After losing Isaiah, Mona did what so many grieving parents do.

She disappeared.

Not all at once. But slowly, quietly, she started skipping the family gatherings where she would feel his absence most sharply, surrounded by all his cousins growing up without him. She got good at wearing a mask, at being on for other people, at performing a version of herself that did not make anyone uncomfortable. And when the exhaustion of all that pretending became too much, she retreated. Into the cave, as she calls it. Until she felt ready to come out again.

It took her a long time to learn the difference between solitude and isolation. One is necessary. The other is lonely.

Isaiah was Mona's only child, her greatest joy, a boy who told her he loved her at least ten times a day and meant it every time. He was funny and easygoing and patient in ways she was not, the kind of kid who would watch you drop the roof of a gingerbread house and just shrug and say it was okay. He was thirteen years old when he died in an accident while clearing trees on the family property. Mona was home packing for a trip. A knock on the door. A two and a half hour drive to Flagstaff Medical Center. And then a doctor who walked out and told her he was gone.

Six years later, she is still carrying it. She has started EMDR, working carefully and bravely toward the day she will be ready to process the memory of that day itself. She has learned, slowly, that letting people in is not a burden to them. It is, as she says, a way of allowing them to love her.

And she has been loved well.

At Isaiah's celebration of life, she said something out loud - that she wanted to collect some money and give it to a charity in his name. Her friend Jessica and her twin sister heard those words, and took them seriously. Within months, they had raised $80,000 to build a medical and dental clinic in Honduras, named La Luz de Isaiah. The Light of Isaiah.

When Mona traveled to Honduras to see the clinic, strangers had painted a dragonfly mural on the wall inside, because Isaiah's favorite insect was a dragonfly. She stood in that room, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something she had been afraid she had lost.

She felt like God had not forgotten her.

Out of that moment, and out of a conversation between Mona and Jessica on the phone afterward, La Luz de Isaiah Foundation was born. Their Dragonfly Wishes program helps grieving parents bring to life the tributes and memorials they have dreamed of but could not carry alone. A bench in a park. A community art fair. A clinic in Honduras. Whatever honors the child, in whatever size fits the family. Jessica does the logistics, the phone calls, the fundraising, the advocacy. Mona holds the heart of it.

Because what they both want, more than anything, is for every grieving parent to feel what Mona felt in that clinic.

Seen. Remembered. Not forgotten.

You can learn more and apply for a Dragonfly Wish at laluzdeisaiah.org.

Becky has spent her entire life adapting to a world that was not built for her.

As a woman with dwarfism who stands four feet tall, she has learned to problem solve, improvise, and push forward in spaces that were never designed with her in mind. She has built the confidence and strength to ignore the stares and the laughs. She has figured out children's recliners and gaming chairs and car beds and oxygen tanks and every other logistical puzzle that life has thrown at her.

And then she lost Jackson. And something unexpected happened.

The fear went away.

Jackson Robert was born on August 9th, 2021, a perfect baby who arrived after 39 weeks, a NICU stay, 20 days of sleep studies, a car bed, oxygen for sleeping, and a yellow sheet of paper with 20 specialist appointments waiting on the other side of discharge day. He also had dwarfism, just like his mama, and Becky will tell you that getting that news was the best news she had ever received. He was her boy. He was going to be like her.

He was six months and twenty-one days old when he died, following a catastrophic loss of oxygen during a routine sleep study at the hospital. He had not been breathing for thirty minutes before anyone noticed. The code team took four minutes to arrive. Becky was thrown out of the room. His father came back from the hotel not even having had enough time to remove his shoes.

Twelve days in the ICU followed. Twelve days of fighting to understand what had happened while simultaneously fighting to give Jackson the best possible care. Twelve days of MRIs and heart rate changes and a physical therapist who came once, lifted his leg, watched it fall, and never came back. Twelve days of Becky going to the hotel every night to sleep, so she could be fully present for him every morning. And at 8:09 PM on March 2nd, 2022, Jackson passed away in her arms. 8:09. August 9th. His birthday.

In this conversation, Becky speaks with remarkable honesty about everything that has come since. The IVF journey that stretched across two years and three states before falling apart. The massive spinal surgery that left her hospitalized for 72 days and still requiring care today. The layers of grief she has carried all at once, the loss of her son, the loss of her mobility, the loss of her marriage, and the grief that began even before Jackson was born, in every diagnosis and every appointment and every moment of bracing for what might come next.

And through all of it, she has kept going. She has written. She has sought therapy. She has found her people, slowly and imperfectly, in support groups and retreats and monthly meetings with parents who lost children around Jackson's age. She has put his photo on her hospital room walls and his picture with Santa in the family Christmas photos and his image on her phone so that every new nurse who walks into her room asks about him.

