Losing a Child: Always Andy's Mom

When pediatrician mom of three, Marcy Larson's 14 yo son, Andy, was killed in a car accident in 2018, she felt like her life was over. In many ways, that life was over, and a new one forced to begin in its place. Come alongside her as she works through this journey of healing. She discusses grief and child loss with other grieving parents and those who work to help them in their grief. This podcast is for grieving parents and well as those who support them.

Episode 360: Find the Light. Walk to It. - Lily's Mom 08/06/2026

Episode 360: Find the Light. Walk to It. - Lily's Mom Jamie's mother gave her a gift years before she knew she would need it. Her mother would say, "During times of darkness, find a little bit of light. Stand in it. Be still and wait for the next bit. Then walk to that light." It sounds simple. And then you lose your child, and you understand what it actually costs to do it. Jamie lost her daughter Lily in September of 2025. Lily was eighteen years old, a lionheart, a girl who was fierce and loyal and creative and strong, who was studying to be a primary school teacher, who loved animals and made Christmas crafts for the whole family every year, whose last tattoo was her grandmother's birth flower in her grandmother's own handwriting. She died suddenly on a Saturday night after finishing a double shift at work, from a previously undiagnosed cardiac condition, and Jamie's world was split in two - a before, and an after, and a rupture so complete that nothing on the other side of it looked the same. And yet she has kept walking. One small bit of light at a time. The best friend who happened to have become a funeral director just five years earlier, and who was called to Lily's body that very night, and who knew immediately to take her fingerprints. The podcast that found Jamie at exactly the right moment, even though she had been searching for months. The counselor who drew a circle and said grief never gets smaller, but your world grows bigger around it, and the people who stay help you carry it. The TikTok reel Lily had made of everything that mattered to her, shown to her by a friend at the exact moment Jamie was paralyzed in her daughter's room, not knowing what to keep. Lily's friends, still coming over, still sitting in her room, all wearing lily tattoos on their wrists. Light. And then another. And then another. Jamie says it plainly near the end of this conversation, quoting something she had heard on this very podcast: God protects us from nothing. But he sustains us through all things. She believes that. And the ten months since Lily died are her proof. Find the light. Walk to it. Be still. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/42343605

Episode 359 - A Season of Tears - Sebastian's Mom 07/30/2026

Episode 359 - A Season of Tears - Sebastian's Mom Jackie knew it was coming. That is one of the hardest things about this kind of grief. For years, she had watched her son Sebastian struggle with mental health and addiction, and there came a point, as she puts it, where it was no longer an if but a when. She braced herself. She prepared. She thought maybe that would soften the blow. It did not. Sebastian was Jackie's firstborn, a towheaded, blue-eyed dynamo who walked at ten months old and never really stopped moving. He was curious about everything, passionate about soccer, and a national chess champion not once but twice before he decided it was no longer cool. He played D2 college soccer, loved the outdoors, and could make a room come alive. He and Jackie were so much alike that they butted heads constantly, but they always knew they loved each other. His last words to her were I love you, Mom. He died by suicide in 2017 at the age of 23. He was in a rehab program. He was supposed to be safe. Jackie says she never found herself angry at God, but she was angry at Sebastian for a long time. She clung to Jesus anyway. She went to church and hid in the front corner of the earliest service where nobody knew her, and she cried for two years. She went walking every day and listened to her Bible, unable to read it, barely retaining any of it, but letting it wash over her. She could only get through the Psalms, underlining every lament. She told people simply: I cannot see God in the midst of this, but I know He is there. Where else am I going to go? She calls those first years her season of tears. And she allowed herself to be in it. What she has built on the other side of it is remarkable. After thirteen writing classes, years of anonymous essays on Substack, and the steady encouragement of a writing coach and a grief counselor she would read her writing aloud to, Jackie has written a book. It is called Messy Mourning: Hope for Mothers Grieving the Loss of a Child by Suicide, and it is written specifically for the mothers who know this particular grief, the grief that comes wrapped in silence, the grief no one quite knows what to say about. Jackie is clear: suicide loss is different. Not harder or easier than other losses, but different. The world does not know how to respond to it. People go quiet. Well-meaning things get said that land like stones. And beneath it all, there is still an unspoken stigma that Jackie is determined to push back against with every word she writes. Her son was more than how he died. Her season of tears was not the end of her story. And no mother who has lost a child this way should have to carry it alone. is available on Amazon and at , where you can also find companion resources including a journal, a 30-day lament guide, and a playlist her daughter made in Sebastian's memory. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/42264195

