Grief Graffiti

Throwups of my grief journey

  • The Monster Doesn’t Want Fixing. It Wants Presence.

    Somewhere along the way, we were taught to believe in redemption as a kind of promise. The idea goes something like this: if you work hard enough, feel deeply enough, prove yourself thoroughly enough – then things will finally come back into place. The arc will complete itself. It will all resolve. You’ll be changed. Continue reading

  • Maybe It’s Grief

    A friend I grew up with is a gifted writer & I love her way with words. She recently posted a poem she wrote that resonated deeply. We want so much to be seen, to be acknowledged, to feel like our lives have meaning. We used to believe that God was watching us, now we believe Continue reading

  • We’re Not Here To Escape. We’re Here To Experience.

    Lately, I’ve been feeling this deep, persistent urge to escape. Not just the physical space I’m in, but the emotional weight of this life, this grief. The thought of leaving—of moving to another country, starting over somewhere far away—has been so seductive. It feels like maybe if I could just go somewhere else, I could Continue reading

  • I Don’t Ever Want to Be Free From the Pain of Missing My Children

    I came across article in the New York Times today in which the writer, Yiyun Li – a mother who lost two of her children to suicide – speaks about the ability to exist in two realities that seem incompatible: one where she’s living in a desolate state she calls the abyss, and another where Continue reading

  • Your Heart Knows What it Needs to Do

    Why? Little word, big question. Anyone who’s been around a toddler knows how complicated life gets when we start to ask why. In the context of grief, the question of “why” can be one of the most infuriating thoughts that we come back to again and again. The first challenge of “why” is that we Continue reading

  • Death Ain’t A Science Project

    My brother and I often swap books that we’ve read & that’s how I recently came in possession of a book by Aleksander Hemon, my first by this author. This was not a book on grief, but the other night as I opened the book to start reading I noticed that he dedicated the book Continue reading

  • The Dichotomy of Grief

    In his book, “A Space in the Heart” (which I highly recommend), Larry Carlat asks his wife, Caryn, how she’s changed since their son’s death. She replied: For reasons I can’t explain, there are days when I wake up and things are very routine. I brush my teeth, shower, work, my son passed away, I Continue reading

  • You’re Not Failing—You’re Just Grieving

    Two years into this journey & I’m still battling the guilt. Maybe even more so now that the initial fog has somewhat lifted & hindsight is 20/20. It’s the unknown that’s the hardest. My son wasn’t found for some time & we still don’t really know what happened, who was with him or if/how long Continue reading

  • Now I Live For Us Both, So All I Do, I Do To Honor You

    My second Holiday season without my boy & I know I can’t do the Christmas stuff & go through the motions. So again, like last year, I signed up to teach yoga at a retreat. This time I went to Fiji, & since I was going to be so close to Australia & New Zealand, Continue reading

  • There Are Those Who Think There Is No Way Back From The Catastrophic Event, That They Will Never Laugh Again. But There Is, And They Will.

    I just finished reading Sean O’Hagan’s interview with Nick Cave, an Australian musician & lead vocalist of the band, Bad Seeds. Nick lost two of his sons, only a few years apart. I loved his vulnerability & perspective in sharing his grief, and wanted to post excerpts of it here as it sheds a light Continue reading

  • They Had Us

     Whenever that Mom-Guilt starts creeping back in I have to remind myself that I did my best, that he knew he was loved & supported, that he was never completely alone. Once your child is gone you will always wish you had done more, spent more time with them, given them more. But then I Continue reading

  • My Journey – With Or Without You

    I like to share articles I find that are particularly helpful, relatable or comforting. I’ve touched on this subject before in past posts, about the loss of & difficulties we experience in our friendships in grief, & the ensuing pain that adds on to the already unbearable weight. I came across this post today & Continue reading

  • You’ll Cry. It’s Worth The Tears.

