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How to Survive the Death of a Child with Guest Gemia Carroll {Episode 210}
570 Plays2 years ago
No parent ever wants to imagine the death of one of their children. But this is a reality for thousands of parents every year. Join us as we interview our kind, funny and vulnerable guest Gemia about how she's surviving the death of her oldest daughter.
Death may never be fun to talk about, but we're so grateful for this chance to learn how to better support loved ones, strangers or anyone who may be called to journey through this sorrow.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Outnumbered' Podcast
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Outnumbered the Podcast. I'm Audrey. And I'm Bonnie. We are experienced moms to a combined total of 19 children. In our weekly episodes, we explore relatable topics using our perspectives of humor and chaos. Tune in for advice and encouragement to gain more joy in your parenting journey.
Guest Introduction and Trigger Warning
00:00:31
Speaker
Okay. Everybody welcome back. We are very, very happy to have a guest with us today. We're talking to Jimmy about childhood loss in motherhood. And so we usually, um, are a podcast episodes that you can listen to with your kids, but today there may be some trigger or some trauma moments. And so you might want to listen with your buds today. Anyway, that being said, welcome, Jenny. It's awesome to have you with us today. Thank you.
00:00:58
Speaker
Yes, Gemia and Audrey and I have been run in the same internet circles for a while. We all kind of got our start sharing things of the sewing nature online and have done, you know, sewing challenges and patterns and fabrics and all the fun things. So it's so fun now that some of us have pivoted and shifted a little bit. So fun to get the gang together.
00:01:19
Speaker
It has been. It's nice to see everybody.
Humorous Anecdote at Albertsons
00:01:22
Speaker
Okay, Jimmy, with most of our guests, we like to ask them if they have a funny parenting moment to share because what with all the chaos and drama that we have as parents, sometimes it's just nice to laugh about it a little bit.
00:01:34
Speaker
I absolutely do. So one of my favorite stories actually is when I got kicked out of Albertson's in the most polite, kind way. And I was very pregnant with my third child. So I had my oldest child, Ansley, and she was probably on a say, probably about three and a half at this time. And then I had a little like, maybe, like the times are all kind of mixed up, but I had, my Ansley was my oldest. I had my next daughter who's sitting like in the top of the grocery cart. You know how that's going and you're like hanging onto one and then
00:02:04
Speaker
I'm like big enough that it's like hard to push the grocery cart without hitting my belly. And we're just struggling through the whole thing. And I do one of those things where like you pull up and I remember I wanted yogurt and I kind of turned around and then Ansley's gone, like pure gone. And you know how that panic hits and you're like, okay, no, I got this. Like I got this. And I was like, Nope, I don't got this. So we closed down the whole store. Okay. So that's the start. We closed down the whole store. We're going up and down aisles. Mind you, I left the.
00:02:32
Speaker
other daughter in the grocery cart. She's all locked in near the yogurt. Do we know what else is by the yogurt? Like eggs. Okay. Not my smartest moment. Um, so we find Ansley, she wanted ice cream, sweet little child. So she had opened up the ice cream thing. She had stepped in, she grabbed the ice cream that she wanted and the ice cream door closed. So we find Ansley pressed up in the freezer aisle. She's pressed up here like this.
00:03:02
Speaker
we finally pull her out we're like okay she's okay she's not blue she's not purple everything's gonna be go around the corner and we hear the like pop pop pop and i'm like what the heck is going oh yes yeah at least like two dozen eggs i had just just went arm reach
00:03:20
Speaker
So the kind clerk just gave me the box of ice cream that Ansley so desperately wanted and said, I hope that you have a great day. Will you please take your children and go home?
00:03:33
Speaker
So I got kicked out of Albertsons. But he did give me ice cream. He was very kind about it. It was, but it is still one of my favorite stories because you just, you're in those moments and you think it could not get worse. And my Lanta, it does. And that's just the way that it is. Poor babies, poor mama.
Jimmy's Personal Story and Bond with Ansley
00:03:54
Speaker
And we've all had stories like that, right? Just take your children and leave, please.
