to think about fitting work in again.

So I’d love to tell you that I’ve been soul searching. That I’ve wandered miles and miles in the desert or in the woods or with my fingers tapping away at a keyboard. But I haven’t. Instead, I took care of my foot—and I will never take walking for granted again. Some pro tips on that surgery: using a knee scooter is handy and better than using crutches when you can’t walk, but it still sucks. It’s awkward and you need space to get around. How many people do you actually see on knee scooters out and about in the world? And using crutches can be useful and suck at the same time. When I could finally walk, I had to use a boot for an entire month and it turns out that can wreck your gait and hurt your aging hips. Which reminds me—PT two and three times a week for several months is its own kind of full-time job.

When I could finally walk again, I found myself desperate to move. On foot, by car, and by plane. Seattle, Minneapolis, Virginia, first. Next up, Corona del Mar, CA and Sedona, AZ. Not bad places to go see after the leaves fall in the north.

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But writing didn’t happen much at all. Nor did much reading. I don’t really know why it didn’t, but this is a year in which I’m determined NOT to beat myself up. Let’s face it, we all feel beat up this past year and so there is no sense in beating myself up over expectations that didn’t get met. Especially when democracy is dying.

I slept. I shuffled about. I watched some good tv and some not so good. I spent way too much time in my head. And I had some really great drugs to get me through the foot surgery—I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much physical pain before.

Part of my issue with Substack is feeling like I need to land on a theme for my writing and I haven’t done that yet. Is it grief? Death talk? Memoir? Family shit? Dogs? (I mean, dogs would be the most popular thing). Middle age? Coming up on 60? Finding my way? Retirement at 58? Am I retired? New career? Is it all of the above or none of the above?

Here’s all I know at the moment. Life is fluid, ever changing, ever expanding my heart and cracking it open. And here when I’m among like minded people talking about how to get through it, I feel better. When I’m writing, I feel better. When I’m reading your posts, I feel better, as long as I’m selective. This isn’t the space where I want to follow political writers. I want to follow people who teach me about love and living and dying. I want to follow writers who are smarter than me. So maybe I’m back. Maybe I’m not.

But today I’m here, so hello. I’m walking again. Everywhere. Enjoying the changing season. Ready to fly again.

Tell me what you’ve been up to. What makes your heart sing? What makes it crack wide open? What makes it hurt? What are you doing today to take care of yourself?

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I won’t be using this platform often to raise money for someone else, but this is personal, important, and necessary.

“…sometimes there’s not a happy ending…”

About a year ago, in the midst of my mother’s stage four pancreatic cancer, I flew from California to the Selah Carefarm just outside of Sedona to meet with five other grieving persons who were asked to open their hearts and their stories in order to make a film about the work being done at the Carefarm and to shine a light on our grief.

I wasn’t there because of me; I was there because of my daughter, Grace, who died almost 22 years ago this month. On what would have been her 21st birthday in 2024, I sat with other grieving families to share our stories, out loud and honestly.

I can honestly say without the carefarm, without my visits there twice a year, without the support and mentorship of Dr. Jo, I would be a much more lost human being than I am today.

I go there to find Grace, to remember my father, to learn more about my relationship with my mother, to lean into the animals. I go there because I am a grieving human who has experienced traumatic grief. I go there because I love.

And now, the trailer has been released, and the independent filmmaker, Jon Bregel, who has done this with his own funding, is trying to make it across the finish line.

Would you help us raise the funds so Jon can finish this film?

Here is Jon’s beautiful description of why he needs the funds, and I hope you’ll read it in its entirety.

Viewer Discretion: This trailer contains sensitive material related to traumatic loss, death, and grief. While handled with care, some imagery and stories may be emotionally difficult for viewers.

“Nobody wants to have to be here.”

Director’s Note: Over the past year, I’ve been immersed in one of the most meaningful projects of my life: directing Selah, an intimate documentary about grief, love, and the quiet strength it takes to keep living after devastating loss. At its core, Selah is not about “moving on” from grief; it is about learning to carry it.

Filmed at Selah Carefarm, the world’s first carefarm for traumatic grief, this 30-minute film follows people seeking solace and connection after unimaginable losses. At the center is Erik, a father and farmhand at Selah, rebuilding his life after the murder of his three young children. Now, with his newborn daughter Josie and partner Shiloe by his side, Erik walks a fragile path between honoring the dead and loving the living.

