When Larry lost his son, Rob, to suicide six years ago, Larry was devasted. He immediately found a grief counselor and signed up to be in a grief support group. After two months of waiting, he attended his first support group meeting. He said he did not expect to like being in a support group, but, shortly after starting, Larry realized that he had found ‘his people’. Larry felt like they could speak a language that ‘ordinary’ parents could not understand.
When one of the other parents in his support group wished out loud that there was a guidebook for bereaved parents, Larry felt inspired to write such a book. Larry wrote ‘A Space in the Heart’ (available on Amazon) as an honest guide to help bereaved parents while they are in their deepest, darkest pain.
Larry writes:
“When your child is taken from you, you are no longer ordinary parents. Ordinary parents don’t visit their child in a cemetery. Ordinary parents don’t cry themselves to sleep at night. Ordinary parents don’t wake up each morning knowing they’ll never see their child again. We become extra ordinary. But after a while, something strange takes place that’s right out of a Marvel comic book. A metamorphosis occurs during our grief and mourning, transforming us from extra ordinary to extraordinary.
We are extraordinary parents who must go on living in the world with a hole in our hearts. We are extraordinary parents who, in many cases, still love and care for our other children. We are extraordinary parents who go to work every day and function as human beings, while most people are unaware of our secret identities. We are extraordinary parents who feel things that no ordinary parent has ever felt, and we can endure the deepest pain because that has become one of our superpowers.”
You may not feel like you have superpowers. You may feel weaker than you have ever been in your life, but Larry’s words inspire me to hold my head a little higher. We are no longer ordinary parents. In fact, we are no longer ordinary people at all. We are extraordinary and have so much to offer the world.
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