The Day It All Fell Apart

May 04, 2025

There’s Always a Moment

The moment you can never forget.
The one that splits your life into two parts:
before and after.

For me, that moment was a phone call.

My daughter’s voice was shaking.
Then she said the words that dropped me to my knees:

“Mom, I lost Austin.”

My body collapsed before my mind even caught up.
I didn’t cry — I wailed. From deep in my chest.

Nothing prepares you for that kind of pain.

I thought I knew what grief was.
I didn’t.

Before that day, life felt normal — busy, full, focused.
Then, in one second, everything changed.

That’s the thing about loss — it doesn’t ask permission.
It doesn’t knock politely.
It shows up, uninvited, and wrecks everything in its path.

After that moment, the world went silent.
Time didn’t slow down — it disappeared.

The grief took over my entire body.
My chest ached.
My stomach twisted.
I couldn’t think, sleep, or breathe right.

And the world?
The world just kept going.

People said things like:
“ He’s in a better place.”
“ Time will heal this.”
“ You’ll get through it.”

But none of that helped.
I didn’t want comfort.
I wanted my person.

I searched for something — anything — that would help.
But what I found was surface-level advice and tired clichés.

Support groups where no one was really healing.
Books that told me to be strong, to move on, to let go.

What I needed was truth.
Someone who wasn’t afraid of my pain.
Someone who had been there.

That’s why I created The Grief School.

Because I realized no one was coming to save me.
And I didn’t want another woman to feel as alone as I did.

I remember one night, lying on the floor, whispering to myself:
“I can’t live like this anymore.”

It wasn’t a breakdown — it was the beginning of healing.

Not because I had the answers,
but because I finally stopped running.
I stopped pretending I was okay.

And that’s when I started to grieve that shit — out loud, for real.

You don’t have to stay stuck in survival.
You don’t have to carry this alone.

There’s a way forward — not to forget,
but to begin living with your grief instead of under it.