Selah’s vision is guided by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, who founded the carefarm after her own daughter’s death. Selah offers no platitudes or fixes, just a place where grief is seen, honored, and carried with care. We also follow six people through a four-day grief workshop, capturing their raw stories and moments of healing. Together with Erik’s journey, the film explores what it means to live with deep sorrow and deep love.

“There are some losses from which there is no recovery.”

Why I’m Asking For Your Help
It’s essential for us to complete this film the right way, with the right people, so we can bring Selah into the world without compromising the integrity of its story, the care behind its making, or the trust of those who shared their grief with us. Our funding goal is $120,000. I know that’s a significant number, and I want to be transparent about why it’s necessary. This is not just the cost of filming and editing; it’s the budget for the entire lifespan of the film. Finishing a film is only part of the journey. Promoting it, distributing it thoughtfully, and building lasting partnerships to ensure it reaches schools, hospitals, and nonprofits is a full-time effort.

In many cases, post-production is just a fraction of what it truly takes to shepherd a documentary into the world with integrity. Every dollar helps protect the heart of this project and honors the deep trust of those who allowed us into their grief. We’ve already poured 18 months of work, resources, and heart into getting this far. Now, we need your partnership to bring it across the finish line, and beyond.

Your donation will help cover:

• Recouping production, travel, gear, and insurance costs

• Fair pay for our small, dedicated crew (many worked for little or no pay)

• Post Prodiction: Editing, sound design, color correction, subtitles, etc.

• Legal and administrative costs

• Marketing, Promotion, and distribution efforts

• Music and licensing fees

• Festival deliverables

• Outreach to bring the film into schools, hospitals, and nonprofits

• And much more…

If you are interested in becoming an executive producer or strategic partner, please reach out. I am happy to share a detailed financial breakdown or have a one-on-one conversation.

Donate Today

Why This Film Matters:

Every year, millions of people around the world experience traumatic loss. Yet in our culture, grief remains taboo, rushed, and misunderstood. At Selah Carefarm, people learn that grief isn’t something to “get over.” It’s something to carry, to honor, and to build a life alongside; with compassion and without shame. This film isn’t just a documentary.

It’s an invitation:
• To stay with your pain
• To bear witness to others’ pain
• To see that deep love and deep sorrow belong together
• To know you’re not alone

Why Ownership Matters:

Making an independent documentary is hard. Owning and protecting that film, while making sure it reaches those who need it most, is even harder. With Selah, I’m committed to retaining ownership and creative control so the film stays true to its heart: honoring the stories, the message, and the people who entrusted us with their grief. This film isn’t meant to be packaged as easy inspiration or feel-good grief. Selah is a love letter to the brokenhearted; a film that invites feeling, not fixing; witnessing, not rushing; honoring, not exploiting. My priority is to protect the integrity of this film while finding thoughtful, meaningful ways to help it reach as many people as possible.

From My Heart to Yours: This project has changed me. I have made many films, but none have mattered like Selah. It is not a product; it is a mission. I want this film to be a mirror and a quiet companion for anyone who has ever asked: “How do I live with this?” Thank you for helping us bring Selah to life.

With gratitude,

Jon Bregel, Director, Selah

I have always craved the hug over the reprimand, the assurance instead of the
disappointment, the quiet moments rather than the shouting.

My mother and I had a complicated relationship, and I will spend the rest of my life, now that she’s gone, unpacking it in its entirety. The hardest part, of course, will unfairly be that it is just my side of the story, but the fact that it is my side of the story makes it as relevant as any other. I think for so long we are all too worried about our own stories—as if someone will point out that it’s not true. At least, that’s one of my biggest fears—that someone will correct me, tell me my memory is wrong, my version of the story is wrong, my recollection is wrong.

For me, so much of memory is tied up in emotional memory. Whether or not the collection of events happened in the way I remember is not as important to me as how it made me feel. Because most of the time how it makes me feel is what I remember.

In about four months, it will be the one year anniversary of my mother’s death. I’ve barely started to unpack what this means, how this affects me, how I move forward in ways that both honor her memory and allow me to lean fully into myself in ways that I never have before.

