Critical Junctures - Our Story of Navigating the loss of a child

Loss of a child creates enduring grief in 93% of parents. We have lost a child and this is our story of love, loss and navigating the grief. We created Critical Junctures - Navigating the loss of Child Podcast to help other parents navigate the loss through our shared experiences. The podcast will focus on interviews of parents who have had to deal with similar experiences. Lessons they have learned through the lens of time can provide help with navigating this deep hurt and impactful loss. Our prayer is that you will find comfort, a sense of peace, and hope through the shared experiences of other parents.

Transcript

 11.5% of adults over 50 years of age have experienced the loss of a  Losing a child is different than losing a parent or a family member. Losing a child has long term. 



Enduring grief more than any other loss you could experience in your life. They say that around 10% of people have enduring grief of the loss of a parent, a close relative. A sibling, but the loss of a child has 94% of people carrying this grief.

 

94% of parents carry enduring grief the rest of their life. We lost a child. June 1st, 2020. We're about five years out and. Have really tried to discover ways that we could keep their memory alive and celebrate their life rather than look at it on the loss that we've had. Make no mistake, it's an enduring loss daily, but we're gonna explore ways that we have found to celebrate them, honor their memory.

And yet still be able to struggle with that loss.

So my son, Richie, was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer, Avilar soft part sarcoma. We're gonna talk a little bit about his story and how that all came about. How it affected us over the nine years that he struggled with that cancer until. Eventually going to hospice and then passing away.

And how since then we have really tried to honor his memory at parties, at events we're gonna celebrate Valentine's Day as a family. And again, we always remember Richie. One of the things that happened to him over the course of this terrible and tragic cancer was he had a choice to make, it was a critical juncture in his life you can either be mad at the world frustrated, I'm sure in his inner thoughts there was a lot of deep seated frustration because one of the things he wanted to do.

He had developed a love of life and he wanted to have a long life, and unfortunately, sometimes things cut those short, but he made a choice of how he would handle his life going forward. He became an inspiration to a number of people, his siblings. He was a solid rock for all of the things that they were going through in their younger lives and as they grew up.

To this day, he's extremely missed by his siblings and friends they would call him to get his opinion. He never judged. He was very willing to listen. He would be a straight shooter and give you opinion, but never judge you, and it was incredible characteristics that he developed through this journey.

One of the reasons starting this podcast is. I've unfortunately had this unfortunate circumstance of our loss. I have friends that have gone through the same thing and acquaintances, and one of the gaps is from the loss to how do you enjoy your life? How does it be fulfilling? How do you not have feelings of this?

How do you not carry an enduring grief? How do you turn that grief to a celebration of their life? And it really just enjoy the time that they were here and what they brought and meant to a family. That's the premise of this podcast. We had a son again that went through a long bout with cancer, watched his body deteriorate.

It was an end of life cancer with no there were no cures for it. But there's other friends that have had that, they've had children taken away. In a moment you didn't get to say goodbye and it's very hard to look back and say, what could I have done differently if only something different would've transpired, but would've, should've, could've, you can't go back.

This is really to be uplifting. We're going to discuss the trauma of losing a child, but also how people who have had some distance and time from when their child passed away. Ways that they've, honored that child kept their memories alive, celebrated their lives, how it's affected siblings and marriages spouses can be affected differently.

Really explored a lot of those topics. And there are people that will watch this that maybe, have just experienced it and looking for what is my life down the road gonna look like? It's immeasurable pain to lose a child. The other thing we're gonna talk about is a number of the unsung heroes that are part of your life that just come beside you and support you.

In our case, we had  incredible friends that were with us the entire journey. There was our life group at church. We had pastors at church, our entire church that supported our journey through this, through prayers just being there. Friends that would bring dinners in. They helped in early stages of Richie's cancer to help work on his house, to just be super supportive of us knowing the challenges we were going through and people at work that supported us customers.

And when you look back going through it, you really appreciate that sacrifice that those people made and their. Willingness to come alongside you and say, I'm here for you. Just asking you. I've seen someone for months and first thing they ask you, how's your son doing?

 It was an amazing experience to have people like that in our life. But when you look back at perspective of time. It is even more remarkable how much they supported us and how much they gave us strength and guidance through this.  Family was incredibly supportive of us through this journey, and I would say without a doubt, the most supportive.

And we felt lucky because we had all these support people around us. You appreciated it. But in retrospect, you look at how much these people just uplifted you. So we're gonna interview some of the people that were in our lives and I'm sure from these podcasts, you can send us recommendations of people that you would like to have us discuss it with.

Regardless to do interviews with people that can shed light on their story and how they have navigated since the loss of a child. Some of them may or may not want to share the story of what happened to their child outside of it was a sudden loss, or it was a loss like ours over time.

But the focus is going to be from the time you lost that child to now, how do you honor their memory? How do you get over the grief? How do you celebrate their life rather than have that big hole in your heart that you can look back and go, we only had 'em for a season, but that season they made a difference in our life.

So I hope you join us in the, these podcasts and video video podcast. And again, our goal is to help in any way we can, and we are looking for anyone that would like to participate. Please let us know in an email to me or just make it in a comment. I certainly would be glad to hear your story and your sharing that can maybe ease the pain of someone else's going through this.

So it is really gonna be a tribute of joy and celebration of life more than loss, how do you navigate those times in your life to change it from an unimaginable loss to something that you can look back and say. I'm so glad that I had the time with that child. Thank you for watching.