Episode 358: The Conversation that Keeps Us - Payton's Mom 07/23/2026

Episode 358: The Conversation that Keeps Us - Payton's Mom Payton loved rainbows. She knew all the colors, knew them in order, and would paint them perfectly every time. But she always added a pink line at the bottom, because she simply could not understand why pink was not already there. Every single rainbow she ever painted had that extra pink line. The Friday before she died, she painted one more. It was still drying on the easel at her Christian school when her class came in on Monday morning. Payton was five years old, a ray of sunshine with bright blue eyes and blonde hair, the kind of little girl who would run up to someone she had never met, say hi, give them a hug, and be ready to go be best friends. She cheered for her little brother Blake when he struggled to hit milestones. She gave her toys away to neighbors because that was just who she was. She asked endless questions about heaven, about the colors no one on earth has ever seen yet. On the Sunday before Thanksgiving, she was struck and killed by a neighbor's car while walking her little brother around their quiet neighborhood circle. Holly is an ER nurse and a paramedic. She ran CPR on her own daughter in the entryway of their home, called her hospital to get the trauma team ready, and walked through the trauma bay knowing exactly where she was going. She was usually the calm during someone else's storm. That day, she could not be that for her own child. Payton was gone that afternoon. In this conversation, Holly speaks with remarkable honesty about the six months since, about navigating grief alongside a new baby, about walking away from a career she has loved since she was eighteen, about the foundation () she and her husband started in Payton's name, and about a faith that has been shaken to its core, but has not let go. She tells God every single day: I am so mad at you. But I am going to remain faithful. Some days she does not believe the words when she says them. She says them anyway. And her friend asked her something that stopped her cold. When you are doubting God, who are you actually talking to? If you did not believe He was real, you would not be in conversation at all. I shared something I carried early in my own grief. As long as I was angry at God, that meant I believed He existed. And as long as I believe He exists, I am okay. The conversations may be cruddy. But as long as we are still having them, we are okay. That is the conversation that keeps us. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/42193030

Episode 357: I Can't Go On; I'll Go On - Anna's Dad 07/16/2026

Episode 357: I Can't Go On; I'll Go On - Anna's Dad There is a line from Samuel Beckett that a friend whispered to Stephen outside the hospital room where his wife Kate was dying. I can't go on. I'll go on. It became, as Stephen says in his memoir, a pretty accurate summary of his life after Kate and Anna. Anna came home from China at seven months old, a charming, sweet, luminously happy little girl who had a gift for drawing people to her. Children would flock to her on the playground, sensing something in her they could not name. She loved music, loved to sing, loved every meal she was ever given. She also had a rare and devastating neurogenetic disorder called Niemann-Pick Type C, diagnosed when she was five, after a fall and a head bleed led doctors to notice her enlarged liver and spleen. They told Stephen and Kate she would likely not live past thirteen. She lived to be twenty. Kate died of lung cancer in March of 2012, three years before Anna. She walked into the hospital on her own, refused to let Stephen call an ambulance, would not let him help her through the door. Doctors were puzzled by how a woman with a tumor wrapped around her lung could still be walking around. It was, Stephen says quietly, very much on brand for her. He was left to grieve his wife while watching his daughter continue her slow decline, and to hold his younger daughter Jane together through all of it. He did not do it gracefully. He did it the only way anyone does it. Imperfectly. One foot, then the other. I recognized something in Stephen's words that I have carried in my own grief. There were so many days when I turned to my dear friend and said, I can't do this. And every time, she looked right back at me and said, Marcy, you are doing this. That is the whole of it, right there. You feel like you cannot, and somehow, impossibly, you do. Stephen's memoir, A Ribbon for Your Hair, captures that truth with a writer's precision and a father's aching heart. He reflects on the weather of grief, how you live in it, how sometimes you notice it and sometimes it is just there. He shares the grief advice he received over the years, much of it well-meaning, almost none of it useful. And he stands on a sidewalk outside the apartment where he and Kate were once happy, weeping, while strangers walk past him as if nothing in the world has changed. Because for them, nothing has. That is grief's loneliest truth. He survived it because he had to. Because Jane needed him. Because that is what we do. I can't go on. I'll go on. is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/42111065