She says she used to wake up in the middle of the night consumed by a fear of death. The moment Jackson died in her arms, that fear disappeared.

She is in no rush. She has a lot to do here on Earth. But she knows she will get to see him again.

And part of what she has to do is make sure Jackson is never just a blip. She is working on a book. She is doing inclusivity advocacy so that the world he never got to grow up in becomes the world she would have wanted for him. She is telling anyone who will listen about her boy and his giggles and his determination during tummy time and the way he was, as she puts it simply and perfectly, the brightest light.

Jackson made Becky a mama. And in the end, he made her fearless too.

For more on Becky, visit beckymotivates.com

Darius made Kelly a mama at eighteen years old.

Then he made her a nurse.

And years later, after he was gone, he made her something else entirely, a certified grief counselor, an entrepreneur, and the founder of something beautiful that would not exist without him.

That is the thread running through this entire conversation. Our children become our purpose. And when we find that purpose, they are wrapped up inside it completely.

Darius Anthony was Kelly's oldest, born on Christmas Day, a gift announced to the world on the day the world was already celebrating. He was a class clown, a party in a person, a young man who dreamed of making a dent in the universe, not just for himself, but for other people. He became a realtor working specifically with first-time homebuyers, bought his own first home, and was preparing to flip it for someone just like them. He was 28 years old, thriving, and full of plans.

On January 3rd, 2023, he died in his sleep from SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. He had been diagnosed with epilepsy at eighteen, managed it well, and was living his life fully. Kelly and her husband were on a cruise ship in Mexico when the call came.

Before January 3rd, 2023 and after. That is how Kelly divides her life now.

In this conversation, Kelly speaks honestly about the grief journey. The permission a dear friend gave her to simply stop and just be. The Visionary Dreamer Award at his college that his colleagues announced at his funeral they were renaming in his honor. The autopsy report that arrived without warning on her second day back at work, and the ashes returned in what she can only describe as a biohazard container. Two moments that made her think: the death care industry has to do better.

So she built something better.

Timely Presence sends heirloom quality gifts on the predictable hard days, the birthday, the holiday season, the anniversary of the death, so that the people who love grieving families can show up right on time. Gifts that are not sad, Kelly says. Gifts that are reminders of love. Learn more at thetimelypresence.com.

And perhaps the most beautiful moment in this conversation is near the end, when Kelly tells the story of Darius's best friend, who brought a framed photo of Darius to his own house closing. Because there was no way to do that moment without him.

That is what it looks like when a life leaves a mark so deep that the people who loved him carry him forward into every milestone he never got to have.

Darius made Kelly a mama, a nurse, and now a purpose.

He is wrapped up in all of it.

The flowers are blooming. The days are getting longer. The world looks like it is coming back to life.

So why do so many of us feel so heavy?

In this episode, Gwen Kapcia, social worker and thanatologist, and I sit down to talk about something grieving parents experience but rarely hear discussed directly - the way the changing seasons can shift something deep inside us, often before we even realize what is happening. As Gwen puts it so simply and so truthfully, every new season is the calendar doing what the new year does, four times over. It is a marker that more time has passed without our child. And there is no denying it.

We talk about why transitions are so hard, why the body keeps score even when the mind has not looked at the calendar, and why sometimes the hardest season is not the one we expected. It might not be the season our child died in. It might be back to school, or the first warm day, or the quiet of February. It just hits, and we feel it before we can name it.

We also read through beautiful and honest responses from our community, parents who shared their children's favorite seasons, their own hardest seasons, and specific memories from each time of year that brought both tears and smiles. A boy who played hooky at the state fair every fall birthday. A girl who wore flannels and loved Halloween and was honored at her visitation the same way. A son whose love of summer camping shaped every warm month for his family. These are the kinds of memories that keep grief open, as Gwen says, to both the beauty and the pain.

Gwen also shares some practical tips for navigating the seasonal shifts, including the importance of routine, sunlight, staying active, and above all, staying connected. Because as we say on this podcast again and again — we are not meant to do this alone.

And there is one more thing I want to invite you to do, whether you are listening the day this drops or months from now. Take a few quiet minutes and write down a specific memory of your child in each of the four seasons. Not for anyone else. Just for you. To remember. To treasure. To hold them close in every season they ever lived in.

Say my child's name.

It sounds like such a simple thing. And yet for so many grieving parents, it is the thing people around them are least willing to do. They look at you with that familiar expression, the one you can see right through, and they stay quiet, thinking their silence is a kindness.

Cindy knows that look well. And it is exactly where everything began.

Abbie was Cindy's youngest, born in November of 1993, the kind of little girl who arrived like a force of nature. Full of energy, full of heart, always wanting to give of herself to everyone around her. She had ADD, a heart of gold, and a cosmetology license she worked hard to earn. She was also someone who carried a great deal quietly, and when her best friend died by suicide in junior high, something in Abbie shifted in ways that would take years to fully understand.