For many of us, 2025 is collectively a difficult year. For me personally, 2024 was a year so difficult that I’m not really sure where to begin to place all of the pieces of it. Sometimes I just have to make a list of all the things. And even though I’ve made the list before, it begs to be written again:

January 2024: My mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
January through August: I made my way back and forth to California to care for her.
June 2024: Our youngest graduated from high school.
July 2024: I had a radical hysterectomy.
August 2024: My mom died.
September 2024: Our youngest child left for college.
September 2024: My very best dog died.
September 2024: My mother-in-law enters the hospital.
October 2024: My husband had emergency surgery.
October 2024: My mother-in-law died.
October 2024: We hold my mother’s memorial service.
November 2024: We clean out my MIL’s home.
November 2024: I fall down some stairs moving boxes from MIL’s home. (Surgery in 2025)
November 2024: I drive 1,500 miles to my mom’s home for the last time, and go through all her drawers, cupboards and closets for the very last time.
December 2025: My childhood home is prepared to be sold.

I stare at this timeline over and over again, and my body and my mind start to float in separate directions. It feels in many ways like an out of body experience because for so much of the year, I simply went through the motions of what I needed to do to get it done. There was no rest. There was no getting sick. My body did what it had to do to get the work done.

I was one of my mother’s primary caregivers, and during that time, I hoped to eek out a different kind of relationship with her. On some level, I did. And on another level, it remained as it always had—fraught with tension and disappointment. On the one hand, my mother saw me in a way she never had before—I was her caregiver, and despite the way in which I nurtured my own children, she hadn’t allowed herself to see me care for others before. And in return, I glimpsed at moments of her vulnerabilities—she cried herself to sleep one night while I held her hand. But these moments were rare.

Most of the time, I completed tasks, did the work of caregiving, and stayed in my lane. I tried to offer up my expertise in caring for her. My mantra with each trip between Washington and California was simple: Just because my mother couldn’t be the mother I needed, doesn’t mean I cannot be the daughter she needs now.

I held to that mantra despite the fact that there were times when she lashed out at me. Despite the times that her sometimes cruel words cut me to the core and broke me in ways I hadn’t felt broken before, my mantra served me well.

In the last 14 days of her life, when she lay sleeping, I was able to wash her hands and face, put lotion on her body, brush her hair, sing songs to her, provide her with ice chips, change her nightgown, wash her bedding, change her diapers, tell her stories, read her books, brush her teeth, rub her feet. All of the same things I did for my own children when they were young. She could no longer fight my softness with her hardness.

And in the end, as I held her while she took her last breaths, I knew that there was nothing more I could have done for her. I knew that her inability to show her vulnerabilities in a way that I not only craved but needed, were not of her doing alone.

Likely, as the oldest child—shadowed by the death of her oldest brother at birth—my mother grew up on a farm with a disciplinarian father who told his wife to come back out each day into the fields after putting my mother down for a nap. When my grandmother thought my mother was awake from her nap, she would return to the house often finding my mother awake in her crib crying. It wasn’t until my own grandmother’s father visited and scolded my grandpa that she was allowed to stay in the house while my mother slept. But by then, my mother could stand on her own two feet. And in doing so, she believed that each of us needed to be raised to become independent while I have always craved interdependence.

I have always craved the hug over the reprimand, the assurance instead of the disappointment, the quiet moments rather than the shouting.

My grief is complicated by the fact that I don’t really miss my mother for who she was, but rather for who she could never be for me.

And the realization that I finally have to let the hope go that she could be anyone other that who she was. And in doing so, I can continue to seek out ways to better provide my own adult children with what they need by pushing myself to remain open to the fact that it may not be what I think they need. Instead, I will continue to ask them the question: What do you need from me? How can I better support you?

And I will continue to turn inward toward myself to ask the same questions: What do I need from me? How can I better support myself? At the core of those questions for me is really this: How do we love one another in ways that continue to open us up to our vulnerabilities, to our humanness?

I continue to believe above all else, that love is ultimately what heals us. I do not doubt that in her own way, my mother loved me, and I loved her. We loved differently. And in doing so, her gift to me was that I want to push myself to love harder and more deeply than I have before. And I want those around me to know that I love them.

My grief has always taught me to grow, to bend, to learn, to become better at being fully human. I have a long ways to go so I will just keep trying and hope that with each stumble, I learn more fully how to love.

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My parents are both dead now—my father for more than 50 years; my mother for just five months.

A year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1961, the Berlin Wall was built and a divided Germany existed for the next 29 years, with a literal wall between East and West Germany.

A year later, 1963, JFK was assassinated.

In 1964, the Surgeon General announced that smoking was linked to cancer. Almost nine years later to the day, my father died of lung cancer from his pack a day cigarette habit that he picked up in the military.