00:03:58
Speaker
Yeah. Could you just come now? You're so cute. They're so sweet. Go home. Take them home. Enjoy them at home. Okay. Have you heard about Safeway down the street? They have food too. They have bigger ice cream sections. More places to hide. Oh, Jimmy, that is great. That is such a relatable mom moment. I think we've all
00:04:22
Speaker
had that panic moment, maybe not that, you know, face on the freezer moment, but still. You know, one thing I love about you is you're one of the funniest people that I know you have, like you have posted this series of videos online about your coworker scaring you.
00:04:41
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Just, I died laughing. Like if I'm ever feeling blue, I'm like, I'm just going to watch Jamia get scared for a while. It's so bad. All right. So let's back up for a minute and have you introduce yourself to our audience. Okay. Well, my name is Jamia Carroll. Like they said, I am a wife and a mother. I have five children.
00:05:05
Speaker
And today we're talking about the fact that one of my oldest daughter, Ansley, she did pass away. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about child death and things like that. But I think the important thing that I want people to know is that even when you do lose anybody in your life, your relationship with that person doesn't change. So I still identify as Ansley's mother and she is still my oldest child. And so I often talk about it that way.
00:05:33
Speaker
I have recently been divorced but again at the same time my ex is still the father of my children and I think that's still an important part of who I am is just he is still a co-parent with me and we are doing our best to raise our children just in a new set of circumstances and to get them
00:05:53
Speaker
through their own grieving process as we get through ours and we're kind of trying to heal together, but it's also an individual process. So I think we need to take time for that as well. Yeah. Yeah. What a beautiful intro. Thank you for that.
00:06:09
Speaker
So, like Audrey mentioned in our intro, we are going to be talking specifically about Gemia's experience with child
Explaining Child Death to Young Children
00:06:15
Speaker
loss. And this is not a topic that everybody rushes to talk about. It's not what everybody wakes up in the morning and thinks that that ought to be a fun conversation, right? But it is a very real experience for so many parents.
00:06:29
Speaker
avoiding it does nothing to help through the trauma and grief. And in the past few years, I've actually had a couple of experiences of either helping friends or just witnessing them walking through this valley of sorrow. And so I think it's going to be really, really beneficial to those out there who are wondering how to get through it themselves or how to help
The Day of Ansley's Passing
00:06:50
Speaker
a loved one. So to start off, we'd love for you to explain your experience as much as you're willing to go into about your loss. Sure.
00:06:58
Speaker
Well, first I'd like to say just kind of one of the things that I try to stand and advocate for is just kind of get away from that child loss aspect and just do remark it as a child death because I haven't lost my daughter. I know exactly where she is. But I think when we use child loss, people get children and as mothers with that as part of our goal is to help our children and especially in this situation.
00:07:25
Speaker
They don't need to think that their sisters lost. They need to know the truth that she did pass away and she did die. And I just think a lot of times younger kids get confused when we refer it that way. So that's just one of those things I do like to tell people when we're starting those conversations that
00:07:42
Speaker
It is, we call it child loss as a society, but it is child death, sadly. And so with us, Ansley was my oldest. She just celebrated her 16th birthday. Audrey, she reminds me of you. She was six feet tall and all legs and gangly and didn't know what to do with her body and just kind of that typical teenager.
00:08:05
Speaker
She could throw a spatula like the best of them. When she got mad, she was pissed off. And then when she was happy, she was just a great mom to our kids. There's a lot of beautiful moments that happened prior to her death that I think for me, maybe later on, we can go more into it. But they helped me not have this survivor's guilt or play the what if game so much.
00:08:34
Speaker
It was just kind of a typical day. I was setting up something at the studio and decided I was going to come home. I wasn't planning on going home that night and just really felt like I wanted to be at home to have dinner with my kids before coming back out to the studio. I actually talked to Ansley as I was leaving the studio for about 45 minutes because she had a test she was preparing for the next day. So we were studying over the phone as I was going through Winco and grabbing some groceries.
00:09:02
Speaker
And I hung up the phone with her about five minutes from the house and said, hey, love you, baby girl. See you in a few minutes. And she said, love you, mama. And that's the last I ever heard of her. And got home, brought the groceries in the house. There's only like two bags. And did you know how you kind of do that call it thing? Like she's upstairs. I'm like, hey, hands. I'm home. Come down. She had lasagna in the oven. The table was all set for dinner. She didn't come down.
