I lost my son, my husband, and my brother within 2.5 years of each other.
Grief came for me like a storm without warning, ripping through my life, taking my son, my husband, and my brother in its wake—but in the silence that followed, I found a strength I never knew I had.
June 2006 is when the storm started to rage, and the reality of my perfect, beautiful life was shattered. My one year old son, Garret, was at his daycare provider’s house along with my four year old daughter, Graci. There was love, trust, and fun all around them on this sunny day. I received a call around 5:00 pm that Tuesday evening, and an unknown stranger’s voice was on the other line telling me that my son Garret was being life-flighted to the hospital after our daycare provider had found him unconscious after she tried to wake him from his nap. Chaos consumed, calls were made, rides to the hospital, walking into the sterile “room”, and listening to the doctors tell me and my husband Jack that, indeed, our son Garret had died. The gravity of these words filled our world with brokenness. Why Us? How? What? So many questions came so slowly but needed to be answered immediately.
We learned the truth eventually—our son had an undetected heart defect. The words sounded distant, like they were happening to someone else, not us. But the questions came, relentless and heavy. How do we move forward? How do we even breathe without him? The ache felt bottomless. There were moments when it seemed impossible to move, like our hearts had been raged by this storm. Our home, once filled with laughter, felt hollow, and I feared what our future looked like.
Answers didn’t come easily. They were the smallest things—a smile from our daughter, a kind word from a friend, a glimmer of something like hope. Faith felt distant, and love was fragile, and resilience? It was not a story we were ready to write yet. But life kept pulling us forward in its quiet, persistent way. I learned that grief would test me again and again as if daring me to find strength I didn’t believe I had. Leaning into faith wasn’t always a choice—it was sometimes the only thing left to cling to. And love…love became our lifeline. In the clutches of despair, we learned how fiercely we could hold on to each other.
When that storm started raging again a year after our son had died, I truly thought that I wouldn’t be able to move forward with life. My husband Jack was diagnosed with cancer, Ocular Melanoma, with metastasis to his brain, liver, & spleen. He was diagnosed with Stage 4 terminal cancer. I can only remember the screams in my head and the whys that rippled through my soul. I knew then and there that our fight for our own survival of grieving our son was going to have to change course. It was now a full-on battle of keeping my husband alive because there was no way in Hell I was going to live life without him and his support and guidance for myself and our daughter.
Jack fought his cancer with everything he had. He did the treatments, he did the radiation, lost his hair, and went through the worst of the worst, only to get hit with bad news month after month. There were good days and great weeks within these sixteen months. Jack fought for his life; there were more down days for him than good. Jack never lost the will to want to live life to its fullest, watch his daughter grow into a beautiful young lady, and live a life we had built around hope, faith, and love. Jack battled with the highest of dignity, and we battled together for our own marriage, navigating the sudden loss of our son and the deteriorating life of my husband. Jack lost his courageous battle with cancer on February 8, 2009. This was just two short years after our son Garret had died. My world went from a dream to a storm that was out of control, with no hope in sight for myself or my daughter.
We were trying to make it through each day the best we could in the weeks after Jack died. It felt like we were walking through a fog, each step heavy and uncertain. Then, my brother Seth—who had been living with a brain tumor for five years—began to show symptoms again. I remember the sinking feeling in my stomach, the disbelief. The odds of this becoming serious now, after everything? Surely not. But life has a way of unfolding without mercy.
On March 13, 2009, just one month after I lost my husband, Seth went in for his third brain surgery. Seth had always been so full of life, towering over me with his warm, gentle presence, and yet this hidden, silent “beast” had been lurking in his brain all along, waiting. He made it through surgery, but something was different this time. He didn’t bounce back. A few weeks passed, and complications set in. On April 7, 2009—exactly two months after Jack’s death and almost two and a half years after we buried Garret—Seth lost his battle. I felt like I was watching the pillars of my life crumble one by one, and I was powerless to stop it.
This is when my world and the storm changed me forever. It didn’t happen in an instant; it wasn’t one thing. It wasn’t my hope, faith, and love because I felt like I didn’t believe in them anymore. It was one person who changed me, my beautiful daughter Graci. We had both ridden that storm together. In the months that followed all this devastation, it was quiet. The silence was deafening around our home. At this point, I knew that I HAD to choose a path. I had to choose if I would live in faith or doubt, courage or fear, hope or despair; I had to choose to believe. I uncovered a resilience that would become my greatest lifeline. I practiced the 3 C’s of Life: Choices, Chances, and Changes. I had to make a CHOICE whether to give up or survive each day. I chose to survive, and by doing that, I had to take a CHANCE on my broken heart and teach it to love and live. During this process, I slowly saw my life CHANGE into a beautiful story of heartbreak, death, love, hope, and resilience.
I am beyond grateful for the path I chose because it has allowed me to have a passion and mission to help other grieving people across the world. I poured my heart into “grief” greeting cards to help friends navigate the grief journey because words matter, and when words fail, cards speak. My cards are crafted with care and provide comfort that words can’t always express. I chose a beautiful name for my online business called Butterflies and Halos; the butterfly represents a butterfly’s spiritual rebirth, transformation, change, hope, and life (and what humans go through during loss), and the halos are for all my angels.
I also recently published my first memoir, “Chapters of a Resilient Heart,” in June 2024 to honor my people. It’s a beautiful story of their lives and deaths, how we survived, honor, hope, faith, dating, remarrying, and, of course, RESILIENCE.
Through this journey of loss, I had to feel the incredible power of the human spirit to rise above adversity and find hope in the darkest moments. I found that there was light by leaning into the ones that needed me most while living through grief. My mission is to guide others through life’s darkest times and help them find their resilience. I also followed my own wisdom and writing by telling people; may you find the strength within your heart, turn the pages of your own story with grace and fortitude, and emerge from the shadows with a heart that is, indeed, resilient.
I write about it in my story, but I follow the three C’s of life: Choices, Chances, and Changes. Each day, I had to make a choice whether to give up or survive. I chose to survive, and by doing that, I had to take a CHANCE on my broken heart and teach it to love and live. During this process, I slowly saw my life change into a beautiful story of heartbreak, death, love, hope, and resilience.
Are you ready to share your story of RESILIENCE? You can do that HERE.