Episode 356: The Broken Heart Stays Open - Noah's Dad 07/09/2026

Episode 356: The Broken Heart Stays Open - Noah's Dad Bryan carried the sadness. That was his decision. Not the devastation, not the incapacitation, but the sadness. A conscious, daily choice to let his broken heart stay open rather than rebuild the walls around it. And in doing so, he discovered something he did not expect. The broken heart made him better. Noah was Bryan's son, born in 1987, a boy of rare and tender empathy who greeted his father every morning before work and asked, at ten years old, to attend the funeral of a classmate's father because he already knew, somehow, how to be present in someone else's pain. He grew into a young man full of promise, studying finance and Chinese, warm and funny and deeply loved. And then, quietly, the opioid crisis found him. He once told his father that the first time he took one of those drugs, it was the first time in his life he had ever felt completely free of anxiety. What followed were years of loving a child through addiction. Rehab. Sobriety. Relapse. Bryan eventually had to fire his own son from the company he ran. He and his wife told Noah they could no longer pay his rent, that they would support his recovery but not his destruction. Noah understood. He said a friend would drive him to rehab. The call from rehab never came. Bryan had the police do a welfare check. Noah was gone. In the years since, Bryan made a choice. He would not rebuild what grief had torn down. He would stay open, stay soft, stay reachable by other people's suffering. Because he had come to understand that as long as we tell ourselves we are safe, as long as we build the little narratives that say the worst cannot happen to us, we create invisible walls between ourselves and everyone around us who is hurting. Grief demolished those walls. And in their rubble, something beautiful grew. One evening, Bryan and his wife Carolyn walked together and reached the familiar dead end of the why. And one of them said, simply, oh well. And they both laughed. Not because anything was less sad. But because releasing the need for an answer brought such relief that joy slipped in uninvited, right through the broken places. Joy and sorrow are not opposites. The broken heart that stays open is the one that feels everything more deeply. Carrying deep sadness, Bryan says, is a condition for me being as compassionate a person as I can be. Bryan's book, The Gift of a Broken Heart, is available wherever books are sold and at . /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/42022405

Episode 355 - No One Right Way – Gwen & Marcy 07/02/2026

Episode 355 - No One Right Way – Gwen & Marcy This week's episode didn't happen the way we planned. It was supposed to be a livestream. And then, within the same week, both Gwen and I found ourselves facing something neither of us expected. My mother-in-law, who had been like a mother to me for nearly 30 years, was suddenly placed on hospice. Gwen's own mother was in hospice as well. We looked at each other and simply said, we cannot do a livestream this week. So we didn't. We let it be smaller, quieter, and just the two of us. And in a strange way, that became exactly the right backdrop for the topic at hand. This episode is built around questions we posed to our community about navigating grief alongside the demands of daily work. What tips would you share about going back to work? How do you balance the daily grind of work and your grief? Do your coworkers and bosses know the pain you carry, and how much do you disclose? The answers that poured in revealed something important. There is no one right way to do this. Some of you went back to work and told everyone everything. Others went back and told no one at all. Some of you simply could not go back, not to the same job, not to any job, at least not yet. All of those are valid. All of those are normal, depending on your circumstances, your safety, and what you personally need in order to function. Practical tips came pouring in too, like asking for help navigating FMLA paperwork, returning part-time before full-time, and clearly communicating boundaries to coworkers and supervisors rather than trying to silently muscle through. Some of you found that work became a meaningful place to honor your child, while others found it became a place to set grief aside for a few hours, a kind of necessary, temporary relief. The conversation around disclosure was especially honest. Some workplaces respond with grace and flexibility, and others do not. Some losses carry complicated layers underneath them that need to stay private for many reasons. Disclosure is not a one-time decision but something navigated moment by moment, situation by situation, for the rest of your life. And things change. I once believed I could never see patients again, retreating into administrative work instead, only to find myself months later unable to bear administrative work at all, wanting nothing but my patients back. A job that meant nothing before a child's death can become someone's entire calling afterward. Grief and work are not static, and neither are we. If you are navigating this balance yourself right now, we hope this conversation reminds you that whatever choice you have made, or are making, is the right one for you. There is no universal answer here. There is only yours. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41935285