00:09:29
Speaker
It's not a big deal. She always studies with her AirPods in. They never listen to us anyway. Decided to go to the bathroom first. And then I sent my middle daughter up to go get her sister. And that's when I heard the scream. And it's just one of those moments that just makes your skin crawl. And you know as a mom instinct, like,
00:09:51
Speaker
something's not right. And I just remember rushing up the stairs as fast as I could. I think I knocked a few chairs down just kind of.
00:10:00
Speaker
I felt that panic. It was there. And unfortunately, she had a heart attack. It turns out she had an enlarged heart, a deformity we did not know about. And it just gave up. When I got there, I have a med background. And so for me, my body just kind of went into a system. And I started performing CPR right away. I think as a mom, the moment when I could
00:10:30
Speaker
feel things, start to hear things again was when I was, I remember having my ear down next to her mouth because I had given two breaths to see if her airway was blocked and I, so my face was turned over and I saw in the doorway the rest of my children standing there screaming and that's kind of when sound started to come back and I was like, oh, oh like I'm just, this is happening. Like it was, it was very surreal.
00:10:59
Speaker
But yeah, I performed CPR, it wasn't enough. We kept her heart alive and good or bad. Her heart, I got it re-beating. And so we did have to turn off the compressor a few hours later when we were at the hospital and we had to make that decision. But there was no brain activity. There had been no breathing on her own since I had gotten to her. And I'm pretty sure she, I do distinctly remember that her lips were already
00:11:28
Speaker
kind of purple bluish right when I got to her. And that's why I went straight into the rescue breaths and compressions. So I'm pretty sure she had already passed before I even started. But we did still have to make that call as a parent to say, OK.
00:11:45
Speaker
turn off the machine. And I don't know what was harder, the CPR or that. It's a toss up. But yeah, all of the siblings were there. My children were all there with me. And I think death is death, but there's also death. And then there's the trauma of experiencing the death. And I think sometimes they're just very different.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. We know that is not an easy story to share, but we wanted you to share it with our listeners so that they have that as a base for going forward with the rest of the episode. I did want you to add one point of clarification. Can you please share with our listeners what year this was?
00:12:33
Speaker
month and year. So yes, Anseli died. It was January 20th, 2021. So just shy of two years ago. Okay. So we really appreciate you sharing that. I'm skipping it out a little bit here, but we know that you have through your experience
00:12:55
Speaker
are building a community of other parents in similar situations.
Coping with Grief: Practical Advice
00:12:59
Speaker
And so we wanted you to share that because at the beginning, because that gives a basis for understanding. But we want you to move now and talk into things of, you talked about the trauma and the grief and maybe the difference between those two, but let's talk about what helped you through the grief. If we put ourselves mentally in this situation,
00:13:22
Speaker
You kind of like, like that, that stops. Like, I don't know how to go on. So like, what, what helped you go forward? I think the first thing to understand when, um, you're like thinking about it is it does change everything. Like we know death is part of life.
00:13:41
Speaker
Everybody knows it, but once it's like part of your personal reality, your perspective truly does change. And you do see things differently, but you also, you don't really have a choice. I hear people say all the time, I don't know how you do it. You're so strong. I'm not strong. Dude, I cry in the shower like every single day, but I don't have a choice. It's just what you do.
00:14:08
Speaker
I think one of the things that I would tell people is for me, what I did was I created a list and it was as simple as
00:14:19
Speaker
brush your teeth, and it really was. And once I brushed my teeth, my teeth felt a little bit better, and my mouth felt a little bit better. And I was like, okay, well, maybe I should brush my hair. And then I could brush my hair. And some days those things didn't happen. And that was okay. I had stinky breath and ratty hair. And that was just what it is. But I also knew that sooner or later, my kids always laugh at this because it's one of the things that we talk about. But sooner or later, you have to get out of bed and go to the bathroom. Otherwise, you're going to pee your bed.
