How I Survived The Most Traumatic Year of My Life and Lived to Tell the Tale

You are strong. You are courageous. You are fearless. You are an inspiration.

These are words I have heard time and time again throughout my life. I have never truly believed those words, however, until today.

Yes, 2020 has been a shit-show for just about everyone. People have relapsed back into addiction. People have died from overdoses, and yes, I knew several of them. The suicide rate has skyrocketed at alarming rates. People are hopeless, destitute, and freightened.

Yet, I am still here. How can this be?

In December of 2019, after many years of fighting addiction, slaying my dragons, and seeking a spiritual salvation that made sense to me, I came to a place of peace and wholeness. I fell in love with myself, Spirit, and all of the messiness of life. Finally, I was able to complete my seven-year-long addiction memoir, Refusing to Drown. That particular "getting sober" part of my story was over.

Then, 2020 happened.

I thought the year was starting off with a bang. I fell in love with someone I felt was a gentle, kind human, and kindred spirit. I had been single for nearly nine years, so this was very refreshing and a welcome change.

After a year of fundraising for my startup, I finally found an investor willing to give us everything we needed to get this labor of love business of mine off the ground. That needed to happen because I invested every penny and all my time into this endeavor. I was living off of borrowed time and borrowed money, this business needed to happen. I was excited to finally be pressing the go button on startup number two!

My children were all doing well, situated in their lives. My daughter had finally found the direction she wanted to take as an educator of special needs children. My son with Autism, Eden, had finally found a job where he was happy, gainfully employed, and excited to go to every day. And my baby, the last to leave the nest, was just accepted into the school of his dreams 1800 miles away in upstate New York. I had never been prouder of my children. Life was finally starting to turn around and go in the right direction.

But swiftly the world began to fall apart.

My daughter totaled her car, lost her job, and was facing an isolated income-less quarantine with no means of transportation. She was scared. I dropped everything, drove to Georgia, and brought her home.

The investor pulled his investment commitment due to the uncertainty of Covid and how that would impact the economy. My balloon deflated further.

Now, what the hell was I going to do? My money had run out, no one was hiring, and the world was shutting down.

While I love my daughter, she and I together are like gasoline and fire. I knew quarantining in a tiny house with three people would be a disaster. So, I moved in with my boyfriend since he had a room he was willing to give me to make my own. At least we would have each other to quarantine with. We were madly in love; what could possibly go wrong?

Everything, that's what.

A month into the pandemic, I got the call that every mother fears. My son and his father were both dead. My world shattered in the blink of an eye. It was Easter Sunday. I ceased to breathe. I could not function. This was a trauma I did not think I would ever recover from.

Everything I knew to be true around me collapsed. And my grief… I have still yet to find words for that. Probably because there are none that can rightly convey the feelings of a mother's grief. Otherworldly would be a nice adjective, because nothing in this world prepares you for that kind of pain.

For the next two months, I moved through life as if in a dream. A horrible dream. Every night finding solace in my tears that would erupt like clockwork and would cease only when there were no more tears left to be shed. The hole in my heart seemed massive.

All I knew to do was surrender. My grief was bigger than anything I had ever known. I couldn't control it. I tried. I failed.

I surrendered my tears, every last one of them. I surrendered my pain. I surrendered my former self, as I knew I would never see her again. I surrendered my sanity, because I knew I was losing it. And I surrendered my son to Heaven, a place where he could be free.

Even after what has appeared to be the greatest loss and most severe trauma I will ever live through in my life, I could still find the faith to hit my knees and say, "Whatever You will have of me." Just for shit's sake, You gotta give me a break.

What other choice did I have if I wanted, at some point, to find peace?

I felt lost. I wanted to die. I saw my psyche shatter to the floor. I feared for my life and my sobriety. I had to allow myself to not be ok. No one was really expecting me to be, anyway. The world was collapsing, and I was collapsing with it.

My new partner, however, was not ok with me not being ok. He was no longer the center of my Universe. Survival, grief, and sanity were taking center stage, not him. I tried to play along and meet his insatiable needs as best as I could. I failed. So, I was quickly devalued and discarded.

In a rage, he threw me out of his house with nothing more than my backpack, my journals, and my son's ashes while he sat on the sofa, flipping through his phone. He packed up the rest of my stuff and left it on the front porch for me to pick up a few days later.

I hadn't even caught my breath from the murder-suicide of my son and his father. Here I was driving around not knowing what direction I was going, which way was up, or where I was sleeping that night.

The sadness of my reality began to take hold as I realized I was walking around the Summer streets of New Orleans with a box of my son's ashes. It was the most pathetic and heartbreaking situation I have ever found myself in. It was surreal. I believe my psyche shattered just a little bit more.

One foot in front of the other. One breathe at a time. One phone call at a time. I started falling back into coherency. Find a place to sleep. Find a storage unit for my stuff. Wrangle people who love me to help move my things. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the feelings, let them pass. Feel nothing, be ok with that.

I have the most amazing and supportive people in my life who love me. Without them, I would not have survived this year.

Truth be told, I was glad to be out of that house and out of that relationship. It was a blessing. My belongings went straight from the front porch to a storage unit where they remain today. And I was getting to set off to live my nomadic dream, free from attachments, precisely as I needed it to be.

I had been dreaming of nomadic living for about 10 years. Once my last child flew the nest I was taking off. To where I did not care. That dream was forced into reality with the words "you need to leave, now." I kind of see it as God doing for me what I could not do for myself. I was shell-shocked, re-traumatized, and sick to my stomach, but grateful.

