10.12.2021
Thought of the day: Do the feelings of grief plateau at a certain point? When do you reach such a point that you literally can’t feel more grief?
Today is 12 years since Danielle passed away. My first trauma, my first monumental loss of someone I loved. Am I calloused or healed from being so open about the hurt in my life? Probably both.
When I was 17 years old I was in charge of driving my brother home after school everyday. My friend Danielle spontaneously decided to join me so that we could both be late for our student council duties for the homecoming game tailgate. I remember being irrationally angry that my brother Alex chose to sit in the passenger seat and Danielle had to sit behind me in the back (teenage problems). A mile from my house, driving the same drive I made every single day, I was daydreaming at the wheel. Alex yelled my name and I snapped back to reality to the realization that I was in the oncoming lane with a car headed towards us. At 17 years old with just a year of experience as a driver, I overcorrected into a ditch causing us to flip 5 times. I still don’t remember the spinning besides my brain not being able to catch up to what was happening. My lagging mind thought I was on a rollercoaster and I attempted to poke my hand out the window with a quick pull back as we continued spinning. We came to a stop upside down and Alex and I squirmed out of the car. Somehow I knew that Danielle wasn’t in the car (we later learned that she didn’t have a seatbelt on and had been ejected). Scrambling to get myself out of the car and think clearly, I tried to examine where I was. We were at the last corner street before my house, a mile tops from my house. I finally see Danielle. She’s laying on her side next to a stop sign and I book it over without even the idea of processing what’s going on. My mind won’t let me. I’m immediately begging her to wake up. Over and over and she suddenly takes in a gasp of air but she’s not doing well. All I can do is comfort my best friend and repeatedly tell her I’m with her and she’s ok. I look up for the first time to the small open field in front of me and the surrealness of this situation is setting in. I MUST be dreaming. I have had vivid dreams my entire life, this is one of them. Relief comes over my body as I try to wake myself up. It’s this moment I share as one of the hardest feelings of my entire life. When the surrealness of my situation quickly became real to me was the hardest I have ever been hit with grief. That blow took me out for years. However, as fast as the darkness seeped into my life, God’s light poked through ever so slightly. The way I was brought up, the Sunday services when I was little, the youth groups as I got older, the families that filled me with Christ, my neighbor who helped me get saved at 8 years old all came up into my broken spirit and filled my body with hope. “God is real” flashed in my mind like a projector on a whiteboard. As someone who didn’t know how to talk to God then I just repeated “God please be with her” over and over and over again as I pulled her hair back and gently laid a hand on her. The cop quietly sat next to me as we waited for help.
10 days later, Danielle passed away. Another broken moment in my life. I wish I could say the healing process was like how I’m doing now but it was the complete opposite. I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t surrounded by unconditional love at home, I lost more and more of myself and people in my life each day instead of finding solid ground and trying to build from there. My dad, who had been in and out of my life finally came forward after months of silence and gave me a couple phone calls the week after my accident. I took each one as a way to punish myself. Our last phone call ended with my dad telling me that he sees me going to jail and he wants nothing to do with me, that I deserved this and he was done. I haven’t seen him since 2008. My friends dropped like flies as they were filled with anger and hurt and felt obligated to “pick a side” between me and Danielle’s mom. So many didn’t pick me. Danielle’s mom, Tami, held so much anger towards me from the beginning. I don’t blame her and I completely see NOW just how easily it is to let evil into your heart and allow it to grow and fester so rampantly as she had. However….how sad and lost.
I spent the next couple years suffering through severe harassment, hate speech, and stalking by Tami and her group. She did a great job at convincing so many that I didn’t care. It was…..harmful to me. I spent years harboring guilt, self hatred, rejection and unworthiness in my heart that poured out as anger towards loved ones, a reliance on alcohol, insecurity in my relationships, and deep hate for myself.
I share this so vulnerably and detailed from a point of healing but there was a point in my life where I couldn’t talk about the details. Now, I’m standing in a place of complete renewal from the Lord where I can share my testimony and ideally relate to others and bring healing. Maybe I’ll share more about how God redeemed me from the self hatred, rejection and unworthiness that losing Danielle and my dad put on me. The horrible moments in my life- the ones that I wish to never relive and sometimes wish I never had to, are a part of who I am and my purpose while I’m on this earth. The assignment on my life is still being explored but I know it involves my unique testimonies and how I can reach those who may be lost in grief and filled with demons that took advantage of the open door to their heart that grief allows. Someone out there has to relate to my story right?
10.14.21
*sigh*. When I sit in my grief, it’s so easy to forget that the rest of the world is still moving. People are still living, working, celebrating…..losing. My family is dealing with another huge loss this week with the sudden death of my cousin. It’s surreal to write that and I get teary eyed just thinking about how I wish I could have been the last one on earth to ever deal with loss because it sucks. I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone but I had to sit with my aunt and uncle on their front porch Monday night and share our grief of both losing our children. The continued loss is unbearable at this point but I say that and I’m still doing ok. Does that make sense? I can’t take it anymore, but I still am. I’m still waking up with my kids, I’m still parenting, I’m still randomly finding moments to smile. How can that be when I’m so broken? I didn’t know my heart could break anymore but it did when I thought of my aunt, uncles and cousins having to begin this debilitating journey of grief that I myself have only just begun. Please pray for the peace that God has been giving me to be placed over them. It’s the only way I’ve found to survive in this.
Tuesday night I found myself wanting to feel the severe pain of losing Alba. I’ve been blessed with this supernatural blanket of peace over me and I’m so grateful, but I know I need to feel everything before I can eventually be healed. I looked back at our hospital photos of beautiful Alba. The beginning photos are my favorite yet still heartbreaking. I don’t have a single photo of her without wires or breathing tubes covering half her face yet she still looked like our wonderful baby that Kyle and I created. By the end, she didn’t look the same. I’ll spare the details but I struggle immensely with the photos we have of saying goodbye. I know it’s done and I can’t go back and the doctors reassured me so many times that Alba wasn’t feeling pain but with how she looked…..how could she not? That thought KILLS me. I can’t think too heavily about my Alba being in pain like that. I need to be done for today or I’m going to struggle to parent.