00:14:46
Speaker
So you've got two options, right? You put your feet on the ground and you walk to the bathroom or you pee your bed and you sit in your pee. Like, we don't want to sit in our own pee. That's gross. So you just do what you have to do. And I think allowing yourself that grace to acknowledge that and accept it and not worry about what other people think you're doing right or wrong. Every single person is going to grieve different. It looks different.
00:15:16
Speaker
for all four of my children, for my ex-husband, for myself, for my parents, for my friends, for Ansley's friends. We didn't just lose Ansley. We were the house where all her friends came. We lost her whole social circle. My kids lost a sibling and a babysitter and a mentor. Like it's not just a person that you lose, it's a way of life. And you do have to start to recreate that.
00:15:44
Speaker
And you have to give yourself grace through that process to let everything go and only put back in the pieces that allow you to move forward at a pace that you can actually move forward. Try and do it too fast. You get sick and you're back in bed sitting in your own pee, right? Like, and that's gross. So you just have to do it little steps at a time. Make a list and put the most mundane small wins on that and allow that
00:16:10
Speaker
motivation to continue throughout the day. That would be my best advice and that's pretty much how I've done it so far.
00:16:16
Speaker
Oh, that's such good advice. And, you know, Audrey and I talk a lot about survival times. Neither of us have had to experience that sort of survival time as far as the death of a child. But that's pretty much what we talk about, is you have to take out everything, and you only put back in the bare basics. And you start to figure out what those are, because sometimes we don't always know, right? We might think it's doing something so that we look a certain way, but really it's not. Really, it's bare basic physical survival. And honestly, as you're telling this story, I'm thinking,
00:16:46
Speaker
It really is a blessing that our bodies need this care, right? That need food. I mean, ideally three times a day, but that probably wasn't happening for a long time. But at the very least, you have to get out and go to the bathroom, right? At the very least, you have to put something in your body eventually to give it fuel. And that is kind of God's very tender way of saying, don't forget, you're still here, you know, and you still need to do what it takes to stay alive.
Family Grieving Dynamics
00:17:12
Speaker
So moving
00:17:14
Speaker
sideways a little bit in your grief, we realize that as a parent, not only did you lose, did you experience the death of your child and this whole way of life, like you're saying, but then you get to witness your children going through it. So tell us a little bit about that. How, how difficult was that? What's watching your other children move through the same thing that you're moving through only in a different way? So this will be the point where I cry because I think that is, um, Ansley's fine.
00:17:45
Speaker
She is safe wherever she is. I have my beliefs. Other people have their own. It's those that are left behind that suffer when you have a death. And unfortunately in our situation,
00:17:59
Speaker
because the children were present, um, they, they witnessed parts of it, but our mind is again, so beautiful that as an adult, we have these plates that can hold so much, but as a child, they have these small little plates and the capacity overflows quite quickly and the brain is going to shut down and they are going to, um, subconsciously let go of what they can't understand. My boys were taken out of the house pretty quickly.
00:18:29
Speaker
Um, and then my two daughters, they had left and my, one of my daughters had a friend with her at the time. Um, so they came back, my two daughters, um, and the police had to separate us all and interview us while this is all going on. Um, which I still don't really understand.
00:18:51
Speaker
stand the point, like that this is one of those points where like the trauma is a different, this is a different trauma at this point because now they're pulling us apart and they're separating us from each other and peppering us with questions and we are not comprehending what's going on at all. And in this process, Anzalie's brought down on a gurney with the other paramedics. They're walking slowly. It was obvious the second I got to her that she had passed.
00:19:19
Speaker
I would love to say that it wasn't, but it was. And I knew that. And they were walking slowly, and they had the compressor on her. So my two daughters, who at the time were 14 and almost 13, saw her coming down quietly. Everybody was quiet, and everybody was calm. And we as adults understand that as them doing their job, right? They're disassociated. They're doing their job.
00:19:47
Speaker
They're taking her to the ambulance. It's all done. It's all over. We know that. They thought they had fixed her. And they thought that everybody was calm because she was better. And I physically had to hold my daughters and tell them, no, she's not okay. She is dead. And I did. I watched their spirits crumble. I watched just their whole world fall apart.
