I’ve lived a full life—with all the ups, downs, sharp turns, and potholes that come with it. I'm a mother of two sons of retirement age: the younger, I'm total estranged from, and it's the same as losing a child; the elder, a practicing alcoholic, is tricky. As a former marriage and family therapist, a caregiver for my dad during his final years, and someone who has fought my own battles with addiction and recovery, I deeply understand being in hard places. My struggles were relationship acceptance and guilt and shame. I was an inadequate parent and it brought great pain to us all. But I finally sought help. I no longer accept the unrealistic perfect mother model. Once I understood my boundaries, our relationship improved. I stopped listening to abusive complaints. Now we can tell when things are "going south" and we can gracefully withdraw from conflict. Acceptance and boundaries are game changers. They can be for you, too. Let me support and help guide you in this process.

There is no grief like watching your child be turned against you — while you’re still alive, still loving them, still fighting to be in their life. Parental alienation is a form of emotional abuse, and it leaves deep scars — not just on the targeted parent, but on the child who is caught in the middle. I never imagined I’d experience the pain of being erased, rejected, or falsely portrayed — especially after surviving so much and just wanting to give my child the love and safety they deserved. But through manipulation, lies, and control, I found myself grieving a child who was still alive… but emotionally unreachable. The grief of parental alienation is complicated. It’s ongoing. It’s not recognized or validated the way other kinds of loss are. But I want you to know: you’re not alone. I’m still in that place — and I’ve learned how to keep showing up with love, patience, and dignity, even when it hurts. If you’re living through this, I’m here to hold space with you. To grieve with you. To remind you that your love still matters — even if you can’t see the results yet.

Grief has touched every corner of my life. I was involved in a tragic accident that took someone’s life and changed me forever. Not long after, I lost my soulmate to suicide. Then I lost a close friend. And just when I thought my heart couldn’t break any more, I lost my son to fentanyl a loss no parent should ever have to survive. Each of these moments shattered a piece of me. The kind of silence that grief creates is heavy, isolating, and sometimes unbearable. There’s no roadmap, no “right” way to move through it. But somehow, I’ve learned to carry it. I’ve learned that we don’t move on we move with it. If you’re living with heartbreak, trauma, or the kind of loss that changed everything, you don’t have to face it alone.

Losing my firstborn son to stillbirth was the most devastating experience of my life. It shattered everything I thought I knew about grief, motherhood, and myself. There’s no way to prepare for the silence where a heartbeat should be, or the way time seems to stop while the world keeps moving forward without your child in it. In the aftermath, I was overwhelmed by a grief that felt impossible to carry. People often don’t know what to say, and sometimes say nothing at all—leaving you to navigate a heartbreak that few truly understand. I know the pain of baby showers, birthdays, and milestones that never come. I know the isolation, the guilt, the anger, and the desperate need for someone who just gets it. Over time, and with a lot of emotional work, I’ve learned to live alongside the loss. I still carry it—but I also carry love, memory, and meaning. I’m here to hold space for you in your grief, whether you’re deep in the early days or years into processing the ache that never fully goes away.

When I became a mom just after turning 18, I had no idea what I was in for. I loved my daughter deeply, but I was still growing up myself—and trying to do it all alone. A few years later, I was in nursing school, pregnant again, and just barely holding it together when I found out my son had a serious heart condition. The next chapter was full of hospital visits, sleepless nights, and moments where I honestly didn’t know how I’d make it through. He eventually passed away. That loss cracked me open in a way I didn’t know was possible. There were days I felt numb, or angry, or like I was just pretending to be okay for the sake of my daughter. Postpartum depression hit hard, and for a while, I didn’t have the words to explain what I was feeling. But slowly, I started asking for help. Therapy helped. So did letting people in. Now, years later, I’ve learned how to carry both grief and joy—and I try to be someone others can lean on when things feel impossible.

12 years ago, my wife and I lost our daughter Margerrit. She died seconds after she was born, with there being nothing doctors could do. Since then, I have dealt with all sorts of triggers and other struggles, such as anxiety when my other children get sick, feeling a sense that a negative situation means doom, or just being unable to regulate my emotions well under stress.