February 19, 2026
I didn’t expect to become fluent in grief.
I didn’t study for it or seek it out.
Grief arrived, and then it stayed.
Five years ago, I lost my oldest son to an accidental overdose. He was 34. The shock of that turned my life upside down and split my life into before and after, a line I would never fully cross back over. I learned early that grief is not just sadness–it is disorientation, fear, longing, and love with nowhere to land. The excruciating pain is like no other.
In the years that followed, I was learning how to survive as a bereaved parent when my mother died unexpectedly. Losing her felt different, but no less destabilizing. She had been my anchor, the person I would have turned to when the pain of losing my son became unbearable. Grieving her while still standing in fresh grief stretched me in ways I didn’t know were possible. It was my first real lesson that grief stacks. It accumulates. It does not wait its turn.
Then, one year ago, my world collapsed again.
My youngest son died by suicide at the age of 29. I was in shock and disbelief. I truly believed that he would always be somehow protected, because we had already experienced a horrific loss of a child, it would never happen twice.
There are no words that adequately describe losing both of your children. The finality of it. The quiet that follows. The way the future you imagined simply disappears. People often ask how I survived. The truth is, some days I don’t know that I did–at least not in any recognizable way. I exist differently now. I move through the world carrying love and loss side by side.
I also have two adult stepchildren whom I care deeply about, and I hold gratitude for those relationships. But the loss of my sons has fundamentally reshaped my identity as a mother.
It is a grief that is both deeply personal and profoundly isolating. Even when people mean well, many don’t know what to say- or they disappear altogether. Not out of cruelty, but discomfort. Grief makes people uneasy. It reminds them of what they cannot control.
One of the most painful realizations after my sons died was how alone grief can feel. The world expects you to “heal”, to move forward, to be better with time. But grief does not follow a timeline, and it does not respond to pressure. Especially when the losses are layered, complicated, or stigmatized by suicide or overdose.
That is why community matters. That is why spaces where grief is spoken aloud–without judgement, without fixing, without comparison–are essential . We need places where the truth is allowed: that some days are unbearable, that anniversaries will always hurt, that love doesn’t die just because someone did.
BRI’S LODGE
At the heart of this nonprofit’s mission is a simple but radical truth: NO ONE SHOULD GRIEVE ALONE. Not the parent who has buried a child. Not the sibling, the partner, the friend. Not the person carrying years of compounded loss while trying to appear “fine” to the outside world.
Grief changes us, but it also connects us. When we share our stories, when we sit together in the discomfort, when we allow ourselves to be seen in our pain, something shifts. The weight becomes a little more bearable–not because it is lighter, but because it is shared.
I don’t write this from a place of resolution. I write from the middle. From lived experience. From the knowledge that grief doesn’t end, but it can be held—with compassion, with understanding, and with others who truly get it.
If you are grieving, I want you to know this: You are not broken, you are not behind, and you are not alone–even when it feels that way. There is space for you here. There is room for your story. And there are people willing to walk beside you, exactly as you are.
BIO:
Deb is a bereaved mother of two sons who has lived experience and firsthand knowledge of the pain, isolation, and heartbreak that grief brings and is deeply committed to turning pain into purpose and supporting the mission of Bri’s Lodge so that no one has to grieve alone.