00:20:17
Speaker
And you can see the shock. I remember, I'm sorry. But I remember seeing the shock in their eyes and just my now oldest, she literally crumbled in my arms and she passed out and fell on the floor. And we had to pick her up and kind of like bring her back too. And the reason I give you all that background is because for their
00:20:44
Speaker
Their bodies literally shut down. And now they're expected to carry on. They just, your body wakes up and you're like, okay, all done. Move forward. And that's not something that's easy as an adult. And it's even more difficult as a child.
00:21:01
Speaker
And they're at stages of their lives. My oldest is struggling quite profoundly. She's trying to find anything that she can do to disassociate herself with the experiences that she's gone through and the reality that in four months, she will be older than her older sister. And that's a hard thing to work on as a 16-year-old, right? Like, we should be learning how to drive, not
00:21:28
Speaker
dealing with the thoughts that in four months I will be older than my sister and I could die at any moment because that's what happened. So I think for my older girls it has been extremely difficult. My one son is doing quite well. He seems to just kind of have shut it all out and we're working slowly with him but we don't want to push him. When his mind is ready we'll start
00:21:55
Speaker
figuring out how that's going to happen. My youngest son is a different issue. He and Ansley were very close. She was kind of his mama because it was during that whole COVID time. So she was at home while I worked full time. So she was kind of his mama. And so he has struggled quite profoundly. And as a young child, it's different. He doesn't know what cutting is, but he will bite himself to the point where he bleeds.
00:22:21
Speaker
He still sleeps in her bed. We had to take her mattress and put it in his bed because he would not get out of her bed and I couldn't handle coming up the stairs and seeing somebody in her bed. I was like, oh my gosh, we have to change this. So, but I think the hardest part in all of it is recognizing that each child will grieve different and you as the parent have to learn how they're grieving.
00:22:47
Speaker
You have to teach your other children that your brother isn't hitting you because he doesn't like you. He has no idea what to do with all these emotions and this pent up anger. And you just got too close. That's it. You got too close. You win the lottery. Um, so it's helping the children learn what makes each other child tick and how they grieve and respecting those boundaries there too. So it can be extremely difficult. It's probably the hardest part of it all.
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, wow. Sorry for asking you more hard questions, but we know that this is other this is definitely something that other parents would be dealing with as well. Just as a side note, my my father passed away when he was 46 and both of his parents were still living at the time. And one one comment I remember my grandparents making is you expect
00:23:46
Speaker
your parents to die before you in life but you don't expect your children to die before you in life and that's something that's always stuck with me like as a parent so then you have like your own grief to manage but then like your children's grief you're helping them or at least observing them manage as well and what a what an incredible thing to to try to to do both of them yeah so we know that
00:24:17
Speaker
All of this is almost unimaginable pain and grief and trauma for
Finding Blessings Amidst Grief
00:24:21
Speaker
your family. But we do want to know if there's any blessings or benefits that have come out of this experience. Not that you would have chosen, but that you're noticing now almost two years later.
00:24:35
Speaker
I think it was interesting trying to wrap my head around that a little bit because I think blessings and miracles are kind of those things that we tend to recognize when things are good, right? And then when things are bad, we don't so much recognize it. And at this point, I don't necessarily recognize miracles or blessings that have
00:25:00
Speaker
I guess solidified our family or brought us closer together. Unfortunately, in our situation, it helped my husband and I. We were just going to touch on this just slightly, but we were already in a situation where our marriage had been struggling for years.
00:25:16
Speaker
And we were trying to make everything work and we were working towards that. But when Ansley passed, one of the things that we realized as a couple was that we really do have a right to be happy. And we are meant to have joy in our lives and on this earth. And sometimes that looks very different than we expect it to look.
00:25:42
Speaker
And so for the two of us, we weren't coming together. And when Ansley passed, we didn't turn towards each other. We had allowed that relationship to deteriorate to a point where we really weren't even consoling each other.
00:25:57
Speaker
And so for him to heal and for me to heal, we decided that we were going to take that next step and go ahead and separate. And then if life turns it around, life might turn it around. But we couldn't heal in an environment that we were being broken in, and we couldn't do that together. We were just causing more harm.