    Finding meaning in life after the loss of a child is an incredibly difficult journey—one that so many of us struggle with. Reflecting on it, I realize that finding purpose is something my child wrestled with, too. I remember vividly the countless times I tried to help my son through moments of despair when he Continue reading

  • Tell Me About Despair, Yours, And I Will Tell You Mine.

    I just listened to the podcast, “All There Is” by Anderson Cooper, Season 3, where he interviews Andrew Garfield about grief & loss. It is so beautiful and filled my soul with such peace that I have to share some excerpts. I recommend listening to the whole interview, and subscribing to the podcast. It’s so Continue reading

  • I’m Sorry You’re Here. I’m Sorry I’m Here, Too.

    It’s time for a recap. If you’re like me, anything you read in the first few months probably didn’t make much impact. This is for me, too. I forget as well. There’s a difference between regret and guilt. Guilt is only for things you have control over. You did not have control over your child’s Continue reading

  • Fear Is A Sidebar Of Child Loss

    I posted the following on our HPH page last week: I just dropped my son off at the airport for his first trip since his brother passed last year. I am so grateful that he made the decision to go on this trip to meet up with some old friends of his brother’s. He’s barely Continue reading

  • Give Vent To Grief

    Everyone expresses their grief differently. Some people are introspective and prefer to keep their thoughts and feelings to themselves. Other people feel compelled to talk about their grief because talking to someone gives them a sense of support and community. Some people may find themselves somewhere in between these two extremes. The point is, there Continue reading

  • “I Was Going To Say I’m Sorry…But I’d Rather Say Thank You!”

    August is Overdose Awareness month & while nothing can change the outcome for my son who died, my heart continues to break for those still struggling with addiction & the 300+ that die every day (in the US alone). My heart hurts for their families & friends, too, knowing first-hand how that pain feels. As if Continue reading

  • #bestdamnmother

    This blog isn’t all about me. Although I do journal here & share some of my journey through grief, I also share a lot of things I’ve found especially helpful or comforting. Some people have such a gift for words & can say things in a way that I never could, truly hitting the proverbial Continue reading

  • It Is The Puddles That Necessitate The Wellies

    I came across Harry Baker on Instagram & his poetry really resonated with me. In particular his poem titled “A Poem for When I Die” that he performed live & with such emotion. While it’s basically a list of how & what he wants his funeral to be like, it weaves in the waves of Continue reading

  • You Are Normal If You Relate To All Of This

    Today I got text from someone asking if I can meet with their close friend who just lost their daughter. She needed to talk with someone who had also experienced the loss of a child recently. Of course I said yes. But I really don’t have any answers, solutions or cures for this horrible pain. Continue reading

  • I Sat With My Anger Long Enough And She Told Me Her Name Was Grief

    I am now in the “depression” stage of my grief. In the original 5 stages of grief depression is stage number 4. It was initially believed that people moved through the stages of grief one at a time, although that’s not necessarily true. However, it can be helpful to understand the characteristics and symptoms of Continue reading

  • To Be A Watcher Is The Joyful Work Of The Grieving

    I love poetry. A good poet can take a mess of emotions & put it into such perfect words, painting the pictures our minds are trying to form. When I found this poem below by John Roedel I imagined myself in each of the experiences, each one drawing me closer to my son, feeling him Continue reading

  • Let it Be

    Today a newly bereaved acquaintance reached out to me for support & it felt good to be able to say “I truly understand”. I’ve said this before but it’s a club we didn’t choose to join but one that we desperately need in our grief. I know nothing I say will heal or cure, but Continue reading

  • These Are The Choices We Make, Which Define Us

    When my son’s body was found in his apartment his little dog, Chico, was found with him, still alive. We don’t know how long my son was deceased but we know it was over a week, and his little faithful dog stuck right with him the whole time. When he was found his ribs were Continue reading

  • Toxic Positivity

    I recently met someone & we had an instant connection as we found ourselves talking about loss, addiction, meditation & our mutual desire to help others in the form of retreats, etc. He owned locations & I have the experience. He was on a positivity & manifesting kick in his life & that was an Continue reading