Five years before his death, I was born in 1967, just a few months before the race riots broke out across the United States, and in Detroit 43 people were killed and more than 1,100 were injured.

Some really terrible things happened in the years between when my parents attended this wedding and when I was born. Some really terrible things have happened in the years I’ve been alive.

Some really terrible things are going to happen again soon. People close to me that I love will die. I could die, though I really hope to still be around for a long time. People I don’t even know will have some really terrible things happen to them. My friends who have lived here for more than 30 years could be deported with daughters who have not stepped one foot inside of Mexico since a few months after they were born.

Our animals and forests and oceans will gasp for cleaner air. More fish and animals will become extinct. The billionaires may become trillionaires.

People will be hurt in ways we cannot even yet imagine.

And yet some really beautiful and amazing things will also happen in between and despite the wreckage that continues around us.

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For the next four years, I’m going to focus on beauty, my wellness, my mental health, all while spreading kindness and love. I’m going to focus on looking for the light, looking for the helpers (thank you Mr. Rogers), stepping into the forest to look for balsamroot, camas and lupine; I’m going to walk along the edge of our rivers to see the marmots, raccoons and osprey. I’ll drive to the ocean as long as it takes me to get there and lift my face to the sun as I step into the sand and watch the sand crabs scurry back before the water carries them under the current.

I will look for the beautiful things surrounding me while some really terrible things continue to happen.

I will find the squirrel in my yard gathering her nuts and seeds, and I will greet her each day with my good morning as I scatter more safe treats for her and her friends to store for this winter that feels never ending.

I will look into the faces of my own children and look for my mother and father. I will remember the day I crawled into the bed with my mama for the last time, holding her hand, my body pressed up against her as she took her final breaths. And as terrible as that moment felt, I will remember gathering the flowers she grew in her garden immediately afterwards to place on her body before she was wrapped in a sheet and carried away.

I will remember cutting the impatiens, the butterfly bush, the plumeria, the hydrangea, and watching the sun rise again as it would do the next day and the next and the day after that, each morning reminding us that whenever the darkness descends, the light will return again and again and again.

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Wow. Thank you to all the new subscribers during the last month. I am overwhelmed by your kindnesses, your willingness to read what I write, and your openness to sharing your own grief journeys.

For those who are new, I want to provide a little bit of context and insight into who I am and what I do. I am beyond grateful for how my life has unfolded and how it continues to unfold, and yet…there are many ways in which I’d give it all back to have certain persons in my life again.

The only thing for certain that I understand is that time moves astonishingly fast, and that my appetite for more time grows as I move closer toward death. We are all dying, and before I go, I want to understand so many more things about living and how we can live in such a way as to welcome death when it appears.

So I think a lot about death and dying, about joy and sorrow, about grief, about my journey which has led me to each of you reading this now.

I have been grieving ever since I can remember. I was born in April 1967 and four months later my father was diagnosed with what would turn out to be a terminal cancer. He was a smoker—picked up from his time in the Navy—and continued on through his life after that. However, I didn’t know smoking killed him until…well into my 40s. (A story for another time!) For the first five years of my life he battled cancer until cancer won. I have no memory of my father. No memory of his presence. Only the memory of his absence. But I have smells and senses and moments of emotional clarity during that time. His death and our family grief was hidden from conversation, won out by the belief in the early 70s that talking to children about grief would be, well, detrimental to all of us. As you likely already know, what we have since learned is that NOT talking about grief is actually the thing that harms more.

So I grew up and my grief appeared in many other ways: in the dark, through meltdowns and screaming, through isolation and loneliness, through running away, up my nose, down my throat, through consuming vasts amounts of food and purging, through hunger strikes, and in all kinds of unhealthy and non-healing ways.

Then I got married and had two children and started to heal a little bit. My children provided me with a balm I thought would *fix* my grief.

Then grief happened again in the form of my dead daughter, Grace, and I plunged into a dark night of the soul which has led me to where I am today.

In 2024, in a four month period I have lost my mother, my mother-in-law, my uterus, my dog, the home my mother lived in for 51 years and where I moved to when I was six years old and fatherless. I spent the first seven months of this year caring for my mom during her battle with pancreatic cancer. I fell and sprained an ankle so badly it will take months to heal.

I am a grieving mother, a grieving daughter, a grieving granddaughter, a grieving friend.

