Journaling

When Michael was in the hospital, I started keeping in touch with everyone back home through CaringBridge. As a form of personal grief counseling, I continued journaling for over a year after Michael died. When I stopped doing it on that site, publicly, a dear friend presented me with a printed copy of each of my posts, and encouraged me to compile them all into a book.

It took me ten years to get to a place where I felt I could do this, but in 2016 it came to fruition. “It” is my book, “From High School to Heaven.” Every once in a while I pick up the book, and reflect on what I wrote, how I was feeling, what I was thinking, on random days during that first year after Michael’s death. My plan is to share some of those entries here in this blog from time to time. But I also don’t want this website, or this blog, to focus only on the tragedy and sadness that brought us here, but to also show the work that we do, and the impact it has made in our community, and beyond.

Changing behaviors and social “norms” can take a long time, and can be tedious and sometimes feel unreachable. But even small, seemingly unsignificant changes to one person, can be a most positive life-changing impact on someone else. Those positive changes are happening here, and can happen everywhere! One small change, has the potential to be the difference between life and death. So.. is it worth it? Speaking as a mother who lost a child to such a preventable death… absolutely!! Join me here, as we talk about it; as we share; as we learn and grow; as we Make Good Memories in our communities.