Episode 354: Story Keepers - Jacob's Dad 06/25/2026

Episode 354: Story Keepers - Jacob's Dad We are all born into a house of stories. That is something Dan, Jacob's dad, believes deeply, and it shapes everything about how he has carried his grief. Dan is a professional storyteller by trade, and when his son Jacob was born fragile and uncertain in the NICU, not expected to survive, Dan did the only thing he knew how to do. He sat by his side and talked. He told stories, sang songs, even recited Chaucer in Middle English, because he believed his voice could be a beacon, something Jacob's soul could navigate by to find his way into the world. He called the experience talking him in. Jacob lived. He was eventually diagnosed with Prader-Willi syndrome, a condition Dan explains in simple terms as leaving someone always, organically hungry, with locks needed on the fridge not because Jacob was sneaky, but because his body simply could not register being full. He grew up big, sometimes teased, slow to make friends, but open to the world in a way Dan deeply admired. His great-grandmother told him once that he was born for a purpose, and Jacob carried that with him quietly for the rest of his life. Years later, working as a beloved school crossing guard in Toronto, he helped save a toddler who had run into oncoming traffic, and told his dad afterward, through tears, maybe that is why I chose to live. Jacob died at 26, eight days after a car accident, with enough time for his mother and brother to make it to his bedside. Dan calls those final eight days talking him out. He believes there is a kind of circle in that. Talked in at the beginning of his life. Talked out at the end of it. In the two years that followed, Dan did something he had spent years encouraging other people to do, first as a storyteller in residence at Baycrest Health Sciences, and later in palliative care settings. He became Jacob's story keeper. He gathered every scrap of Jacob he could find, poems, apology letters, nicknamed lists of fishing rods and fedoras, all of Jacob's own words and ways, and wove them into a book written entirely in Jacob's imagined voice. It is called I Am Full: Stories for Jacob, and a major publisher offered to print it if Dan would write about his own experience instead. He said no. The book was never meant to be about him. It was meant to be about Jacob. Dan's belief is simple and profound. We are each other's story keepers. Not just parents and children, but everyone who has ever loved someone and chosen to remember them out loud. He shares the story of an Italian woman in a palliative care unit, encouraged to collect her dying mother's proverbs in her final days, who became her mother's story keeper in the process. He shares the old expression that a person is not truly dead until they are forgotten. This podcast exists, in many ways, to do exactly what Dan describes. We tell stories. We collect stories. We keep them, together, so that no child is ever just a name on a headstone, but a whole, full, remembered life. If this conversation moves you, Dan's book is available through Signature Editions, a small publisher out of Winnipeg and can be purchased on Amazon. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41803355

Episode 353: What Keeps Them Close - Josh's Mom 06/18/2026

Episode 353: What Keeps Them Close - Josh's Mom There is a fear that lives quietly inside almost every grieving parent. It rarely gets said out loud, but it shapes so much of how we carry our grief. If I let go of the pain, will I lose them too? Caryn, Josh's mom, spent years living inside that fear before she finally understood something that changed everything for her. Josh was Caryn's oldest son, a champion wrestler who came within reach of Olympic dreams, smart and witty and utterly fearless. A week and a half before he died in a motorcycle accident at 23, he told her three times that he was invincible. Caryn believes now that in some sense he was right. His soul was invincible. It was only his body that was not. The accident happened just eight days after Caryn and her husband told their sons they were separating. It was, as she puts it, the year from hell. She remembers saying out loud to her friends that she did not think she could live through it. But Caryn had tools most people do not. As a hypnotherapist of over twenty years, she understood the power of the subconscious mind, and in the days after Josh died, she leaned on every tool she had. She also began experiencing something she never expected. Messages from Josh in the middle of the night. An unearthly peace on her deck just days after his death. A spiritual awakening she did not see coming and, by her own admission, would have dismissed as woo-woo before. What grew out of all of it was a hard-won understanding about the difference between holding on and letting go. For a long time, Caryn held Josh so tightly that she could feel him gently telling her it was time to let him run free, that he did not need her to hold on so tight anymore. Releasing that grip did not come easily. It felt, for a while, like losing him all over again. But what came after was lighter. Freer. And Josh was still there. That is the heart of everything Caryn now teaches in her hypnotherapy practice and her grief retreats. Releasing the heavy emotions, the anger, the guilt, the haunting last images that will not leave you alone, does not mean releasing your child. Caryn believes, and I believe this too, that what keeps our children close is never the pain. It is the love. The pain is simply what we are afraid to put down. Caryn now leads four day grief retreats in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where she walks grieving parents through exactly this work. Her next retreat is coming up in July, and at the time of this release, there are still a few spots remaining if you feel called to it. You can find all the details at . Whatever your path looks like, I hope this conversation reminds you of something important. You do not have to keep carrying the pain to keep them close. Your love already does that. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41688735