Abbie's road was not a straight one. There were struggles with addiction, a stint in rehab, and a season of sobriety so joyful that Cindy wrote to the judge and district attorney just to tell them she had her daughter back. That season was real. It was precious. And then Abbie relapsed, and on the night it happened, the heroin her friend had purchased was one hundred percent fentanyl.

Abbie was gone. And Lily, her little girl, was there when Cindy found them.

In the years since, Cindy turned her grief into something. It started with wristbands and a name she registered: Say My Child's Name. It grew into a child loss grief group, and then into a vision for something much bigger.

A remembrance memorial. A beautiful park-like space in Stowe, Ohio at Adele Durbin Park, with wind chimes and benches and dedications and a nook full of mental health resources for grieving families. Not a cemetery. A destination. A place where anyone who has lost a child can come and simply be.

Seven area mayors are on board. A grandmother donated $20,000. The community has raised $45,000 toward a $200,000 goal. And it is only just beginning.

Cindy will tell you she is doing baby steps. But from where I am sitting, what she is doing looks a whole lot like something sacred.

To donate or learn more, reach Cindy at saymychildsnameAbbie@gmail.com, or give directly at smfcommunity.org/mychild.

Grief is permanent. But it doesn't have to be all-consuming.

That is the quiet, hard-won truth at the heart of this conversation with Wesley, Graham's mom. And it is the kind of truth that only comes from ten years of living with loss.

Graham was adopted at five months old, a boy who struggled from early on with questions of identity and belonging. He wrestled with being adopted, with his sexuality, with depression, and eventually with addiction. Wesley spent years in that particular kind of anticipatory grief that parents of children with addiction know all too well, always bracing, always wondering, always hoping. And then one night, the call came anyway.

Graham died in July of 2016 at the age of 33.

In this conversation, Wesley speaks with remarkable honesty about what the years since have looked like. The shame she felt in the beginning, the instinct to hide, the relentless second-guessing of every decision she had ever made as a mother. She talks about the unique and unexpected gift of seeing Graham's therapist after his death, someone who actually knew him, who could fill in pieces of the picture Wesley never had, and who has helped her understand that she did the best she could with what she knew.

She also talks about how she has channeled her grief into purpose. Her blog, When Your Child is Addicted, her Facebook group Kids on Drugs, and the book she is currently writing are all born from a desire to help other parents before they find themselves where she is now.

And she talks about what ten years of grief actually looks like from the inside. Not linear. Not resolved. Still present on holidays, on birthdays, in unexpected moments. But incorporated now, woven into the fabric of daily life rather than overwhelming it.

I share my rock metaphor in this conversation, and Wesley captures it perfectly when she says that grief will always be with you. It is just that it doesn't have to become the whole point of your life.

The loss never goes away. But slowly, gently, life grows around it.

Some dates just carry weight.

April 23rd. The anniversary of Taylor's death. Two days after what would have been Andy's 22nd birthday.

When Jam reached out and asked to come back on, I looked at the calendar and knew immediately. There was no one else I wanted in this space this week.

If you haven't yet listened to Episode 157, I'd encourage you to start there. Jam first came on just four months after losing Taylor, her 13-year-old daughter, a girl who rode the special needs bus by choice every single day so she could sit beside her twin sister Morgan, who saved her lunch seat without fail, who never met a stranger and never stopped looking for someone to love. In that first episode, the word that kept coming to me as I listened was compassion. It still does.

Now, nearly four years later, Jam is back.

And what strikes me most about this conversation is simply that she is here. That she is still standing. That she is still showing up - for Morgan, for her husband, for the families her foundation has served, for the women in her Starlight support group who have become some of her closest friends in the world.

She didn't think she would survive this.

She is surviving it.

We talk about what these four years have looked like from the fog of the first year, the harder truths of years two and three, and now, the slow, uneven work of figuring out who you are on the other side of the worst thing you have ever lived through. We talk about the May Flowers Taylor George Foundation, which has helped ten families navigate burial expenses, sibling travel, and the crushing practical weight of sudden loss. We talk about Morgan and the particular heartbreak of watching a child grieve in a language she cannot fully speak. We talk about finding your people, even when they live a thousand miles away.

And we talk about what it means to still be figuring it out at year four. To not yet know exactly what God is asking of you next. To be healing without yet being whole.

Jam says it simply and beautifully near the end of our conversation: I honestly thought I would not survive it. And I am. It may not be pretty every day. But I'm surviving.

I want to say to every single one of you what my friend Michele used to say to me, again and again, when I told her I couldn't do this:

You are doing it.

It may not be pretty. It may not look the way you thought surviving was supposed to look. But every single day that you get up and live your life without your child, that is the work. That is surviving. And you are doing it.