Journal Entry

June 18, 2022

Grief is exhausting. It’s isolating.

Grief is overwhelming. It never leaves you alone. It’s dark and suffocating. Just when you think you can have a brief and temporary break it tugs on your coattails and drags you back in. Sometimes back into an achy, depressive sadness and other times into a drowning, denying panic. Even as people forget my loss, grief remembers.

No matter how much support you have you are alone. Everyone could be right next to me every second but I am alone. Even Jeremy and I are each alone in our grief and we are the parents each grieving the loss of the same child. I am alone in my routines I had with Truman. I am alone in being his mother. I am alone in the special love and bond I had with him. I am alone in my brain. My brain that never shuts up. My brain that replays his voice and the feel of his hugs and the features of his face along with the trauma of that day and the constant reminders he’s not with me anymore.

I need to somehow figure how to make grief my companion. I will carry it with me as long as I have love for Truman so making friends with grief is my only chance. I need my grief to continue to make me softer. Not stronger. I don’t need thick skin and the world we live in doesn’t need any more either. It’s needs compassion and love. It’s needs soft hearts and kind souls. I need to be a survivor. Not a superhero.

I had read that “grief comes in waves but in between the waves there is life. And that’s where our power lies.” I need to find that. I need to find my life with my family. Daily happiness along with constant grief. I need to live a beautiful life AND miss my son fiercely.

-Truman’s mom 💙💞💙

PS. These are my plans. I am no where close to having found it yet.