'Learning I carry Jimmy's cells deep w/in me is an unfathomable gift. Not just his, but my mother's, my daughter's & those of the baby girl I miscarried at eleven weeks. Even more stunning is the discovery that Jimmy helped make Molly's life possible ...'
findyourharbor.com/unbounded/

'I left my bike in the basement .. But life led me back to it when our newborn daughter, Lucy, died from a birth-related brain injury in the fall of 2022. My grief looked a lot different than it had two decades prior.'
nytimes.com/2024/04/18/wel…

“We are hardwired to pull our hands away from a burning stove, to avoid physical pain. We are also hardwired to avoid emotional pain. And this is about deep, unrelenting emotional pain that feels like there's no other way out.'

Pamela Morris-Perez

youtube.com/watch?v=SZNJUz…

'The thing about the mix of
illness and grief is:
You have to make your own chicken noodle soup.'

~Julie Gardner

findyourharbor.com/stirring-more-…

'His wife Callie asked if I wanted his clubs, if I wanted all of his old golf equipment .. I took all of it b/c I didn’t want him to be dead & I didn’t want to believe that this game I’d come to love b/c of him would always remind me of what I have lost.'
wsj.com/sports/golf/br…

'This acceptance has allowed Jimmy to come back at all ages. He is mine now in ways he has never been. The serrated edge of sadness over the way his story ends is still there, but the pain no longer casts a pall over everything.'
findyourharbor.com/acceptance/

' ... it had never occurred
to me until that moment, for fifteen years
our dog had held down what we had
by pressing his belly to the floors,
his front paws, too, and with him gone
the house had begun to float out onto
emptiness, no solid ground in sight.'
poetryfoundation.org/poems/143286/d…

Walk into the light ...

'I couldn’t gauge whether it would even be possible to carry on ... I didn’t want to suffer, but I did want to know that life could still go according to plan, that not everything had to be broken and incomplete, that I could endure.'
wsj.com/lifestyle/trav…

'I was the first to catch him as his mama corgi birthed him.
Now it would be the last time to hold him.
To run my hands through his silky hair,
And receive his affectionate growl as I kneeled down to kiss him.'

~ Cheryle Mclaughlin

findyourharbor.com/footprints-on-…

'A group of narwhals is called a blessing. I learned this in the dark hours of the morning when I should have been sleeping but wasn’t. My eyes and mind poked open by a question asked of me earlier in the day. 

Do you have other kids?'

corporealkhora.com/issue/31/11-fa…

'What Jimmy taught me that sunny afternoon was anger isn't a shield & self-pity only makes everything worse. To open my eyes to what others are dealing with would help me feel less alone & allow me to see the brave, beautiful ways they found to go on.”
findyourharbor.com/grief-blind/

'Dinnertime, in particular, can be tough.

'It took me about a year to do dinner because dinner was just freaking depressing,' Williams said. '[To] just go in the kitchen and try to cook a meal by myself — that wasn’t happening.'
huffpost.com/entry/lonely-a…

I’m excited to share the first meeting of the Sibling Loss Book Club, sponsored by “The Loss of a Lifetime,” a (soon-to-launch) website and community created by Alyson Shelton (she/her) , Lynn Shattuck and my daughter, Molly Fowkes. To sign up, use the QR code on the graphic below.

'They ask me how I’m doing
these days and weeks after
he left for the last time
shed his last tear
gave his last hug
took his last breath ...”

~ Carol Mathew-Rogers
findyourharbor.com/just-fine/

'And then, the loss hit me as it registered that my mother didn’t know me. I had to let go and come to terms with the reality that my mother—the woman who knew me longer and better than anybody—was no longer there.'

wsj.com/health/wellnes…

'A difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one ...'

Andrea Gibson

'I wonder how many times
I have missed what lay just below the surface,
Sailed by without ever knowing what lay hidden under waves of grief.'

findyourharbor.com/the-sadness-be…

'Just b/c you feel stuck in your grief doesn’t mean u are doing it 'wrong.' You are doing everything right & it can still feel all bad inside. As much as I wish there were a spell to cast, an elixir to sip, a magic pill to take the pain away, there isn’t.'
wapo.st/49dZdSB

**A Poem For When I Die**

“At my funeral, I’d like there to be sunflowers,
a truly inconvenient amount
for I, too, have spent a lifetime searching for the light
and I don't see any reason why that should stop now.”

~ Henry Baker

instagram.com/p/CzLW7p_IEiy/