I watched with great interest the story of January Schofield in Born Schizophrenic: Jani’s Next Chapter on the Discovery Channel Jani has a very rare type of schizophrenia that starts almost as soon as life begins. Now the family thinks her brother Bodhi may have it, as well. He is autistic, so it’s hard to know.

Her father Michael has written a book about their family experience: January First: A Daughter’s Descent into Madness and Her Father’s Struggle to Save Her. Although his daughter is alive, schizophrenics commit suicide at a rate much higher than the national average for people without schizophrenia.

I remember when my daughter was first admitted to the hospital with auditory and visual hallucinations when she was 14. They told us then that she was schizophrenic, but later they recanted the diagnosis because she was functioning so well. She went through many diagnoses after that — and countless hospitalizations. She claimed nothing helped her, but when she was on anti-psychotics, she seemed better able to function.

She didn’t commit suicide–at least it wasn’t ruled that by the coroner. She died of an accidental overdose. That was always a risk for her, because she didn’t respect the danger of adding just one more Ambien to the mix in order to get some sleep. It was Ambien and Percocet that killed her. Not a large amount; just enough.

I hope you’ll check out Jani’s story. It’s playing for the rest of the month, I believe.

Peace to you all, D

I love the imagery and the thought that we don’t have to be wise. We can simply live.

Here is the poem…

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,

by Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.

Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.

You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

“Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,” by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. © Word Press, 2005.

“Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself,” by Barbara Crooker, from Radiance. © Word Press, 2005.

Her story is worth a read.

I wish I’d been keeping a journal since Stephanie died. I suppose I do have some of it written in my blogs and some of it in my journals, but mostly the pain was so grievous that I couldn’t put it into words. I want to survive it and tell my story, but it’s still very hard.

Peace – D

His parents grieve, but they are making a difference every day at the Matthew Shepard Foundation and with the Matthew Shepard Act. I salute their bravery in dealing with this so publicly and so consistently, despite their loss.

http://www.matthewshepard.org/

Being Gentle with Ourselves During Times of Grief (pp. 297-298)

The process of adapting to change and loss takes energy. Grief is draining, sometimes exhausting. Some people need to “cocoon for transformation,” in Pat Carnes’s words, while going through grief.

We may feel more tired than usual. Our ability to function well in other areas of our life may be reduced, temporarily. We may want to hide out in the safety of our bedroom.

Grief is heavy. It can wear us down.

It’s okay to be gentle with ourselves when we’re going through change and grief. Yes, we want to maintain the disciplines of recovery. But we can be compassionate with ourselves. We do not have to expect more from ourselves than we can deliver during this time. We do not even have to expect as much from ourselves as we would normally and reasonably expect.

We may need more rest, more sleep, more comfort. We may be more needy and have less to give. It is okay to accept ourselves, and our changed needs, during times of grief, stress, and change.

It is okay to allow ourselves to cocoon during times of transformation. We can surrender to the process, and trust that a new, exciting energy is being created within us.

Before long, we will take wings and fly.

[Meditation:] God, help me accept my changed needs during times of grief, change, and loss.

I’d love to hear from some of my readers on this. What is it that gets you through the day without your child? Do you find that as time goes on it becomes easier?

Peace…D

I saw an affirmation the other day for a 12-step program that said:

• We came
• We came to
• We came to believe

This set of statements roughly conforms to the first three steps in AA and Al-Anon:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

We can substitute our situation in this set of statements like so:

1. We admitted we were powerless over our child’s death–that our lives had become unmanageable
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him

What does this mean? It means that eventually, out of our abject and intractable grief, we will find that we are still living, still breathing, still waking up every day. We have to then make the decision that we will look around us and see the mess that has happened since the worst day of our lives. No blame here. It’s just the way it is. Our lives fell apart that day, and rightfully so. Who ever expects to lose a child when we first seek to conceive one? None of us. But we do carry on. We do wake up, and we have to deal with the unmanageable state of our lives.

Finally, regardless of what you believe, whether your higher power is an all-knowing, omnipotent God or whether it is Dr. Phil, you will look somewhere for help. You will look to a sane being for some sanity. You will realize that this problem is bigger than you are and that you need to talk to someone, pray to someone, or just walk out in nature and breathe in the scent of the rain.

Those first simple steps are your road back to sanity. Nothing is as painful or as insane as losing your child, but their is life after loss. We didn’t die. It’s the truth. And we will go on until it is our time to go. Taking a few steps in the right direction, even dancing around them, will lead you back to a good place.

Peace and love, D

Check your politics at the door here, folks. We are all just bereaved parents or counselors trying to help bereaved parents. So listen when I tell you that there are some beautiful stories featured in this article from the Huffington Post about foundations and good deeds that came out of the losses of 9/11. Enjoy.

Honoring the Memory of 9/11 by Honoring the Memory of 9/12.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/post_2391_b_957737.html

Peace and much love – D

So many parents lost children that day. At the end of one program, Louise Sweeney spoke about how when she sees that video of the second plane flying into the tower, she is watching her son die. I can’t imagine how that must feel. Of all the things that replay in my mind about the loss of my child, none of them are as horrific as having her death replayed over and over on television for the world to see. None of them are as horrific as thinking of her dying in a fiery explosion.

