grief
Losing a family member is one of the most traumatic life events; Families must support one another to endure the five stages of grief and get through it together.
Tragic Passion & Toxic Love: Part 3
New parents to our son. Happily in love. We think our dream journey of love is about to begin like we're impervious to a failed relationship, Taylor working 6-10 hour shifts. Newborn beauty Uncontrollable fear of failure. Postpartum Depression. Dependency on a person, which can ruin your entire life if you don't put a stop to it's progression, that is if you are even self aware enough to realize you're becoming dangerously dependent on someone that isn't yourself. At the end of the day, no one will fight harder for you, than you, so don't ever fight harder for a person than you do for yourself, because while you may help them along their journey, you could be severely damaging your own while also possibly robbing them of a valuable lesson they may be meant to learn on their path through life. Alongside having the fear of looking stupid, I let my pride break my heart beyond compare and ended up losing the love of my life, which I greatly feared more than anything else in my life, I'm ashamed to admit because I still felt that way even after I became a mother, that is what severe dependency can do to you. I'm merely blessed and lucky, both, to have been one of the few people who managed to wake up to who they really were becoming in time to make a change in themselves, and maybe even make a difference in the world if they choose to. I myself have decided to use my personal experiences and horrendous decisions that ultimately brought me nothing but pain, despair, terror, and hopelessness to my life in order to hopefully save other innocent people from going through something that is entirely avoidable. While what I made it through taught me great things that will only benefit me from here on out, I am only one of so many people who have suffered these things and I'm one of the lucky ones who didn't let their pain, or their fear of hopelessness in their lives, cause them to have no future or life at all, so if I can help them by talking about how valuable fighting for and living their lives in the best ways life would allow really makes a person feel, and they decide to take my word for it, and that word saves ANY number of lives, everything we suffered will have been worth it, and I'd even put Taylor through it all again for the same outcome that gave us both much needed knowledge I definitely never obtained, and surprisingly knowledge even he had needed to get through life. I finally managed to become a person I actually see having a bright and meaningful future. I finally feel like I have a purpose in my life worth more than just showering everyone with all the love I'm able to hold (which turns out is a HEAVY LOT). However that doesn't mean I don't still have terrible fear of failure, because if anything now I have even more than I used to, and the fear I used to have crippled me yet through some, honestly, un-explainable epiphany that I was truly blessed by God to see, unlike what I imagine to be nearly everyone else on the planet who probably never have an out of world experience like I did, and due to that I'm finally for the first time in my twenty-six years of life being brave by going after what I want, despite the immense fear of failing that in my past, ended with me letting it take everything I had cared for and wanted, away. I let the fear keep me from making any effort that way I wouldn't fail at all, but that was worse than failing. I was ignorant to think there was any way around being responsible for my own happiness let alone my baby son's life which I knew too well was so easily able to mess up... Anyways, he and I really believed that the love we had for each other would make it through any and every single horrible thing life could possibly throw at us, and for a long time, we showed life what we were made of. I really thought my dream of finding true love that mattered above all else actually came true, and it did, but not in the way I expected, or hoped for... but in a way that left two people who dove head first into each other and into the unknown lifestyle of adulthood which for our parents, was entirely different, and to us, so fucking much easier, we were blind-sighted by the fact that it looked so simple for them, because even though it's never simple, it was a far deal more so for our elders than it is for us, and we never thought it fair that we were raised how we were, differently but still felt the same way, and essentially tossed to the wolves which was life, and it utterly obliterated us entirely. Never seeing it coming because we couldn't see anything but each other, and at the time, I thought that our ability to have almost nothing but each other yet still manage to laugh and enjoy our company was a real life miracle kind of love, the kind you never let go.