00:26:19
Speaker
And I say that because it is one of those things that happens quite often. Marriages quite often don't survive this. Sometimes it does bring spouses together. In our case, that just wasn't the case. It's just not how it worked. And that's OK. But I think when I think of the blessings
00:26:44
Speaker
It's more what happened right before she died. We had COVID and people saw it as such an awful thing I saw it as an awful thing. But it gave my kids a full year, the last year of her life, where they were together every single day, more than they even wanted they hated each other at the time but they loved each other right.
00:27:02
Speaker
We all know how that goes, but they had every single moment together. And Ansley actually, the Christmas prior, her appendix had exploded and we didn't know. And so she ended up going through a surgery that took about three and a half hours. She had her own cardiologist, she had her own anesthesiologist, she had two specialized surgeons and three nurses for three and a half hours.
00:27:30
Speaker
Nobody knew that her heart was enlarged. Not a single medical professional who had her body literally open on the operating table had a single clue. So how should I have known? Right? There's a lot of what ifs that can come in these situations. And I am very blessed that that's not part of my story. I knew how to perform CPR. I knew
00:27:57
Speaker
everything that needed to be done. I did it great. I broke her ribs. I did everything the way I was supposed to. I don't have that guilt that a lot of parents have. And so for me, my blessings are a little bit different. I don't necessarily see them as an outcome right now. I'm in the trenches of it. But I do recognize and see the blessings that we had prior to her passing that have relieved
00:28:22
Speaker
things that I think would have been there. All those what if questions. What if I had known? Would I have made her sit on the couch and never experience life? Or would I let her do? She was a cross country star. Girl ran all the time.
00:28:36
Speaker
So there's a lot of things that are blessings that we don't recognize in that part, but recognize in prior to, if that makes sense. Sure, sure. So having gone through a traumatic death experience myself, my father died in a car accident.
00:28:54
Speaker
And so it wasn't a child, but a parent, like I understand the sudden death experience in dealing with that. And I would say that two years is probably quite soon to start realizing the blessings or benefits that come from it.
00:29:13
Speaker
one thing that I did notice right away that I would call a blessing now, I don't know if I called it a blessing or benefit then, was how much I valued life. Yes. Because I'd had the experience of it suddenly stopping. And so valuing life, I think was one huge, I can call it a blessing now. I definitely think having had 20
00:29:42
Speaker
years, almost 23 years of valuing life when it's here, it's definitely been a blessing in my relationships with other people. But two years in, I don't know that I would have called that a blessing or a grave. It was like two years in is like you're drowning and somebody says blessing and you're just like, go away.
00:30:02
Speaker
Well, I think part of it, like you said, is you have to look for it and you have to find it. I don't really, I don't know why Ansley died yet. There's no purpose in it for me at this point, but I can give purpose to it. I can allow it to transform my life so that I have purpose within life.
Creating Purpose from Grief
00:30:25
Speaker
So it's not necessarily something that is always going to be evident or right there. You do have to search for it. It does have to be something that you're going to look for and that you're going to be in a place where you're capable of doing that. And I think that goes back to that grace. Sooner or later, you'll get there, hopefully. I'm crossing my fingers. And if not, you have to create it yourself.
00:30:46
Speaker
I've never been a believer that you just sit around and wait and let things fall in your lap. That's not why, in my opinion, God gave us hands and feet. He gave it to us so that we could work and we could enjoy our lives the way that we want to create them. I would say to anybody that's kind of in the thick of it, if you don't find a purpose in it, that's okay, but create a purpose.
00:31:11
Speaker
make it yourself. And if that's not the right purpose, in a few years you'll figure it out and you can pivot that and you can create something new from it. But you can't sit in that victim mindset of it either. I love that you shared it in that way because I think that a lot of people when they go through something really traumatic or tragic like this in their life, they try to find purpose in it. That's human nature, right? There has to be a reason, there has to be a purpose. And sometimes what that does is just creates resentment towards
00:31:39
Speaker
the world towards God. Why wasn't this stopped? Why wasn't this changed? But to put yourself in the driver's seat of your life and to find the purpose, to create a purpose, right? This thing happened. I don't know why. I don't know if there was some grand scheme. None of us know enough about life to make that call, but we can make a purpose out of it. And again,
00:32:01
Speaker
I do think you're so close to it still and able to see it in that way, which I really, really admire. And I think that's beautiful and is going to help a lot of people sharing that. So thank you for that.