I am learning how to love by learning how to grieve. I want to grieve harder and love harder. I don’t apologize for my grief, nor do I seek sympathy for it. I will spend the rest of my life learning how to do this well.

Grief will always take center stage. Grace is my teacher along the way. Everything I am today is because Grace has taught me how to love again. Every grief now is informed by my grief as a mother. Even my father’s death—31 years before Grace—has been transformed by Grace.

I want to continue to be transformed, to be moved to tears, to be moved.

So here is my voice.

Here are my words.

Thank you for coming along with me.

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One day she was sitting and talking and eating and smiling, and the next day she was throwing up, never really getting out of bed again.

Confession: The nurse and I lied to our family, her friends, the morning after this Friday. No one else seemed ready to watch her die. And so my middle brother did what my middle brother does: he threw a party, yes, a party.

People came: my brother’s friends, our niece, our cousin and her husband, another cousin, my own children, my mom’s great granddaughter. My brother barbecued steak, chicken, shrimp, pork, mushrooms. People ate and ate and ate. I watched my mom sitting first outside in her garden chair, then in her recliner in her tie-dyed purple *bajamas* (as she and I called them). I watched her all night as she stared off into the distance. Everyone else seemed oblivious to her indifference, except my daughter who I think also knew.

Around 9 pm on that Friday, after my mom fell asleep five or six times in her chair, I tried to gently nudge her toward her bedroom. “But this is my house,” she said. Ever the hostess, my mom claimed she couldn’t leave the living room with guests in her home. “It would be rude,” she exclaimed.

Until you have your first child, you never fully understand the term *mama bear* but something happens when your child is born—someone tries to do something to your infant that you don’t want, and the mama bear in you rises violently, with surety. It doesn’t matter if that someone is a stranger, your partner, another family member, or a doctor. “No, I will not give him three vaccines at once—how then will I know which one, if any, he reacts too?”

“No, I’m not going to let him cry himself to sleep, or lie him down, or let him fall asleep on his own.”

“No.”

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The mama bear in me was activated as soon as my mother was diagnosed, back in January, back when everyone wanted to come visit, when people were still believing there was a cure, when my mother thought she’d beat the odds, with a drug or a miracle, with prayer. I told people not to come visit if they were sick; I created a medication schedule; I started a CaringBridge even when my mother was uncertain of its usefulness; I created a visiting schedule. And at the same time, I tried (though sometimes failed) at assuring my mom that I wanted her to have autonomy through the entire ordeal.

So when the party continued, and when my mother was unwilling to go to bed until the party was over, I stepped into the backyard and declared, “The party is over. My mom needs to go to bed and won’t until everyone leaves.”

As people do at parties, everyone pretended they were leaving anyways. My older brother—always the entertainer and the entertainment—gave me a sideways glance as if to suggest the party was just getting started. Normally I’d bow to his wants as the older sibling, as the man, because growing up in a patriarchal family, the patriarchy still reigned strong in my blood despite all my efforts to squelch the urge to purge myself of its hold on me. On that night, I just stared back and said, “She’s exhausted, and needs to sleep.”

My mother, just hours before though un-hungry, attempted to eat some steak, some shrimp, some chicken, some pork because well, “I want to taste what your brother barbecued.” The men in my family have always been lifted up onto a pedestal I could never reach. She always wanted to please them while I always tried to please her.

So she ate tiny bites choking it down with water she never wanted to drink. “You force water down me,” my mother claimed often when I tried to fill her glass five or six times a day. “You are trying to drown me,” she say.

In the beginning, I took it personally. My brother would bring her water, and she’d nod and say thank you. When I’d bring her water she’d say, “look at you being so bossy and ordering me around.” Even though that was our norm my whole life, I couldn’t help but take it personally. Sometimes, her comments sent me to my old bedroom, the one I grew up in, the room where I first tried to kill myself, the room I hid in after I was hit with a belt, the room I climbed out of at night to run away. Sometimes, in those early days as a grown woman in my late 50s, I’d go into my old bedroom and sob myself to sleep again.

The party was finally over, the guests disbursed, and together my mother and I went into her bedroom to go to sleep. I crawled into her queen sized bed next to her. She asked me to hold her hand while she cried herself to sleep.

That was the last day she ever ate a meal again.

Tomorrow I will lie to my mother for the last time.

I am trying instead to be grateful for his wagging (tailless) wag when she arrived, for his ability to stand up and look out the window, for his ability to drink a few laps of water.