Episode 352 - You Are Seen - Isaiah's Mom 06/11/2026

Episode 352 - You Are Seen - Isaiah's Mom After losing Isaiah, Mona did what so many grieving parents do. She disappeared. Not all at once. But slowly, quietly, she started skipping the family gatherings where she would feel his absence most sharply, surrounded by all his cousins growing up without him. She got good at wearing a mask, at being on for other people, at performing a version of herself that did not make anyone uncomfortable. And when the exhaustion of all that pretending became too much, she retreated. Into the cave, as she calls it. Until she felt ready to come out again. It took her a long time to learn the difference between solitude and isolation. One is necessary. The other is lonely. Isaiah was Mona's only child, her greatest joy, a boy who told her he loved her at least ten times a day and meant it every time. He was funny and easygoing and patient in ways she was not, the kind of kid who would watch you drop the roof of a gingerbread house and just shrug and say it was okay. He was thirteen years old when he died in an accident while clearing trees on the family property. Mona was home packing for a trip. A knock on the door. A two and a half hour drive to Flagstaff Medical Center. And then a doctor who walked out and told her he was gone. Six years later, she is still carrying it. She has started EMDR, working carefully and bravely toward the day she will be ready to process the memory of that day itself. She has learned, slowly, that letting people in is not a burden to them. It is, as she says, a way of allowing them to love her. And she has been loved well. At Isaiah's celebration of life, she said something out loud - that she wanted to collect some money and give it to a charity in his name. Her friend Jessica and her twin sister heard those words, and took them seriously. Within months, they had raised $80,000 to build a medical and dental clinic in Honduras, named La Luz de Isaiah. The Light of Isaiah. When Mona traveled to Honduras to see the clinic, strangers had painted a dragonfly mural on the wall inside, because Isaiah's favorite insect was a dragonfly. She stood in that room, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something she had been afraid she had lost. She felt like God had not forgotten her. Out of that moment, and out of a conversation between Mona and Jessica on the phone afterward, La Luz de Isaiah Foundation was born. Their Dragonfly Wishes program helps grieving parents bring to life the tributes and memorials they have dreamed of but could not carry alone. A bench in a park. A community art fair. A clinic in Honduras. Whatever honors the child, in whatever size fits the family. Jessica does the logistics, the phone calls, the fundraising, the advocacy. Mona holds the heart of it. Because what they both want, more than anything, is for every grieving parent to feel what Mona felt in that clinic. Seen. Remembered. Not forgotten. You can learn more and apply for a Dragonfly Wish at . /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41610180