00:32:11
Speaker
Well, and I think it goes, it expands beyond this. I mean, we can do that any, I wasn't expecting to have five kids. I thought I was done after three and then they kept showing up and I'm like, why what's the purpose in this? You're all driving me insane. I mean, you just, it doesn't really matter where in motherhood, um, you have that perspective. You can create purpose in every single aspect of it. If you can't find it on your own, because sometimes we're so much in the mud or the thick of it that you can't find it.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yes absolutely. So you just have to make it on your own. Absolutely yeah for sure. Okay so with that perspective that of looking back let's say you had you you were given a magic wand and you could have changed something about the scenario. Are there things you would have changed are there things you would have done differently? No um people ask that so much more than you'd expect like like they're expecting you to be like yeah I'd not have kids because losing a child or having a child
00:33:07
Speaker
get hurt or having a child who has a disability or an illness. It's tough. Like, it's not easy. But would I give it up and never have a child? Absolutely not. Like, there's nothing that would take the place I can
00:33:29
Speaker
I guess that's a blessing in a sense. It's a really sucky blessing. But I can say that I have seen my daughter's full complete life. And I have lived every moment with her. That is a unique position to be in. It's not one that I want to be in. It's not one that I wish on my worst enemy. But I would never replace anything
00:33:56
Speaker
If, like, if it meant not having her like the joys that you get those moments when you can't stand them when they like she threw the spatula no joke she hit me with spatula she hit all of us was fabulous. But like, I wouldn't take that back.
00:34:13
Speaker
I wish she was here. Like, why wouldn't you? But I got to have 16 and a half amazing years with my daughter. And why would you ever give that up? I just couldn't imagine. And yeah, I just couldn't imagine. It always cracks me up when people ask. They're like, well, if you knew, would you still have her? Yeah, absolutely.
00:34:37
Speaker
Absolutely. All 31 hours of labor, that stupid child of mine. I'd have it all over again. Yeah, that is a difficult question. It is interesting that people think that's like a valid or okay question to ask because that's something you have no control over. Right? Like it is. It happened. But because other parents are probably getting asked that as well, we wanted you to speak to that question.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of times people ask things that they're not, probably shouldn't. They probably shouldn't ask some things. I think sometimes, but it is genuine. You don't know what to say. I know we've talked a little bit about it, but we have another friend amongst us that just lost their son this last week. And even though I've been there, I found myself going, I'm sorry.
00:35:34
Speaker
I'm sorry. I don't have any words for you other than I'm sorry. And it is genuine. I am genuinely sorry that this is her journey. But sometimes that's the best thing to say. And just, I'll sit with you. Like, even if you don't want me to, tell me to go away. But just know that I'm here for you. We don't have to have words. You don't need to say anything other than I'm here for you. And I'm sorry. So.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, thank you for sharing that. We want to ask if there's one takeaway that you would like like moms and dads to get from this episode, like how can you share that like a one takeaway? I think part of it is just
00:36:20
Speaker
Like we said before, it's not a situation anyone wants to be in, right? It's not a situation you choose. It's not anything that you aim for. But you're there. And you have to literally put one foot in front of the other. And you have to keep walking. And you have to give yourself grace. It's going to be hard. It's unimaginably hard. And there's times when you would shut down.
00:36:44
Speaker
If you have a friend or someone that you know that's going through it, be so very patient when you think of your children. Just remember every single person grieves different. It looks different every single day. It looks different on every single person. My one son, he laughs until he cries and that's, he doesn't know how to cry. He doesn't know how to just sit there and say, I'm sad for Ansley today. I want to cry.
00:37:11
Speaker
So he starts telling jokes, like stupid boy jokes about bum cheeks and farts. And then he's laughing until he can get himself to cry. They're all gonna do what their body needs to do. And as a parent, probably the hardest thing is that you're going to have to learn how to heal on your own, but you also have to help your children and your spouse or your partner. Um, and it, it is difficult, but it is absolutely doable.