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I am trying to feel the presence of G behind me on the sofa as she mews all day long, wanting more food, more attention, more time and finally, finally, deciding to curl up behind me who knows for how long, but I am trying to take it in.

I am trying to remember that this too shall pass—this feeling of being pulled down by the weight of my grief, by the missed opportunities to understand more clearly who my mother was, why she did what she did sometimes, and why she didn’t do what I needed her to do more often than not.

I am trying to remember the conversation I had instead today with my great aunt who is 97 now and living beyond the age of my own mother who talked to her aunt almost every week. Even though I only met her a few times (most recently about eight years ago), I am trying to be grateful for picking up the phone to call her to say, “I just wanted to hear your voice and say hello and to tell you how much my mother adored you.”

I am trying to remember more than just turning my mother on her side, every two hours, the alarm going off and needing to call in other helpers because I couldn’t lift more than ten pounds because of my own recent surgery. I am trying to remember more than holding the bowl for her as she threw up over and over and over again as the cancer grew inside of her.

I am trying to celebrate the wind outside imagining it blowing away not only the dust and leaves and certain particles in the air, but also blowing away pieces of myself that I feel done with—pieces of my former self that spent too much time criticizing myself, placing the blame on myself, feeling the shame of feeling whatever it was I thought I wasn’t supposed to feel.

I am trying to feel it all—the joy and the sorrow; the shame and the celebration; the light and dark—the feeling that each day is both one less day that I get to be here and one more day that I get to be here.

I am trying. It is all I can for today.

My mother was born in 1939, ten years after the 1929 market crash, and just two months before Germany invaded Poland. She was two years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and just a month later, the United States arrived in the British Isles as we entered the war. For the next three years of her life, the United States remained at war, and I imagine as a child, she overheard the adults speaking in whispered tones about this young man and that young man heading off to war, and then discovering at some later date, that he was never going to return.

She grew up in the small farming town of Wishek, North Dakota, about 95 miles southeast of Bismarck in the central, southern part of the state. In 1940, the population of Wishek was 1,112. At its height in 1980, it rose to 1,345. Today, it is just under 840 people.

The farm she grew up on was about a mile or so out of town. As the oldest living child, I imagine the responsibility to help her mother with the younger children and with the household and farm chores felt immense. And since she was born after the traumatic birth of her older brother who died in utero at 40 weeks, it is easy to imagine that my grandmother and grandfather held onto a kind of silent grief that neither one of them in those days was able to process. In fact, years later, after the death of my own daughter at birth, my grandmother told me that she was put to sleep in order to give birth to her first born son, and they buried him and held a funeral without telling her. She told me that she never forgot him and never let a day go by without thinking of him. When she spoke, I witnessed a grief and regret in her I’d never seen before.

I don’t know when my mother learned of her older brother. We never talked about him. We never talked about so many things. Like the letters and photographs and dishes my mother saved in her cupboards, these stories were closed behind cabinets and boxes in her mind. Speaking about grief was antithetical to her belief that thinking pleasant thoughts would improve one’s outlook on life.

After my mother’s death, I started opening closets and drawers to spaces I’d never been allowed to enter in the home I grew up in.

At the foot of her bed was a hope chest, the name alone evoking a sense of the yearning to come. As a child, I never looked inside. I’m not even sure if I could have if I had asked. I had a silent kind of knowing that you didn’t ask and you most certainly didn’t open the lid. So just a few months before she died, I finally asked if I could look inside, my heart pounding as if anticipating her answer might be no. Instead, she said yes. There had been an opening of vulnerability between the two of us in that moment.

For me, when I opened the cedar chest, it was both a sense of intrigue and sadness that overtook me. I found the things she saved answered a few of my questions but also washed over me with a sense of the heartache she hid. There were among the saved items these things:

• my baby blanket that was lost when I was two years old

• Her wedding album

• An envelope of pictures of my father I’d never seen (he died when I was five)

• someone’s baby teeth

• the guest book from her wedding

• my father’s baptismal record

• her wedding announcment

• another baby blanket from one of my three brothers

• a drawing of my father’s mother

• a fur neck warmer

• a card to my mother from her best friend

And so many more things. It smelled of moth balls and pine needles. It smelled of ancient forests. It smelled of nostalgia and longing not hope.