Episode 351: The Fear Went Away - Jackson's Mom 06/04/2026

Episode 351: The Fear Went Away - Jackson's Mom Becky has spent her entire life adapting to a world that was not built for her. As a woman with dwarfism who stands four feet tall, she has learned to problem solve, improvise, and push forward in spaces that were never designed with her in mind. She has built the confidence and strength to ignore the stares and the laughs. She has figured out children's recliners and gaming chairs and car beds and oxygen tanks and every other logistical puzzle that life has thrown at her. And then she lost Jackson. And something unexpected happened. The fear went away. Jackson Robert was born on August 9th, 2021, a perfect baby who arrived after 39 weeks, a NICU stay, 20 days of sleep studies, a car bed, oxygen for sleeping, and a yellow sheet of paper with 20 specialist appointments waiting on the other side of discharge day. He also had dwarfism, just like his mama, and Becky will tell you that getting that news was the best news she had ever received. He was her boy. He was going to be like her. He was six months and twenty-one days old when he died, following a catastrophic loss of oxygen during a routine sleep study at the hospital. He had not been breathing for thirty minutes before anyone noticed. The code team took four minutes to arrive. Becky was thrown out of the room. His father came back from the hotel not even having had enough time to remove his shoes. Twelve days in the ICU followed. Twelve days of fighting to understand what had happened while simultaneously fighting to give Jackson the best possible care. Twelve days of MRIs and heart rate changes and a physical therapist who came once, lifted his leg, watched it fall, and never came back. Twelve days of Becky going to the hotel every night to sleep, so she could be fully present for him every morning. And at 8:09 PM on March 2nd, 2022, Jackson passed away in her arms. 8:09. August 9th. His birthday. In this conversation, Becky speaks with remarkable honesty about everything that has come since. The IVF journey that stretched across two years and three states before falling apart. The massive spinal surgery that left her hospitalized for 72 days and still requiring care today. The layers of grief she has carried all at once, the loss of her son, the loss of her mobility, the loss of her marriage, and the grief that began even before Jackson was born, in every diagnosis and every appointment and every moment of bracing for what might come next. And through all of it, she has kept going. She has written. She has sought therapy. She has found her people, slowly and imperfectly, in support groups and retreats and monthly meetings with parents who lost children around Jackson's age. She has put his photo on her hospital room walls and his picture with Santa in the family Christmas photos and his image on her phone so that every new nurse who walks into her room asks about him. She says she used to wake up in the middle of the night consumed by a fear of death. The moment Jackson died in her arms, that fear disappeared. She is in no rush. She has a lot to do here on Earth. But she knows she will get to see him again. And part of what she has to do is make sure Jackson is never just a blip. She is working on a book. She is doing inclusivity advocacy so that the world he never got to grow up in becomes the world she would have wanted for him. She is telling anyone who will listen about her boy and his giggles and his determination during tummy time and the way he was, as she puts it simply and perfectly, the brightest light. Jackson made Becky a mama. And in the end, he made her fearless too. For more on Becky, visit /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41534585

Episode 350: Wrapped Up in Purpose - Darius's Mom 05/28/2026

Episode 350: Wrapped Up in Purpose - Darius's Mom Darius made Kelly a mama at eighteen years old. Then he made her a nurse. And years later, after he was gone, he made her something else entirely, a certified grief counselor, an entrepreneur, and the founder of something beautiful that would not exist without him. That is the thread running through this entire conversation. Our children become our purpose. And when we find that purpose, they are wrapped up inside it completely. Darius Anthony was Kelly's oldest, born on Christmas Day, a gift announced to the world on the day the world was already celebrating. He was a class clown, a party in a person, a young man who dreamed of making a dent in the universe, not just for himself, but for other people. He became a realtor working specifically with first-time homebuyers, bought his own first home, and was preparing to flip it for someone just like them. He was 28 years old, thriving, and full of plans. On January 3rd, 2023, he died in his sleep from SUDEP, Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy. He had been diagnosed with epilepsy at eighteen, managed it well, and was living his life fully. Kelly and her husband were on a cruise ship in Mexico when the call came. Before January 3rd, 2023 and after. That is how Kelly divides her life now. In this conversation, Kelly speaks honestly about the grief journey. The permission a dear friend gave her to simply stop and just be. The Visionary Dreamer Award at his college that his colleagues announced at his funeral they were renaming in his honor. The autopsy report that arrived without warning on her second day back at work, and the ashes returned in what she can only describe as a biohazard container. Two moments that made her think: the death care industry has to do better. So she built something better. sends heirloom quality gifts on the predictable hard days, the birthday, the holiday season, the anniversary of the death, so that the people who love grieving families can show up right on time. Gifts that are not sad, Kelly says. Gifts that are reminders of love. Learn more at thetimelypresence.com. And perhaps the most beautiful moment in this conversation is near the end, when Kelly tells the story of Darius's best friend, who brought a framed photo of Darius to his own house closing. Because there was no way to do that moment without him. That is what it looks like when a life leaves a mark so deep that the people who loved him carry him forward into every milestone he never got to have. Darius made Kelly a mama, a nurse, and now a purpose. He is wrapped up in all of it. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41451120