When my daughter moved back to New Orleans, I told her she could have all of my house contents with a caveat. She had to have space for me to sleep when I would come in town from time to time. She agreed. We just didn't know it would be sooner rather than later.

As I lay sleeping on my son's old mattress on the floor in my daughter's living room, I felt a tinge of reality hit me in the face. I had no more home. I had no more comfy bed. I had no more boyfriend. I had no more startup. I had no more money. My son and his dad were gone. And the world would never be the same again.

Humility had found me as it had never done so before. I felt so small. So powerless. So vulnerable. But there was nothing to fear. Then a feeling hit me like a freight train, and it felt like freedom.

The world, as I knew it, ended, and I was free to choose how I would participate in this new world that was being erected right before our Covid-laden eyes.

With all the things I left behind went the attachment I had to them. My ego died a little bit more on that mattress of humility as I understood what was truly important in this life. It wasn't things, or status, or money, or even relationship. It was how fully and with how much love I lived my life.

Then I heard his sweet little voice speak to me. "And you don't have to worry about me anymore, mom; now go live your life."

Eden was right. I had spent the last 21 years worrying about this child. As he grew to be an adult, I worried even more. That burden has been lifted from my heart, and the only thing that remains is peace.

After my dad sat me down to tell me that he had saved some money for me in case of an emergency, my newfound homelessness an obvious emergency, I was able to get a room at a hostel in New Orleans. It was a funky place, and I felt right at home. Gypsy living had found me right in my own back yard. Wow, my vision finally caught up with my reality. This was happening!

Three months after Eden died, we were able to have a small ceremony. It was perfect and beautiful in every way. I was grateful that I had time to plan, get my head a little bit above the trauma, and give my son the send-off that he deserved no matter how his life may have ended and who he took with him.

Death. The final frontier. It has never frightened me. Probably because I believe it to be a silly parlor trick that God plays with us. Being highly clairvoyant, I have felt Spirits around me my entire life. I know they exist. I know there is "something else" because I feel it, I sense it, and I know it is there. But I have never felt the need to speak to them or engage with them, I just know they are around. But now, I do.

I began playing games with Eden that looked a lot like hide and seek. "Send me a shooting star, Eden." And one would come. "Send me something with gold sparkles containing the color cerulean." And something would come. Once I started feeling more at ease that he was really there in another form, I stopped the game playing. We talk. I feel his presence near me. I can sense his ethereal energy.

Eden is happy. He is free. He is no longer suffering. He is having a really good time where he is. And I could not be more pleased about that. Yes, I miss him like stupid crazy, but I want whats best for him, not what is best for me. Knowing he is happy, makes me happy. I choose to see it this way. I must see it this way.

I take comfort in knowing that my son is exactly where he is supposed to be doing exactly what he is supposed to be doing, and so am I. His life ended exactly how it was supposed to when it was supposed to. There is nothing in me that wants to question "why." I don't blame God for taking my son away. I thank God for giving him to me in the first place. What a gift that child was to me.

Both he and his father's suffering is over. For that, I am grateful. There is profound peace in that.

In August, my youngest son and I packed up my car with all of my belongings that were precious to me, and we began the three-day road trip to upstate New York to move him into the dorm. It was a sweet trip. I cannot believe my baby is grown. He grew up quickly this year. But I am not ready to let him go. I can't bare the loss of another child. I thought I was ready. I'm not ready.

So, I'm going to stick around Rochester, NY for a while until I am comfortable that he (ahem, me) is ready to fly the nest.

I flew a few hours away to the Adirondack Mountains, where I found loving people who were kind and generous. Then I flew to Vermont, where I was placed in a beautiful country setting with a woman who had also been bereaved. I took so much solace visiting her young son's grave which was on the property. I felt his presence, too.

Nature called me into her bosom of the mountains and held me there to grieve and cry and howl like a banshee, and that I did.

I was sent angels that had also lost children who would call me and check on me and remind me to breathe. People took me into their homes, fed me, clothed me, and sometimes cried with me.

Occasionally, someone would appear as a distraction to my grief to remind me that I was still alive. In return, I gave them the only thing I could... love, gratitude, and often a song.

I was sent love in so many forms, and I let it all in. I felt the Universe supporting me, loving me, and healing me every step of the way. It did so, because I let it.

When I needed money, money appeared. When I needed a shoulder to cry on, someone would show up. When I needed solitude, I was provided that in abundance. And when I needed to hear the voice of Spirit, all I needed to do was close my eyes and open my heart, and Spirit spoke with immense clarity.

So, here I am. It is the last day of 2020, and I find myself in a profound place of peace, serenity, and, dare I say it... happiness. How can this be? I asked myself. This has effectively been the worst year of my entire life.

The answer lies in the brave choices I made to choose love over fear and life over death. To feel my feelings, instead of run from them. To embrace them, and ask them to teach me. Feelings are temporary only if you allow them to pass through.

I asked Eden what he wanted for Christmas this year. "Your happiness, mom. Just be happy."

Merry Christmas, Eden.

Happiness, like love, is a choice. I choose to allow joy to exist amid grief. To accept what is as being what is supposed to be. To see every shitty situation as an opportunity for spiritual growth, staying open, and willing to learn and evolve. I choose to keep my heart open and vulnerable instead of closing it down due to fear, resentment, or rage. I choose to find gratitude in the most painful, earthshattering of situations. And I choose to forgive.

That last part, admittedly, is taking some time. But I am willing to stay open to allow forgiveness to appear in my heart for both myself and others. Until then, I will keep on choosing to live the best life I can, full of purpose, peace, and true contentment.

For more of my story, listen to the Refusing to Drown podcast. It has been quite a journey!