How does one Recover from the Death of a Child?
by Kim Ades
Her name is Lorraine. A few short weeks ago she was a stranger to me, yet I knew that she had just lost a child and was in excruciating pain. Her son, Hunter, was only 3 ½ when he died. Sam, one of my coaching clients, is good friends with Lorraine. As Hunter was approaching his last days, Sam had journaled about this incredibly brave mother and child, describing the torture Lorraine was experiencing.
I was only an innocent bystander, but after Sam sent me a video of this child helping his mom blow out birthday candles with tubes in his nose, only six weeks before his death, it was impossible for me to sit on the sidelines.
With five kids of my own, I imagine that there is no worse blow than the death of a child. I kept thinking about Lorraine and how difficult it must be for her and her husband to cope with such a significant loss. I thought about the wide variety of emotions that she must be feeling—from deep despair as a result of her loss to joy from the memory of such a sweet child.
As the owner of a coaching company that uses journaling as the centrepiece for coaching, I asked Sam to connect me with Lorraine so that I could offer to help her create an online journaling platform as a safe place to express all that she was feeling. At the same time, she could invite her friends, family and other supporters to journal as well. I suggested that journaling might help her heal—at least a little.
Lorraine accepted my offer and she has begun to journal. Her entries are brutally honest and heart-wrenching, and they demonstrate her fierce love for her son and her incredible strength as a mother. She is pregnant and expecting in a few months, and dealing with questions about whether this is her first child. Lorraine is using her journal to capture her thoughts and try to cope with day-to-day life after the death of her son.
Kim Ades, MBA, is the president and founder of both Frame of Mind Coaching and JournalEngine™ Software. Sign up for your own free online journal at www.journalengine.com, and read journal entries just like Lorraine’s. For more information about setting up an online journal for your clients, contact marc@journalengine.com.
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