  • When I Get To Where You Are

    Missing him so heavily these past few days. One of the harder moments of grief is when we are just living life, doing the day to day routine, working, walking down the street, driving somewhere, watching a Netflix series, cooking dinner…and it occurs to us that they are dead and not coming back. For this Continue reading

  • Books

    These are just some of the books I’ve read since I lost my son. (Some I have given away or lent to fellow grievers.) Some I reference in this blog, others I have gone back and reread at different stages of my grief. There’s just something about hearing what others experienced, learned or realized in Continue reading

  • It Was Never About You Anyway

    “Walk a mile in the shoes of my inner child, before you judge the ways, in which she chose to cope. It doesn’t matter, how she survived. It only matters, that she did.” ~Little girl speak I’ve written about this before but today I felt a little angry about it. I’m referring to friends who Continue reading

  • She Is As Complicated As The Grief She Carries

    On the surface, we can look like we’re doing fine. We look pleasant and unbothered. We smile and say we’re doing fine. We laugh. We’re polite. We dot our i’s and cross our t’s. We post pictures of our happy lives and we list out all of our accomplishments and wins. On the surface, we all Continue reading

  • Staying Alive

    I don’t think we give grievers enough credit for simply staying alive. And by “alive” I don’t just mean physically still breathing, heart still beating. I mean alive in the sense that we’re moving forward & progressing. When you’ve lost someone, especially a child, you don’t want to keep on living. You don’t want to Continue reading

  • Groanings Which Cannot Be Uttered

    William Shakespeare wrote, “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” Sometimes it’s just hard to find the words, to express the overwhelming heartache, pain & anguish to explain our grief. I often think I wish I had a translator, someone who “speaks grief”, to put Continue reading

  • Happy Birthday Tristan

    So grateful to everyone who helped us celebrate my boy! We had dinner at his favorite steakhouse (thank you Mastro’s for making it so special), then his crew, friends & family helped me commemorate a plaque display (including a tiny urn with some of his ashes) & do a champagne toast (Cliquot, his fav) for him Continue reading

  • Grievers Prayer

    This is my prayer, my hope, my mantra. I just want, through it all, in spite of it all, to be kind. I recently read a conversation in an online support group where a woman shared, “Before my grief I used to pride myself on being easy going and flexible. Now I am so rigid Continue reading

  • Dreams

    I don’t usually remember my dreams, possibly because I have to take an aid to sleep, but I’ve had a few amazing dreams/visions of Tristan where it felt so real! In her book, “Journey to Healing-A Mothers Guide to Navigating Child Loss”, Lisa Boehm says: “Sleeping is a state where our ego (the logical part Continue reading

  • Platitudes

    I haven’t written here in a while. I’ve been working on my Instagram page (@grief.graffiti) and in the process have found more & more people sharing their stories. I will do a post of all the pages on grief I recommend soon as I know it will be a help & comfort, especially for those Continue reading

  • The Space Between

    This little poem expressed exactly how I feel these days. That “space between” who we were & who we are can be so confusing & scary. There’s a lot of questioning myself; am I making enough progress? Am I working hard enough on my goals? Am I fulfilling my purpose? As Kirsten says in her Continue reading

  • I’m Hurting…I’m Healing

    Some days we just need a reminder that whatever it is we’re feeling right now, it’s OK. Whatever we’re doing, it’s enough. Grief comes in waves. Just when you think you’re doing “better” a new wave hits. Much like in surfing, learning to ride these waves takes practice, falling off, being rolled & tossed underwater. Continue reading

  • Grief Brain

    I first learned the term “Grief Brain” while driving to Maine from Arizona accompanying one of my best friends as she closed down a rental home she and her husband had there. Her husband had just died & she was left dealing with all that entailed, including bringing furniture back by a certain date, requiring Continue reading

  • Why Are We So Hard On Ourselves While Grieving?

