The RememberGrams Blog is a place for you to come and find understanding, validation, and a sense of community while you navigate loss. Whether you are deep in grief from a recent loss, years out from a loss that affected you deeply, or just wanting to support a friend as they walk their own path, I hope you can find something useful here.
Absolutely nothing makes me (or anyone else) the expert on your grief or grief in general. Loss is personal, and so is our response.
My name is Mandy, and this writing reflects my own experiences with grief, loss, coping, and healing. My mom died suddenly a few days after my 26th birthday, and her death was a lesson and journey into the darkest places of my heart. Climbing out of that was a transformation from who I was before her death to who I became after. Eight years later, my youngest brother died suddenly from an accidental drug overdose at 23. The experiences of losing them have shaped me in ways I have only begun to untangle. Each loss was painfully similar in some ways and entirely different in others.
Every topic I write about here comes from my own lens of lived experiences, and I invite you to take with you what resonates and leave what does not serve you. You have your own story to dig deep into as you become the expert of your own grief.
Like so many people across the globe, COVID has found its way into our home. It started with our son and is currently residing in my husband, prompting him to hibernate in our guest room. Suddenly a ghost, staying away in an attempt to keep the rest of us safe and healthy. This is why […]
Take a few moments and think back on a person from your childhood. How many specific memories can you recall with them? I am a mother of two kids, growing up so rapidly that my breath catches when I stumble on a random picture of a little girl on her dad’s shoulders with her […]
The hidden grief of incarceration. The day my older brother walked away from the re-entry facility and did not return, he became an escaped federal inmate. The sentence he was serving was within weeks of completion. After that, he would have been a free man. My dad called me with the news, and my heart […]
My daughter turned two precisely one week before my mother died. The morning we got the news, we all piled into two cars to drive four hours to the area she lived; the silence in the car was palpable. You could hear a sniffle here or there, but it was overwhelmingly quiet. Even music would […]
I began imagining my older brother's death when I was 11 years old. I pictured it in a variety of ways, detailed and tragic. This was not because I wanted it to happen but because I was a child living in a world of magical thinking and anxiety. I believed that if I could imagine […]
She Would Want You to Be Happy He is at Peace Now This is God’s Plan Everything Happens for a Reason Platitudes for grief are an easy trap to fall into as a support person. We don’t know what to say, and these sound wise and true, and best of all, they sound […]
Knowing what not to say to someone who is grieving is almost more important than knowing the best and most supportive things you can say. People who are grieving have many heightened emotions and may be extra sensitive to the words you choose. Anger, when you are grieving, is not everyday anger. It is […]
During a business trip, well into my adulthood, I had what I can only describe as an epiphany. I was there as a sign language interpreter at a national conference for researchers who all hold multiple degrees and stand up on stage to share their knowledge and insights with large audiences of their peers. As […]
Before the days of TikTok and cell phones, teenage girl sleepovers looked different from those of today. One common 90’s sleepover pastime was to levitate a girl in the group. She would lie down on the floor completely dead weight, and we would gather around her, each putting our fingers lightly under her. We would […]
Both of my significant losses were sudden. My mom died of a sudden heart attack in her home. She was in her forties, and I remember the intensity of the shock and denial when I got that phone call. My brain worked very hard to protect me from the onslaught of pain that was to […]
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