I’m not going to take over this post by telling you my own feelings about that day. Better that I share with you some links to stories about those parents and how they dealt with their loss.

S. Florida Mothers Remember Children Lost in 9/11
“I begged her to get out,” said Jaffe. “She said mom they’re telling us we are safe in the building. I said ‘Honey, you’re not safe’. And she said ‘Mom I love you’.“
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/09/08/south-florida-mothers-grieve-children-lost-in-911-attacks/

Susan Carroll, on her son Kevin:
I’m going to beat this and live my life to the fullest as Kevin would have wanted.
http://malverne-westhempstead.patch.com/articles/living-for-kevin-mother-of-911-victim-finds-strength-to-overcome-grief

One Mother’s Faith Despite the Loss of Her Two Sons
…her faith and a group of ladies, she has met – all mothers from north and central New Jersey who lost their children in the tragedy – remind her about living life and keeping the memory of her sons alive.
http://www.patersondiocese.org/page.cfm?Web_ID=4319

I’m the founder of The Way Through, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about my story.

Like you, I’m a bereaved parent. It’s a role I never thought I’d be in, yet at the time I lost my child, I was enrolled in a graduate program in thanatology–the study of death, dying, and bereavement. After sitting with my mother through her last two weeks of life and having been with my grandmother through her death at home, I felt I had a heart for hospice work and perhaps grief counseling. It was my first semester, and for the term paper, I wrote about parental bereavement. Ironic, eh? The inspiration for that paper was an interview I had done with my mother a few years before, during one of my undergraduate courses. In that interview, I finally got the full story of how she lost her first baby, my brother Eddie, just two days after he was born. I’ll tell you that story another time, but I wanted to know that bereaved parents of stillborn or newborn children now had better treatment and options. That was the point of my paper. Little did I know that before the semester was over, I would face the death of my only daughter.

Stephanie Nicole was my first child, and my only daughter. I’d had a miscarriage the year before she was born. I was very relieved to have carried her to term, having a beautiful, perfect daughter. Three-and-a-half years later, I had her brother, Sean.

Life wasn’t perfect with Stephanie. She began to have problems when she hit those turbulent teenage years. Eventually, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder with psychotic features and later with borderline personality disorder. She suffered in this life–cutting herself, engaging in “body modification”, and making very poor choices. She eventually became addicted to substances, resulting in severe alcoholism toward the end of her life.

I was the classic codependent, always “helping” her but really enabling her. I didn’t know if she was ever going to be capable of caring for herself, and I couldn’t get to that point where I could ever let her try. I was so afraid of losing her. March 30, 2008, I joined a recovery group and began to learn how to detach with love. When asked, “What’s the worst thing that can happen if you let go and let God?”, I said, “The police will come to my door and tell me that my daughter is dead.”

But I continued with the program because I needed some sanity in my life. I began to care for myself again and have the energy to spend on my son. So many times, he had been the good child, doing his homework or playing a video game in the waiting room while we met with yet another therapist or sat waiting for the family meeting at a psychiatric hospital. He deserved to have some of me, too. Addicts and alcoholics can have such a draining effect on the family. Out of love, we give and give and give, always thinking that if we try this or do that, the addict will get sober. That’s not how it works.

The events that transpired over the holidays that year combined with my recovery from codependency resulted in her finally hitting her “rock bottom”. Thank God, by New Year’s Eve, she was sober. With only one small relapse after that, she stayed sober until the day she died.

On April 3, 2009, the doorbell rang at around noon. Before I knew it, a deputy and a detective were in my dining room, asking me to sit down. My personal worst nightmare had met me halfway. Stephanie had been found dead that morning at the home of a friend. She had died in her sleep while her friends were away and had been dead between 12 and 24 hours. The worst pain of my life started that day, and though it has subsided somewhat with time, I will never stop hurting over the loss of my child.

The autopsy results showed that she had died of Ambien and Percocet intoxication, accidental death. She was prescribed Ambien, and it’s likely that the Percocet was given to her at the hospital when she was mugged and beaten the weekend before. Despite being discharged from the ER around 6 a.m., she was at her AA meeting in time to make the coffee before everyone began to arrive. I was immensely proud of her for that. I was proud of her for her sobriety. And I was proud that during the meeting that day, she told the others, “God was with me in that alley. He’s the reason I’m still here.” Just one bad interaction between those two drugs, however, and she was gone.

The last two-and-a-half years have been difficult. Many days I did not want to get out of bed. My own health has taken a downturn, as did my mental health. Just days after the second anniversary, I checked myself into a psychiatric facility, because the depression and despair had reached a frightening depth. I was ready to end it all.

I promised myself and God that if I survived all of that, I would do something to help other bereaved parents. I would go back to my path toward helping those who are suffering a loss or are dying themselves. Here I am.

My goal is to use my experience and knowledge to bring you stories of hope, stories of parents who have walked this path before us, and who have not only survived but have made a difference in the world.

I hope to be one of those people. I want to make a difference for each and every grieving parent who comes to this site. I want to show you that there is a way through your suffering and that there are those of us who have walked the path you’re now on. We will show you the way through. Please enjoy the following slideshow of my daughter’s life.

Peace, D