I’ve come home.
Apart from a very few brief hellos, I’ve been generally absent from writing this blog for nearly a year. I feel like I owe an explanation.
The last year has been an extraordinary journey. The best I can equate it to is riding a roller coaster in slow motion: there’s been crazy turbulence, exciting highs and heartbreaking lows… and all happening about 5mph.
Now that I’m back I hardly know where to begin.
Just to be clear, I didn’t really go anywhere — I’ve been here all along. Rather, a shell of me has been here.
After my precious Tanner-Man died on April 11, 2017 I was determined I would prevail over death. It might have taken my baby, but I wasn’t going to let it take me too. My Tanner was pure joy and I knew how strong I was capable of being: there wasn’t anything thrown at me that I couldn’t handle. You combine his joy with my strength and I knew I would be a force in the face of utter heartbreak: I would simply declare I was choosing joy and I would show the world what it looked like to trust in God’s plan while cherishing the beautiful memory of my perfect angel.
Oh hell, I didn’t have a clue.
The first two weeks were a total haze. Wonderful, dear people came and went. Food was delivered. Flowers began filling every corner of my house. I laid on the couch in a state of utter disbelief as the world somehow went on around me.
On April 23rd, nearly two weeks after his death, I did something amazing: I put a cube of butter in the butter dish. It might have been the tiniest of inconsequential events, but it was the first normal thing I had consciously done in nearly two weeks.
That’s all it took and I was back on track.
Butter.
My feet started moving and forward I went. Forward face first into an unforgiving brick wall.
Turns out I wasn’t as strong as I thought.
Every day I woke up I was faced with confronting the reality that my baby was still dead. Every step forward was another down a frightening path of firsts: first last load of his laundry, first last time putting away his toys, first time grocery shopping and not buying his favorite foods, first time going to church and not being able to watch him walk off to high school group with his cape flapping in the wind, first birthday where he didn’t turn a year older… and the list goes on (and on and on and on).
Every first was both an entry in my journal and a punch to the gut.
The loss of my heart child began to consume my every thought. Images of his death began to consume my vision. Everywhere I looked, I would see him — his last waking moment replayed in my mind over and over and over like a never-ending boomerang. (I didn’t know it at the time, but I was experiencing many classic symptoms of PTSD.) The pain began to seep out of every pore and before long I slipped to a dark place where I would lay sobbing in bed by the hour, desperately clutching a black plastic box that contained the ashes of my son.
I became frightened of the pain and the heartache, of facing another day under the suffocating weight of a deceased child. Television became my only escape. Immersing myself into another world was the only way to leave behind the pain of my own. I would wake up at six in the morning in a sheer panic that required me to immediately occupy my brain with television less I would slide wildly down the rabbit hole. My body would literally go from a deep sleep to panic attack in one single breath as I scrambled for the remote control.
TV on.
Escape achieved.
Another day of feeling put on hold…
And yet, when real offers of help were given, I turned them down.
I didn’t really want to get better.
My pain connected me to Tanner. I didn’t want my wound to heal. I didn’t want to let go of the box of ashes.
Or so I thought.
Months went on and I slipped farther away. By the time November arrived, I was suffering from PTSD, clinical depression, severe anxiety, panic attacks and PGD (prolonged grief disorder).
One day that November, my surviving son asked if he could go straight to Grandma’s house after school. “Afterall,” he said matter-of-factly, “You’ll just be in bed anyways.”
That was my moment.
There’s no way I did it myself, but at that moment, God gave me the strength to get up and get help.
I still had a son and he needed me.
That week I got to the doctors and was started on meds. It took about a month to find the right cocktail that worked for me: the first pill took care of my anxiety but didn’t touch my depression; the second pill handled my depression but caused a secondary anxiety not treated by the first pill; a third medication served as a mood stabilizer and handled the secondary anxiety but made me insatiably hungry and I gained thirty pounds; a fourth pill helped offset the appetite created by the third.
I fought shortness of breath, dynamic changes to my appetite, extreme vertigo and utter exhaustion while my body was acclimating to the meds and we were finding what “cocktail” would work for me. Then, suddenly, snap-snap, just like that I was functional.
Not great, not healthy, but out of bed and finally turning off the television.
That was November 2017, a full year ago.
Once I was strong enough to stand on own two feet, I started intensive EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy to treat my crippling depression and the PTSD that was sending me into spiraling panic attacks. The effects of EMDR were instantaneous and mind-blowing — single sessions were fixing massive traumatic wounds. As fast as they came, my panic attacks left.
My healing was then taken to a whole new level when I attended Onsite, a week-long therapeutic retreat for parents who have lost a child. Touted as “a year of therapy in a week” I was immersed in group therapy with the most amazing, compassionate, empathetic, resilient, vulnerable, strong and supportive people I’ve ever been blessed to know. Together, we fought through our shared heartache, grief and guilt, and I emerged from the week healthier and stronger than I had felt in over a year.