Episode 349: When Seasons Change 05/21/2026

Episode 349: When Seasons Change The flowers are blooming. The days are getting longer. The world looks like it is coming back to life. So why do so many of us feel so heavy? In this episode, Gwen Kapcia, social worker and thanatologist, and I sit down to talk about something grieving parents experience but rarely hear discussed directly - the way the changing seasons can shift something deep inside us, often before we even realize what is happening. As Gwen puts it so simply and so truthfully, every new season is the calendar doing what the new year does, four times over. It is a marker that more time has passed without our child. And there is no denying it. We talk about why transitions are so hard, why the body keeps score even when the mind has not looked at the calendar, and why sometimes the hardest season is not the one we expected. It might not be the season our child died in. It might be back to school, or the first warm day, or the quiet of February. It just hits, and we feel it before we can name it. We also read through beautiful and honest responses from our community, parents who shared their children's favorite seasons, their own hardest seasons, and specific memories from each time of year that brought both tears and smiles. A boy who played hooky at the state fair every fall birthday. A girl who wore flannels and loved Halloween and was honored at her visitation the same way. A son whose love of summer camping shaped every warm month for his family. These are the kinds of memories that keep grief open, as Gwen says, to both the beauty and the pain. Gwen also shares some practical tips for navigating the seasonal shifts, including the importance of routine, sunlight, staying active, and above all, staying connected. Because as we say on this podcast again and again — we are not meant to do this alone. And there is one more thing I want to invite you to do, whether you are listening the day this drops or months from now. Take a few quiet minutes and write down a specific memory of your child in each of the four seasons. Not for anyone else. Just for you. To remember. To treasure. To hold them close in every season they ever lived in. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41379360

Episode 348: Say My Child's Name - Abbie's Mom 05/14/2026

Episode 348: Say My Child's Name - Abbie's Mom Say my child's name. It sounds like such a simple thing. And yet for so many grieving parents, it is the thing people around them are least willing to do. They look at you with that familiar expression, the one you can see right through, and they stay quiet, thinking their silence is a kindness. Cindy knows that look well. And it is exactly where everything began. Abbie was Cindy's youngest, born in November of 1993, the kind of little girl who arrived like a force of nature. Full of energy, full of heart, always wanting to give of herself to everyone around her. She had ADD, a heart of gold, and a cosmetology license she worked hard to earn. She was also someone who carried a great deal quietly, and when her best friend died by suicide in junior high, something in Abbie shifted in ways that would take years to fully understand. Abbie's road was not a straight one. There were struggles with addiction, a stint in rehab, and a season of sobriety so joyful that Cindy wrote to the judge and district attorney just to tell them she had her daughter back. That season was real. It was precious. And then Abbie relapsed, and on the night it happened, the heroin her friend had purchased was one hundred percent fentanyl. Abbie was gone. And Lily, her little girl, was there when Cindy found them. In the years since, Cindy turned her grief into something. It started with wristbands and a name she registered: Say My Child's Name. It grew into a child loss grief group, and then into a vision for something much bigger. A remembrance memorial. A beautiful park-like space in Stowe, Ohio at Adele Durbin Park, with wind chimes and benches and dedications and a nook full of mental health resources for grieving families. Not a cemetery. A destination. A place where anyone who has lost a child can come and simply be. Seven area mayors are on board. A grandmother donated $20,000. The community has raised $45,000 toward a $200,000 goal. And it is only just beginning. Cindy will tell you she is doing baby steps. But from where I am sitting, what she is doing looks a whole lot like something sacred. To donate or learn more, reach Cindy at , or give directly at . /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41292240