    I am very hard on myself. I’ve always been. And I find myself being even more so in grief. Even in my early grief I remember feeling like I wasn’t “doing it right”, that I should be more anguished, less numb. And then conversely; that I should be more proactive or find more purpose in Continue reading

  • One Year Anniversary

    Today is the one year mark of when they found him. It was hard. Very hard. But not in the way I expected. I expected to be sobbing uncontrollably all day but instead I found myself extremely irritable, anxiety-ridden & angry. My younger son & I decided to do things he would have loved to Continue reading

  • BC / AD = Before Loss/After Loss

    Someone asked me how I was doing today & like I often do now, I paused to “check in” on how I was feeling before responding. Grief is such a roller-coaster of emotions & the “waves” come and go. One moment you are feeling “OK” & the next you could be totally drowning. I’m learning Continue reading

  • Celebrating One Son While Grieving Another

    We did the best we could & celebrated in our own way. But for my younger, and only surviving, son this was a hard day. The the Survivors Guilt, the hopelessness, the lack of purpose & meaning all hitting at once for him. His older brother was his hero, his best friend & has been Continue reading

  • Harder Than Ever

    This week is very hard….one year ago yesterday is the last day anyone saw or heard from my son until he was found on the 19th.  “The first year after child loss can be deeply confusing. You feel pain you’d never imagined. In fact, you begin to wonder if you ever understood grief at all, Continue reading

  • I Wish I Could Have Held You That Little Bit Longer

    It’s raining today…and will be all this week according to the weather forecast. It always seems to rain on dates that are important to him, at least that’s what Troy says. So it feels fitting that it will be raining this week, the week we lost him. I don’t know how I am going to Continue reading

  • It sucks. And it’s profound.

    My son’s death transformed me. But I didn’t ask for this transformation. My son’s death made me more self aware. I didn’t want more self awareness. His death changed my perspective on life but I liked my former view of the world. I am a more compassionate person, more sensitive to others’ suffering. But I didn’t Continue reading

  • February

    February was once one of my happiest months. My younger son was born this month & so over the years I spent much of it planning his celebrations. This year I hate it! I want to make it go away forever and not come back. I’d be fine with 11 months of the year. I’d Continue reading

  • My First Birthday Without Him

    I knew this was going to be hard. All the first milestones are. Tristan was my purpose, my hope, my reason for living & breathing. What is the point of another birthday, another year without him? What reason do I have to celebrate it? None. And the thought of doing any kind of celebration nauseated Continue reading

  • Beauty for Ashes

    “To lose a child is to lose the very heart and soul of you. It is overwhelmingly disorienting. It takes a long, long time to find yourself again. It takes a long time to grow new life around the chasm of such grave loss. It takes a long time to grow beauty from ashes. This Continue reading

  • Mourning Masks

    I get so lonely at times & know it’s not healthy to spend so much time alone. But when I meet up with friends I feel like I don’t know how to do friendship or socializing anymore. I feel like I say all the wrong things, I react unpredictably to comments, I brush off condolences Continue reading

  • Isn’t It Ironic

    “Grief had spilled me out in a wild, desolate, unknown place and I didn’t know if I would ever find my way home again. I wasn’t certain that there was anywhere on earth I could still feel was home.” ~Emma McEvoy  This grief thing is so confusing. Just getting through the day or doing a Continue reading

  • Maybe We’re Not Meant to Move On, We’re Meant to Move With

    “I want to smile again, without feeling guilty. I want to miss you, without coming undone. I want to celebrate your life, without my heart breaking. If there’s a good side of grief, I’ve yet to reach it. It’s not getting any easier. Time isn’t helping. Some days I feel as if the pain deepens. Continue reading

  • You’re Within Me

    Continue reading

  • Hope

    “Hope is like a golden ring. If I took the ring from your finger & tossed it into a lake, you would not have it, & it would be gone forever. If I took the ring from your finger, and held it in the palm of my hand forever, you would also not have it, Continue reading