00:37:37
Speaker
You just have to get up every single day. And even if it's just brushing your teeth, accomplish that one thing, brush your teeth, make sure the rest of your kids are okay. And so you go back to bed for the day. Congratulations. You did one thing tomorrow, add brushing your hair. Um, I think people just expect so much of themselves. We need to give ourselves more grace and just accept life and
00:38:03
Speaker
make the best of it like it sounds so corny but i mean they're really there's no really other option right like you just have to do the best i i appreciate you ending with that ray of hope right that you will get through it right um there are not i don't i don't know that there would be really anything in this life that might be more difficult than getting through something like that but
00:38:27
Speaker
to watch those who have gone before and to see your experience and to know, okay, today it might be a struggle to get in the bathroom and go to the bathroom. But in a year, it won't. And in another year, it'll even be a little bit better. Maybe with a little bit of backpedaling, but that it will get better. It will get better. And to keep moving forward, that's beautiful.
Building a Supportive Community for Grieving Parents
00:38:50
Speaker
Okay, so, Gemia, we know that you have found a little bit of purpose in this so far, and that you are trying to build some sort of community. You want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so it kind of goes back to just the point that I don't understand it. I don't have a purpose in it. Like, it's ruined. I hate saying ruined, but Ansley ruined everything. You guys have a conversation in the next life, right? Listen here, Missy.
00:39:18
Speaker
I'm like, my picture is totally messed up now, dude. But so I have decided to create purpose in it. And I am going back to school and I'm going to get my master's. I have my bachelor's right now. I'm going to get my master's in family and marriage therapy. And I'm going to specialize in grief and childhood trauma.
00:39:38
Speaker
And within that I think the community that I'm trying to create with a few other moms here that I've met Is just thriving in our grief like there's a difference between that victim mindset where you sit there and you pee your bed and you sit in it and You put your feet over the side of the bed and you walk to the bathroom and you do what you got to do It's not easy. It's not fun none of us enjoy it but
00:40:03
Speaker
there is purpose in it there is purpose in living there is a reason why we're still here and why it was her and not me and i don't know that but i can give purpose to every day that i live here on forward and when the perspective change when you realize how many people um lose a child every single day that
00:40:24
Speaker
number is devastating in of itself. And there is, there's quite a community. I know we all love social media, but TikTok does have quite a community base where there's a bunch of grieving, grieving parents, bereaved parents, however you want to call it.
00:40:41
Speaker
And there's lots of Facebook groups that people can reach out to where there's communities of just parents who are trying to weed their way through it and some get stuck in that mindset and some are thriving. But I think that more of us that we can put that example out there that you can get up and you can walk forward. Other people will see that and we'll start walking together versus each person walking individually and trying to wade through it on their own.
00:41:09
Speaker
So yeah, on TikTok, like I say, you can find my page on TikTok. Eventually, I'll have more information in a stronger community, but we're just kind of building that slowly just here within our local community in Boise, Idaho, and then we'll see where it goes from there. So you can find the TikTok account at at underscore Mia underscore LC.
00:41:34
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for allowing us to talk to you today and like the vulnerability that you brought to this episode. It's not easy, but it is happening and it is not only happening for you. It's happening for so many other, unfortunately becoming more common for parents to lose a child. And so we really know that this is something that there's like added to Bonnie and I on our, on our podcast talk about so many
00:42:03
Speaker
normal parenting things that are hard to get through. And then this added layer would make it almost unbearable. And so we really appreciate bringing you on this fresh in your grief to talk about it is possible to put one foot in front of the other and get up off the bed and go to the bathroom. Even if it's just because you have this thought in your mind that if I pee the bed, I'm going to have to clean a bigger mess up. Exactly. More laundry. Who wants more laundry? Me.
00:42:33
Speaker
Jimmy, it was so wonderful talking with you. Thank you so much for being who you are and for sharing your experiences with us. Thanks for listening to today's episode. We'll talk to you again next week. Thanks for listening, friends. Click the link in the show notes to subscribe to our email and never miss another episode. Show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes or sharing the podcast with a friend. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.