After my mother’s death in August, I started peeking in places I’d never looked before. In the hallway in our home, I found four boxes tucked in the back of a cupboard, each with our names on them: Sarah, Jeff, Chris, Jason. Inside mine, were cards and letters from me to her. I held my breath as I opened several of them because not all of the letters I sent her were kind. After reading two or three, I shut the box and put it in my suitcase to bring home. It sits on a shelf waiting for me to return.

In another room, in a closet, was a box of newspapers with every major event dating back to the 1960s: JFK’s assassination, stories of Vietnam, Watergate, Prince Diana’s wedding and her death, President Reagan’s swearing in… as I unfolded the yellowing pages, I tried to imagine what she thought we might do with these. I tried to imagine how these events made her feel, shaped her, held her back or propelled her forward.

Three sets of china, a set of silver, three sets of flatware, decorations for every holiday from St. Patrick’s Day to Thanksgiving to Valentine’s Day. Unlimited doilies and tablecloths, hummels, so many tschotskes and bric-à-brac.

As I unbox 51 years of storing things, I am trying to envision what I want to keep, what is worth giving away or selling, and what can actually go into the trash. How do you throw into the recycling bin 45 years of newspapers no one wants but someone meticulously kept, folding the pages, stacking the pages, tucking the newspapers into the bin.

I am holding space at the moment, holding time and sitting with all of these things trying to imagine a younger version of my mom sitting on the couch, sipping her cup of coffee and reading the newspaper pages before tucking them away: “Family is the most important thing in the world,” said Princess Diana. And in that way, my mother tucked the memories of our years together inside bins, on shelves in closets, underneath beds.

I want to hold onto the memories of the past few months and the years behind us—the painful ones and the beautiful ones. The night she cried herself to sleep and asked me to hold her hand, both of us lying in silent regret of what the two of us would never have together.

It wasn’t until more than a year later, sitting in a circle with other women whose babies had died, that I confessed my feelings. I couldn’t look at babies, hold babies, see my friends with babies, or smile at babies. And as I quietly confessed my thoughts, a collective sigh of relief took over.

It turns out I wasn’t alone.

There were several moms who felt the same way. We decided that this was grief’s dark side. And we were pretty sure while we felt this way, it wasn’t something we should share in public.

Even though I found relief in knowing that they felt the same way, I still couldn’t explain my feelings to my husband. Instead, I just remained angry at T. when he held babies. I scowled at him. I walked away. I generally stayed mad for days.

If I couldn’t draw comfort from holding babies, I certainly didn’t want T. to find comfort.

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One day after my mother died in August 2024, my siblings and I held a zoom call to discuss “the estate.” While it sounds regal, the estate consists of my mother’s home and her possessions. And while her body had just been removed from the house less than 15 hours earlier, we were on a zoom call talking about finding a real estate agent and cleaning out her house.

There were no how are you doings? No how are you feeling? It was all business. All talk. All let’s sort out the legal stuff.

Here’s some context: My mom was 88 when she died. She was battling pancreatic cancer for seven months. She spent her last 12 days virtually asleep unable to eat or drink and slowly dying. My eldest brother and I held vigil while my two other brothers chose not to come in the final days. One stayed home. The other went golfing and to a wedding. We knew her death was imminent. All four of us live in different states. Our mom lived in California, and I live in the north. One brother in the South while two live in the Midwest.

We all grieve differently I guess, is how I consoled myself during this time. As my anger simmered because of their absence, another part of me was grateful they weren’t there because honestly, they would have made her dying more complicated.

Grief was never the topic of our zoom calls. Let’s have an estate sale. Let’s sell the house. Let’s get it done by the end of the year.

For the first two days after my mother died, I wandered her house. I slept poorly. Had terrible dreams. I felt my anxiety growing, and I watched my oldest brother make phone calls, talk to realtors, set up appointments, schedule meetings.

A realtor is coming by in the morning he told me on day three after she died. Okay, I responded.

I played along. I donned my good sister armor. I also made phone calls. Relatives. My mom’s friends. Her church. Her handyman. My boss. Her neighbors. I told them all she died, and I told the story over and over again. Fourteen days. No food. No water. Yes, she was tough. We knew that about her. We all nodded and sighed. My mom grew up on a farm after all. She lived through droughts and winters at minus 30 degrees. She was tough!

My oldest brother, the executor, carried on. He called to order death certificates. He handled her cremation. He called the financial advisor. The insurance company. Cancelled magazine subscriptions. He called the gardener. The cable company. The church. He talked to her minister.

