After seven and a half years and 333 episodes, I took a month to step back.
Not because I don’t love this work.
Not because it isn’t meaningful.
But because sometimes even sacred work calls for a pause — a chance to breathe, to be present with my family, and to tend to my own heart.
When it felt right to return, there was only one person I wanted sitting across from me.
Stephanie — Keyan’s mom — was the very first bereaved mother I ever interviewed. Even before that, she was the woman sitting across the circle at Starlight Ministries just weeks after Andy died. She was further down this road than I was, and I remember studying her quietly, wondering how she was standing, how she was surviving. Somewhere in that watching was a small but steady hope: If she can do this, maybe I can too.
This conversation feels like a full circle.
Stephanie speaks honestly about what it means to be nine and a half years into child loss and still say, “I hate being a mom whose child has died.” She talks about the days that still knock her off her feet — about how grief doesn’t disappear, but changes shape.
For five years, she poured herself into serving other grieving families at Starlight. It was good work. Holy work. But somewhere along the way, the work that once helped her heal began to crowd out her own healing. As her therapist told her, “Anything you give energy to takes away from your healing energy.”
So she stepped away.
We talk about what it means to reassess. To recognize when something that once brought relief no longer does. To admit that even good, sacred things can become too much.
We discuss guilt — the complicated guilt of enjoying your living children, of laughing, of taking a vacation, of holding a grandbaby and crying at the same time. The way joy always carries a shadow.
Stephanie shares the freedom she felt on a recent trip when she realized she didn’t have to tell everyone she met that she had a daughter who died. And we talk about how early grief feels visible to the world — and later grief can feel hidden.
There is so much tenderness here. So much honesty.
We talk about scars — about being healed versus being cured. About how grief may never be cured, but healing can still happen, even when the scar remains.
Most of all, this episode is about seasons.
Seasons of saying yes.
Seasons of saying no.
Seasons of pouring out.
Seasons of pulling back.
And about the quiet courage it takes to keep learning your grief as it changes.
If you are wondering whether it is okay to step back…
If you are carrying guilt for laughing…
If you are years into this and surprised that it still hurts…
You are not alone.
And maybe you need this reminder, too:
You can miss them fiercely and still build a life that holds joy.
You can carry the scar and keep walking.
You can be healing, even when you are not cured.
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