Lost In Darkness: Grief, Anger, and Finding My Way Back

After Jax's diagnosis, grief took me through every emotion imaginable. But the one that surprised me the most was ANGER.

And I was angry for a long time.

I was angry at life. Angry at God. Angry at the people I thought would show up for me but didn't. I watched everyone around me continue living their lives while mine felt completely frozen.

People would tell me, "You were chosen for this."

I know now they were trying to comfort me, but at the time, those words made me furious. I remember thinking, If you truly understood the pain I was experiencing, you might reconsider saying that to me.

But how could they understand something they had never lived?

From the moment I opened my eyes in the morning until I closed them at night, I was carrying the

weight that my baby had a fatal disease. I was living every parent's worst nightmare while trying to somehow function like a normal person.

I wasn't a normal person anymore.

My entire world had turned upside down.

My world became very small. People I expected to support me disappeared. Everyone else seemed to move forward while I remained stuck in the same place—grieving a future that hadn't even happened yet.

I felt forgotten.

I felt abandoned.

And if there was a God, I couldn't understand how He could allow this to happen.

I was angry

Eventually, I found something that helped numb some of the pain.

Alcohol.

Every evening precisely at 4:00 p.m., I poured myself a drink. I wasn't drinking because life was fun. I was drinking because I wanted a break from feeling.

And for a little while, it worked.

Until the next morning.

Damn. My head is pounding.

I woke up with yet another hangover. I stumbled into the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror, but this time the woman staring back at me was a stranger.

Who are you?

Is this really my life?

Somewhere between the diagnosis, doctors, medications, appointments, fear, grief, and trying to keep my child alive, I had lost myself.

I kept waiting for someone to notice.

Can't they see I'm struggling? Doesn't anyone see what I'm going through? Why won't someone come help me?

I wanted someone to rescue me.

But I didn't know how to tell anyone just how bad things had gotten.

Eventually, the grief, depression and emotional pain became so severe that I began having suicidal thoughts.

I didn't want to feel this pain anymore. I wanted it to stop. Part of me even longed to be in heaven with Jax someday, where I believed I could finally care for him the way I had planned too.

One night, I reached one of the darkest moments of my life.

I took a knife from the kitchen drawer and held it to my wrist.

Just do it.

End the suffering.

Tears ran down my face as adrenaline rushed through my body.

Then one thought came through louder than everything else.

Who would take care of Jax if I wasn't here?

I couldn't leave him.

I put the knife away, walked upstairs, and put myself to bed.

I wish I could tell you that was the night everything changed.

It wasn't.

I continued struggling with those thoughts for a long time. I continued drinking. I continued grieving. I continued trying to survive a life I didn't know how to live.

The first three years of Jax's life were the darkest time of mine.

And when I look back at the woman, I was then, my heart bleeds for her.

For years, I judged her.

I wished she had been stronger. I wished she had been a better wife, daughter, sister, and friend. I wished she had enjoyed those precious years with Jax more instead of spending so much of them terrified of losing him.

But I don't look at her that way anymore.

Now I see a 27-year-old mom whose entire world had been shattered.

I see a woman experiencing anticipatory grief without even knowing there was a name for it. I see a mom who woke up every morning wondering how much time she had left with her son. I see someone who was exhausted, scared, angry, depressed, and desperately trying to survive something she had never been taught how to survive.

She wasn't weak.

She was hurting.

And she needed help.

I wish I could go back, sit beside her, and tell her to stop being so damn hard on herself.

I would tell her, you're doing the best you can right now.

You don't have to have this figured out.

You are allowed to fall apart.

And you are allowed to ask for help.

All I have now are the memories from those years, and I do my best to hold on tightly to the good ones—the smiles, the laughter, the little moments with Jax that grief sometimes made difficult for me to see.

I can't go back and change those years.

But I can forgive myself for them.

Eventually, something inside me started to change.

I became sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I knew I couldn't keep living the way I was living,

All I knew was that I needed to move forward.

Jax was still here.

I had spent so much time grieving the possibility of losing him that I was missing pieces of the life we still had together. I didn't know how much time we would get. For years, it felt like I could lose him at any moment.

And I didn't want the rest of his life to be defined only by fear, hospitals, doctors, and grief.

So I made a decision.

If our time together was going to be limited, I was going to make it count.

I started doing everything I could to give Jax a life filled with experiences, fun, laughter, and memories. We went places. We did things. We made memories together. I wanted him to experience as much of life as possible, and I wanted our family to have memories we could hold on to forever.

I was still struggling.

I was still grieving.

I was still scared.

But I was moving forward.

At that point, It was about choosing Jax.

I couldn't change his diagnosis. I couldn't control how long he would be here. But I could choose what we did with the time we were given.

And somewhere along the way, we started living again.

I was simply a mom who loved her son desperately and wanted to make the most of every moment she had with him.

And for that season of my life, that was enough.

If you're reading this while you're in your own dark season, I'm not going to tell you that someday you'll be grateful for everything you're going through.

I wouldn't have wanted to hear that either.

Sometimes life is just really fucking hard.

Sometimes you're not ready to find the lesson.

Sometimes surviving today is the accomplishment.

But I will tell you this:

Don't give up.

Ask for help. Let someone in. Take the smallest step you can toward something better. And if you fall back down tomorrow, get back up when you can.

I had to walk through some incredibly dark places to become the woman I am today.

I wouldn't choose the pain.

I wouldn't choose the disease.

I wouldn't choose the years I spent drowning in grief.

But I can choose what I do with everything they taught me.

When I think about that young woman standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a pounding hangover, wondering where she had gone, I wish I could reach through time and put my arms around her.

I would tell her:

You're still in there.

This isn't where your story ends.

You are amazing.

You are strong.

I love you.

Keep going.

One day, you're going to look in the mirror again and recognize the woman staring back at you.

Only this time, she's going to be stronger.

She's going to know her worth.

She's going to love herself.

And she's going to be so damn grateful you stayed!

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My younger self. I feel such deep compassion for her now. When I look at these pictures, I can see how much I was struggling and how hard I was trying to hold everything together.