I continued to behave. I called her sister. My uncle. My cousins. My kids. I cancelled Amazon Prime. I threw out her library card.

I didn’t worry about hating babies this time. (And by the way, I draw great joy and pleasure from holding babies now!) I didn’t even worry about hating J. because he’d been my father figure for more than 51 years since our father died. He’d seen my rage and anger so I knew he could take it.

But I started resenting my other two brothers. They called. They gave advice. They suggested spreadsheets for things we wanted in the house. They offered suggestions. All from the comfort of their homes and hotel rooms. I cleaned her toilet and straighten my mom’s bedroom. I washed her sheets and remade her bed. I threw out her makeup. Her toothbrush. Her leftover pads.

They didn’t see our mom's cheeks sunken in. They didn’t change her diapers. They didn’t watch her gasp for air. They didn’t hear her cry out in pain as we turned her on her side so she didn’t get bed sores. They didn’t see the green and black and brown sludge coming out of her mouth just hours before she died. They didn’t watch me collapse to the floor sobbing when she could no longer wake up.

I can sit with a couple whose child just died and offer them my unconditional love. I can let them be anything they need to be in that moment, that day, that week, that year. I can listen to them say the most horrifying thoughts and I can tenderly hold their hands and tell them I understand. I can call them each day. Text them notes of encouragement.

But my love for my siblings is conditional. I cannot seem to forgive them for not showing up. I can’t forgive them for wanting to sell the house immediately. Get rid of her things. Move on. I can’t let go of the fact that one of them shouted at me that I just wanted to stay in her house longer so I could have a vacation. I can’t forgive the other one for all the years of bullying he inflicted on me more than 40 years earlier. I can’t forgive them.

One sibling call turned so ugly, I told them all to fuck off and left the room and swore off sibling calls for good. (The next day I longed for a script writer as good as The Bear script writers. I need to work on my use of the word ‘fuck’ so that I can better use it as an adverb instead of just a noun and an adjective. I wanted the Hollywood version of myself for that outburst.)

This is the dark side of my grief. My anger grows. My ability to think clearly diminishes. It brings out my shadow self. The one that wants to destroy things, hide valuable objects from them, steal things from my mom’s house when we’re told to list everything on a spreadsheet. Fuck the spreadsheet.

Fuck grief. Embrace grief. Love grief.

I’m leaving myself open to experience it all. Right now that experience is darkness. Bring. It. On.

After 27 years of taking care of children, I was keenly aware that my last child was heading off to college in the Fall of 2024 and for the first time in nearly three decades, my husband and I would find ourselves alone again as in the early days of marriage.

So I made a mental list of all the things I wanted to do this year:

• Attend all of Sawyer’s final track meets

• Be present for Sawyer and yet carve time out for myself

• Find a new hobby for myself

• Reconnect with the self

• Be comfortable being alone again

• Reconnect with my spouse in ways we hadn’t done in years

• Do a whole lot of writing, reading, and nothing

On January 7th at 11 p.m., my cell phone rang—on do not disturb mode that meant only one of five people could get ahold of me.

“Hi Sarah, this is your mom’s friend, Pat, calling from your mom’s phone. It’s not good.”

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Eight months later, I am coming up for air for the first time.

• I missed several of my son’s track meets.

• I’ve mostly connected with him by phone.

• I have no hobbies at all.

• I don’t even recognize myself in the mirror

• When I’m alone, all I do is sit catatonically or weep

• T and I have slept in the same bed for maybe 90 days all year

• I’ve only written text messages to my therapist to help me untangle my thoughts; I’ve read maybe two novels in the year; doing nothing hasn’t been an option.

I have quietly perused throughout the year even as I’ve subscribed to writers I adore. I long to spend time here but time has had other plans for me.

I remain lost.

I am orphaned now for the first time in 57 years.

As my mother took her last breath on August 14, I began to take my first breaths without her, trying to find my place in a world I’ve known so well for more 51 years without a father, a place I’ve known for 21 years without our daughter Grace, but not a world I’ve known without the person who brought me into this breathtaking and heart-wrenching world.

Like many mother daughter relationships, ours was fraught with misunderstanding, unrealistic expectations, and big disappointments. It was filled with so many complications.

Here I will explore all types of grief and death: anticipatory grief, ambiguous loss, complicated grief, traumatic bereavement, disenfranchised grief; all from a place of deep love and empathic emotions.