By Audrey Elena6 years ago in Families
The Effects of Distracted Driving
One Fall morning, cool crisp air with a strong ray of Sunshine was how the day started on Nov. 1, 2016. My Daughter, Brittany texted me around 7:30 a.m. that morning and we texted a few minutes and I texted I love you, not knowing it would be the last time. Today would turn out to be a day that would forever change my life and my family's. My mother was in the hospital fighting Lung Cancer for the second time. She had been an 8 year Cancer Survivor until she got the news that it had come back. I was on my way back from the hospital to go pick up a few things that my mother had asked me to go pick up at her house. On my way there, my cell phone rang and it was Anita, telling me that my Daughter, Brittany had been hit by a car (8:29 a.m) and that things didn't look good and to get to the hospital. I couldn't believe what I just heard, I did a complete circle in the middle of the road to turn around and head back to the same very hospital I had just left from. Upon arriving at the hospital, I did not know what I was walking into, except that I knew things were bad. I was then approached by Brittany's Dad, and the doctor's and we went into a room and that's when the Doctor said that they were giving her brain surgery to help stop the bleeding and excessive swelling in the brain. It was a couple of hours later that the doctor came back and said that she had broken her brain stem and that she probably wouldn't make it 48 hours. The police, who was two cars back and caught the entire accident on dashcam, told us that she was hit by a driver that said he didn't see her crossing the street and that she went face-first into the windshield and flew up into the air, then onto the pavement. My daughter suffered several bleeds in her brain and they were trying to stop it with tubes by draining it, she had excessive swelling, and the top of her brain stem was severed. When the doctors gave her an MRI to see the damage, it revealed that because of the extensive injury that the bleeding and swelling had killed a lot of her brain tissue, which once dead, can't be reversed. When you suffer a Traumatic Brain Injury to this magnitude, it is nearly impossible to have a normal functioning life. As my daughter lay in a bed, on life support in the ICU for nine days fighting for her life, the doctors said that we needed to make a decision to take her off life support or let her live on machines for the rest of her life. I was devastated and going through so many emotions I had never been through before, that I didn't want to lose her, I just wanted a miracle to heal her. We ultimately decided to take her off life support and let her go because she was not ever going to have a functional life again and would only survive on machines and we couldn't do that to her, so on the afternoon of Nov. 9, 2016, we took her off the machines, while holding her hand as she passed away. This was a needless tragedy that shouldn't have happened and that took a life away that should be here today. My daughter, Brittany was 23 years old when she got hit, a law student in College, and a vibrant young woman with many goals and dreams. Her life was cut short by someone that made a careless decision to drive distracted and not pay attention to pedestrians. Our family knows the worst now that can come out of Distracted Driving, SO PLEASE, DON"T DRIVE DISTRACTED!!!
By Tammy Harvison6 years ago in Families
Father's Day
Four years you’ve both been gone. Four heart breaking years. Even though I promised to be strong for mom and grandma, I still to this day, break down. I can’t listen to certain songs because they remind me of you, and I break all over again. You left the biggest hole in my heart behind when you left this world, and nothing can fix that. My children don’t have a real grandfather or great grandfather because you’re gone. Only my first and second child got know you before you left.
By Lisa Staires6 years ago in Families
Good Freakin Grief
I play it in my head over and over of how you died. Your car crashing into a pole at a certain speed. You swerved, lost control, and rolled over five or so times. You lost control not paying much attention and hit a tree. The last one I found out to be true. Why did you decide to leave so early? I am at a loss of words as to how you made this decision to leave. Unless you didn’t. I am so upset and angry with you. How could you do this, how could you leave us like that? You had so much potential and you decided to through it away like the evening garbage. It’s not fair you did this. It’s not fair for our family. I am still in disbelief that this even happened. I am still shocked and think this is a nightmare that one day I’ll wake up from. Then I’ll call you and everything will be at ease when you answer the phone. It's like you're still here breathing… The whole world stopped at that moment when I heard the words you didn't make it. Let's take a step back.
By TheMoabKokopelli6 years ago in Families
Silence
Life. How quickly it changes, without warning, as quickly as a breath, as suddenly as the blink of an eye. I sat outside her bedroom door, knowing that she wouldn’t call for me. She wouldn’t come out, and she wouldn’t make a sound for a while. It was her way. It was her custom to hibernate, to process, to ponder before she resurfaced. By the time she did, she’d have figured out a way to be okay. And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want her to journey towards acceptance alone. She’d suffered a great loss. My best friend was grieving, mourning, processing alone. In my selfishness I wanted to suffer with her, I wanted to dive into the trenches and wade through muddy waters with her. But she wouldn’t let me. She couldn’t.
By Tina Muzondo6 years ago in Families
Drowning in Grief
There are days; like today, when everything is fine, I've managed to move that pain that now lives in me to the back of my brain, to be picked up again at a later time (most likely when I try to go to sleep at night) and then, something triggers the wave - it pounds me into the ground, and threatens to drown me in my own pain. This wave is not something foreseeable, it's not something I can control. The very idea of being unable to control something that threatens my total destruction is unbelievably frightening to me.
By Kathleen Elizabeth Comfort-Steinbaecher6 years ago in Families
When Both Parents are Dying of Cancer, and the Hilarity That Ensues
Mom’s diagnosis came first, then Dad’s a few weeks later. After Mom started chemo and lost her hair, I started a twitter account documenting the craziness. Going bald was quite traumatic for my mom, as was the process of getting a wig. The lovely people at American Cancer Society provide one for free, and there was a location in the suburban strip mall close to where my parents lived.
By Linda Horton6 years ago in Families