Having released the weight of guilt I was carrying, I came back ready to start living again. It was a much lower-key version of myself, and I required meds to address the clinical issues, but I was getting back into the swing of a healthy, ordinary life.
I was vacuuming.
One of the memories I carried from my week at Onsite was of another participant telling me how much more beautiful I was when I smiled… and he suggested I should do that more. A sentiment frequently echoed at home by those whole love me.
But I did smile. I smiled when I was happy. It’s just that it took me so much more to get there. There was no joy in the little things. It’s hard to say there was really joy at all.
What I and others failed to acknowledge is that the same pills that dulled the pain, quieted my depression and held off the anxiety attacks also robbed me of my joy, quieted my laughter and stole my energy. My motivation to do anything was gone, my drive was in park and I was simply going through the motions.
Every few months I would try to go off my meds. I sought healing prayer by the church elders, I prayed myself, had others praying for me and regardless each time by Day Three I would be overcome with grief. It wasn’t even that I was upset about my dead child, I was just heart-wrenchingly sad and there was nothing I could do to make it stop. Undeniably, I was still in the throes of depression and my mind wasn’t yet able to get through it on its own. I would begin to have anxiety about having anxiety attacks. Back on the meds I would quickly go. Healing takes time and my wound was great.
Throughout this part of my journey, I basically stopped writing. I didn’t have the drive to make the effort, I couldn’t find the words when I tried, and honestly, I was embarrassed…
Embarrassed to have failed so extraordinarily in my promise to choose joy. Embarrassed to have not been the mom that Travis, my surviving son, needed. Embarrassed to have so dramatically let down Tanner and his memory. Embarrassed I wasn’t stronger. Embarrassed I couldn’t be there for friends who had always counted on me. Embarrassed to have watched life happen around me — and to me — for the better part of a year.
I knew where I wanted my life to head, and I was aiming all I had in the right direction, but it was in slow motion. I would be dealt a difficult blow and would shrug my shoulders. Great news would come my way and I would casually muster a thumbs up. In every sense, for the last year, I was functioning pretty well and doing the right things; it’s just felt like none of it really it mattered.
One month ago, I again pulled myself off my meds. This time, days one, two, three and four passed with no consequence. The wave of grief I braced in anticipation of never came. Days five, six, seven came and went with only a few minor symptoms of withdrawal but no hint of the depression that had stolen the last nineteen months of my life. I started to walk a little lighter. Weeks two and three ticked by as I began to realize that I had made it through to the other side.
Suddenly, I found myself smiling at stupid commercials…
Game night with family and I laughed so hard I cried…
Friendsgiving with some awesome mom gals and my cheeks hurt from smiling…
Teasing my son…
Laughing at the cats…
Making silly faces and funny dance moves at impatient road-raging holiday shoppers (okay, maybe not my finest moment but I still thought I was hilarious)….
It’s been a full month and I’m so blessed to say that I’m now 100 percent med-free.
I’m back.
My drive and motivation are back in full force and for the first time in more than a year I have the energy to sustain my ambitions.
I decorated for Christmas before Thanksgiving.
I helped assist in an evacuation of a few horses from the Woolsey fire and have since returned to support those devastated by the fire. My heart is happy volunteering again.
I’m making (making!) Christmas gifts.
To be honest, I had no clue the haze I was living in. I was completely incognizant of how much the meds were also dampening my joy and ambition, of how much effort it was truly taking just to function at the minimum.
In no way do I regret reverting to medication to support my recovery — I don’t know how I would have made it through without them. I needed help healing. But now, an enormous weight has been lifted and it feels like I’ve been given a second chance to truly live.
Don’t get me wrong… my child is forever gone. I still get sad, and will forever have my moments… that’s normal, healthy grief, but the paralyzing, dysfunctional depression is finally well behind me.
I thought I was the strongest woman I’ve ever met, but it turns out all it took was one dead kid to take me out at the knees… or rather, the heart.
Coming out of this chapter of my journey, I’m so grateful. I’m grateful for a Heavenly Father who loves me and loves my baby even more. I’m grateful for every moment I had with my Tanner, I’m grateful for Travis and my amazing family and friends that have walked this horrible path with me, and I’m grateful for my health — body, mind and spirit.
I’m grateful for a brand-new ability to be truly empathetic toward those struggling with mental health issues: there’s nothing scarier than being trapped in a mind that won’t function the way you know it should. I’ve been there. I get it. And I pray I’m able to use this experience to someday serve others.
For those who have started checking in on me as we approach Christmas, my second now without my Tanner, I’m grateful for you. Thank you.
But I’m okay.
I’m great, even.
Last year Tanner’s spirit was very present during the holidays and we did a great job of including him. Because of that, I’ve genuinely been looking forward to doing it all over again.
Christmas is coming and I’m able to choose joy.
Finally.