  • A New Year

    The start of a New Year has always been something I looked forward to. A time to reset the clocks, turn to an empty page, manifest new & better things ahead. But it’s not the same anymore. I don’t want it to be a new year without him. He died in 2023 & I don’t Continue reading

  • Getting Through Christmas

    Christmas was Tristan’s favorite. I know this not only from how important it was to him but because it’s a subject he spoke & wrote about, both to me and his friends. I even have an essay he wrote when he was around 10 or 11 (I’ll have to find it and post it here) Continue reading

  • Poetry

    When I was a child I loved poetry. I read every book of poems I could get my hands on & also wrote my own. I have several notebooks filled with poems, long & short, on a variety of topics. Somehow I lost that as I got older and stopped reading poetry. Now, in my Continue reading

  • The Day After

    I did so well on Thanksgiving Day so I was unprepared for the crushing, debilitating grief & pain that hit me today, the day after. I couldn’t stop crying, I was just so sad. According to psychiatrist Dr. Judith Orloff, “putting up a false front and feigning happiness can be incredibly draining. This idea is Continue reading

  • First Thanksgiving

    Today is the first Thanksgiving without him. Firsts are hard as you just have no idea how they’re going to hit or how you’re going to feel. I know for sure that I won’t be able to do Christmas this year. I have spent every single Christmas with my boys, every single one for 26 Continue reading

  • To the Moon and Back

    My son and I said this to each other all the time…it was one of our last texts to each other. So I got it tattooed on me along with his tag. The moon will never be the same to me now, but since reading this poem the other day I am seeing it in Continue reading

  • “I will only wonder if you knew how much you mattered to me.”

    A friend of mine texted me today that they almost lost their son. He had been at a music festival and thinks his drink was spiked. Thankfully the paramedics got to him soon enough & he recovered, but it was a huge fright for him mother. She asked me for my advice & I told Continue reading

  • Leaning In

    “Do not resist the pain. Allow it to be there. Surrender to the grief, despair, fear, loneliness, or whatever form the suffering takes. Witness it without labelling it mentally. Embrace it. Then see how the miracle of surrender transmutes deep suffering into deep peace.” ― Eckhart Tolle It’s been a minute since I wrote here. I Continue reading

  • I Miss Talking About Him

    Someone asked me about you today It’s been so long since anyone has done that It felt so good to talk about you to share my memories of you to simply say your name out loud She asked me if I minded talking about what happened to you or would it be too painful to Continue reading

  • Time Does Not Heal All Wounds

    The way I pictured it, all this grief would be like a winter night when you’re standing outside. You’ll warm up once you get used to the cold. Except after you’ve been out there for awhile, you feel the warmth draining out of you and you realize the opposite is happening; you’re getting colder and Continue reading

  • 6 Month Anniversary

    6 months today. It seems like so much longer, and yet it seems like just yesterday. Grief is hard to put your finger on, hard to gauge time with. It’s been some time since I last wrote anything on here. I have been learning to go with my intuition and what I’m feeling I need Continue reading

  • Losing Friends in Grief

    One of my closest friends, who was there for me in my early grief, helping me with all the arrangements, traveling with me back & forth to Portland, packing up his apartment, picking up his ashes, planning & handling all the details of his Celebration of Life, etc. began to pull away once it was Continue reading

  • Grief is not Linear

    I’ve read this, I’ve heard it said to me, but now I can say from experience how true this is: Grief is not linear. The stages do not go in order. There are days I feel like the pain hurts a little less, my chest isn’t as heavy, I can breathe a little deeper. Then Continue reading

  • In His Honor

    There is no greater loss for a parent than the loss of a child. My heart is broken & it’s often difficult to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning, much less get through the day. But I have discovered that honoring my son by making a difference in the lives Continue reading

  • Grief is a Lonely Journey

    When you lose someone, all of a sudden you have no choice but to live in a world you don’t recognize. It feels dark even when it’s daylight. Lonely even when you are surrounded by people. Only existing. Unsure of your identity now. You can see life going on right in front of you.You even Continue reading

  • Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason

    I’m listening to a man tell a story. A woman he knows was in a devastating car accident; her life shattered in an instant. She now lives in a state of near-permanent pain; a paraplegic; many of her hopes stolen. He tells of how she had been a mess before the accident, but that the Continue reading

  • The Mess we Leave Behind

    Shortly after my son passed I had to tackle the heart wrenching task of packing up his condo so I could get it rented out. It was a mess, dishes in the sink, laundry on the bed, books strewn around, a box of VooDoo donuts half eaten on the kitchen counter. Signs he didn’t intend Continue reading

  • First Mother’s Day

    When we lose a child, it feels like time stops. But it doesn’t. Life still continues around us. There are 365 days to endure, the year of Firsts. I made it through his first birthday then only a short time later was Mother’s Day. People warned me that the first one would be hard, but Continue reading

  • Grief Yoga

    Have you heard of Grief Yoga? It’s a certain set of poses that help release the tension & emotions we carry in our bodies when grieving. Grief yoga combines different types of yoga, movement, and breathing techniques to process grief, heal, and transform. The person becomes aware of the present moment and struggles with pain in Continue reading

  • We Created Warriors Because We are Warriors

    For those of you who have children battling with mental health, depression & addiction: I’m sharing this message I got from someone who read one of my posts. Hope it helps someone out there as much as it did me: “No one chooses to be a drug addict. Yes, they chose to do drugs. However, Continue reading

  • Feeling Like I Failed Him

    I’m still having such a hard time with the guilt & thinking if I had just followed my instinct to fly up to Portland & check on him sooner I could have saved him. And it’s compounded by the guilt of having gone to several parties & events over Super Bowl (it had been about Continue reading

  • I’m Not “Strong”

    I’ve been reading everything I can get my hands on regarding grief & how to deal with it. I don’t know how to move forward. I don’t know how I’m supposed to find purpose or motivation for anything again. I wish my job was busier right now & I had more to do. I don’t Continue reading

  • Bereaved Parents Wish List

    Recently I have spoken with other mothers who have lost a child and we agree it’s difficult to express what we need sometimes. Here’s a list of some of the main things we want people to understand: 1. I wish my child hadn’t died. I wish I had him back. 2. I wish you wouldn’t Continue reading

  • Signs

    One of my good friends gave me a book called Signs written by Laura Jackson, a renowned psychic medium. In it she talks about how to ask for and recognize signs from the other side–messages of comfort from loved ones who have passed that impart a greater understanding of our interconnectedness. I found this book Continue reading

  • First Birthday

    You would have been 27 today…Celebrating your birthday knowing I was so lucky to have you as long as I did. Love you to the  & back! Today was hard. I had been starting to plan things for his birthday the last few months, including ordering a gift, making a canvas out of a collage of Continue reading

About Me

My grief journey started on February 19th, 2023 when my 26 year old son was found dead in his home in Portland, Oregon from an accidental overdose.

The title of this blog is in homage to him, my son, Tristan, aka Womes, a “King” (a title given to the most prolific and best graffiti artists) whose art inspired and touched more lives than he ever could have imagined. This blog is my “graffiti”, my “Throwy’s” (another graffiti term meaning a quick/simple piece), my way of expressing the things I’ve experienced, felt & learned in this journey through my grief.

Losing a child is an unimaginable pain, one that no parent should ever have to endure. In the midst of this overwhelming grief, it can be challenging to find meaning and purpose. Writing has become a vital part of my healing journey. Through writing, I honor my son’s memory and discover meaning amidst the devastation. It allows me to express and navigate the depths of my emotions, while also fostering connections I yearned for with those who understand the intricacies of grieving a child. It was this longing that inspired me to share my experiences, along with quotes & stories that helped me through, in a blog. If this can offer solace or guidance to others who are walking a similar path, then perhaps I’ll find purpose in this pain.

Celebration of life

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