CHAPTER 1
Once Upon a Time I Had a Fairy Tale Life
"Change can happen at any time, but transition comes along when one chapter of your life is over and another is waiting in the wings to make its entrance."
-William Bridges, author of The Way of Transition
One thing is certain; nothing can ever be counted on to remain the same. When you try too hard to hold onto a time or a person or a feeling, it seems to be the very moment you are forced into transition, and it changes you, forever.
I remember the bliss of walking the Red Carpet at the Emmys when my husband was nominated as writer/producer for a show called Beauty and the Beast. The CBS television series was a modern-day fairy tale starring Linda Hamilton as the Beauty, and Ron Perelman as the Beast.
I thought of the years David and I envisioned the possibility of this very day. The night was so alive, radiating excitement, expectation, glamour, and beauty. It represented an achievement indeed, but enchanting nights like these often veil the common thread of human experience. It's hard to imagine sometimes, but these are real people with real lives, sometimes filled with joy, and sometimes, great tragedy.
We had a lot to be grateful for, but working in the entertainment industry wasn't always what it appeared to be. Sometimes we struggled to pay our bills, but we continued to stay focused on our goals and developed new storylines for new shows, hoping the next one would sell.
Our greatest achievement, however, was our growing family. Our two sons were at home on this special night, anxiously watching television for a glimpse of "Mom and Dad" on the Red Carpet.
The roundness of yet another child, a daughter, was hidden underneath the soft fabric layers of my gown.
I was caught up in the magic of fairy tales, believing that love conquers all, and everything I ever dreamed of could come true.
No one could have told me on that magical night, our family would soon be ripped apart by the worst that could happen.
Just five years later, our 16-year old son, Garrett, woke up with a fever and was dead the next morning. My beautiful, healthy, vibrant boy went from life to death in less than 24 hours by a lethal killer, bacterial meningitis.
It was on that tragic day, our castle walls tumbled to the ground.
Nothing evokes a more profound life change than loss, and nothing changes life like the death of a child.
It's often referred to as "the worst that can happen." When it's your child, you've unwillingly joined a group of people who know how it feels to have chapters of your life stripped away. Your future is changed forever, and your past will never, ever be the same.
Whether a child dies in the womb, in the early years, as a teenager, or as an adult, the pain that parents feel is the same. It's the deepest loss imaginable and no one is prepared.
How could we? We can't even bear the thought of it.
The death of a child is like an assault on everything you hoped for, dreamed of, believed in, and lived for. Everything is challenged, even your will to live.
At this point you have to make a choice: will you choose to go on living life, or will you remain trapped forever in a sad stifling world of bereavement?
How can you make a choice when you can't even breathe? Your focus is obsessively on the child you've lost. Your fairy tale is now set in a deep dark forest where grief is ominous and shrouds every bit of light in your life.
You know beyond a shadow of doubt, when you wake up in the morning, the sorrow will still be there, and it's another day, struggling to accept life with this cavernous hole in your heart.
Suddenly, those beautiful, joyful memories of your child's early years are painfully colored by the aura of loss. The death has changed every chapter of your book of life. The chapters are chaotic and out of sequence, because your child defied the natural order of life and left this earth before you.
You're now faced with having to create a whole new way of existing. You can't begin to believe that is even possible now ...
But you will.
How? You ask, when grief is everywhere? It's like the air that you breathe, or the sky that is always there. You can't hide from it or escape it. As bereaved parents we feel life moving forward without us, and we begin to question how we can possibly go on.
You search for the lost feeling of wholeness, a time when you were happy. There's no renegotiating, and there is no replacing what's been taken away. You are in the depths of despair. It strips away every part of your being, and all that you thought "was," is now gone forever.
Do you recognize yourself in these words and feelings? Will you ever be happy again, you ask?
Yes ... you will.
I wrote this book as your guide, surrounding you like a comforting blanket woven with hope, love, and inspiration. Let me hold you and guide you. I've been through it, and I've survived.
You are not alone, I promise. There are many, like me, who have walked this path before you. It won't be easy to resurrect your life, but there are steps you can take to introduce peace, purpose, and joy back into your life. You will regain a quality of life that you can live with ...
Yes ... you will.
I promise that the lessons learned along the way will give you a better life than you are capable of imagining right now, because at this moment, you are in your deepest sorrow. You are in the middle of a grief storm.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, groundbreaking psychiatrist and pioneer in near death studies, introduced her theory of the five stages of grief in her book, On Death and Dying. You may recognize the stages:
• Denial
• Anger
• Bargaining
• Depression
• Acceptance
Each person's grief is unique, but you'll see yourself in these stages and the framework it provides in beginning to accept life with loss.
Through the process of recognizing my own Five Stages of Grief, I stumbled onto the path of a sixth stage. I call it Resilience.
At some point I realized resilience was my only...