Episode 347: Love Becomes Purpose - Adrienne's Sissy 05/07/2026

Episode 347: Love Becomes Purpose - Adrienne's Sissy Parent. Sister. Friend. That was the order Andrea established with her little sister Adrienne when Adrienne was just nine years old, fresh into a new life in Los Angeles after their mother signed over custody on the day after Christmas. Andrea was twenty-two. She had not planned any of this. But she looked at her little sister and she knew. And so she laid it out simply: I have to be your parent first, then your sister, and one day when you grow up, I really hope I'm your friend. Adrienne understood. She had a painting made for Andrea's office wall. It said: Parent, Sister, Friend. That painting still hangs there today. Andrea raised Adrienne from the age of eight, working four part-time jobs to stay on her schedule, becoming a substitute teacher so she could be home when Adrienne walked in the door. She gave her stability, consistency, and a love that was fierce and steady and completely unconditional. Adrienne thrived. She found herself in high school, earned a 4.0 GPA, stopped caring what anyone else thought, and became exactly the kind of bold, vivacious, deeply caring young woman you would expect from a girl raised by someone like Andrea. And then, three weeks before the end of her freshman year of high school, Adrienne came home from school and curled up on the living room floor in pain. She could not breathe. What followed was 147 days — a diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma, primary liver cancer that had already spread to her lungs, caused by hepatitis B and C she had received from their mother at birth and never known about. One hundred and forty-seven days of fighting, of blue wigs and butterfly wings, of a girl who joked her way through a CAT scan and named the family cat after synthetic marijuana. Adrienne died on October 9th, 2001. She was fifteen years old. A year later, Andrea was suicidal. She had lost not just her sister but her entire purpose for being. Everything she had done, every job she had chosen, every sacrifice she had made for nearly a decade had been for Adrienne. And now Adrienne was gone. It was her partner who stopped her. He said simply: if you go ahead and kill yourself, she is never going to forgive you. And Andrea knew he was right. So she found a way to channel her grief. She called the largest liver disease nonprofit in the country, pitched herself as a volunteer, and was turned down flat. That rejection sent her searching, and what she found was a gap so large it was almost unbelievable. There was not a single organization in the United States dedicated specifically to HCC, the cancer that had killed Adrienne. So Andrea founded one. She named it , after Adrienne's beloved blue hair, her blue wig, and the blue butterfly wings she was buried in. The day Blue Faery was officially incorporated was December 19th, 2002. Eight years to the month from the day Adrienne came to live with her. It felt like everything was lining up. Today, Blue Faery is the leading HCC nonprofit in the country, providing education, advocacy, and community to patients and families navigating a disease that is both more common and more preventable than most people realize. Andrea has also written a memoir, , which tells the story of the seven years she raised Adrienne and the 147 days she fought to save her. Parent. Sister. Friend. And now, advocate. Love, it turns out, does not need somewhere to go. It just becomes purpose. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41203335

Episode 346: Life Grows Around It - Graham's Mom 04/30/2026

Episode 346: Life Grows Around It - Graham's Mom Grief is permanent. But it doesn't have to be all-consuming. That is the quiet, hard-won truth at the heart of this conversation with Wesley, Graham's mom. And it is the kind of truth that only comes from ten years of living with loss. Graham was adopted at five months old, a boy who struggled from early on with questions of identity and belonging. He wrestled with being adopted, with his sexuality, with depression, and eventually with addiction. Wesley spent years in that particular kind of anticipatory grief that parents of children with addiction know all too well, always bracing, always wondering, always hoping. And then one night, the call came anyway. Graham died in July of 2016 at the age of 33. In this conversation, Wesley speaks with remarkable honesty about what the years since have looked like. The shame she felt in the beginning, the instinct to hide, the relentless second-guessing of every decision she had ever made as a mother. She talks about the unique and unexpected gift of seeing Graham's therapist after his death, someone who actually knew him, who could fill in pieces of the picture Wesley never had, and who has helped her understand that she did the best she could with what she knew. She also talks about how she has channeled her grief into purpose. Her blog, When Your Child is Addicted, her Facebook group Kids on Drugs, and the book she is currently writing are all born from a desire to help other parents before they find themselves where she is now. And she talks about what ten years of grief actually looks like from the inside. Not linear. Not resolved. Still present on holidays, on birthdays, in unexpected moments. But incorporated now, woven into the fabric of daily life rather than overwhelming it. I share my rock metaphor in this conversation, and Wesley captures it perfectly when she says that grief will always be with you. It is just that it doesn't have to become the whole point of your life. The loss never goes away. But slowly, gently, life grows around it. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/41073525

Episode 345: You Are Doing It - Taylor's Mom 04/23/2026

Episode 345: You Are Doing It - Taylor's Mom Some dates just carry weight. April 23rd. The anniversary of Taylor's death. Two days after what would have been Andy's 22nd birthday. When Jam reached out and asked to come back on, I looked at the calendar and knew immediately. There was no one else I wanted in this space this week. If you haven't yet listened to , I'd encourage you to start there. Jam first came on just four months after losing Taylor, her 13-year-old daughter, a girl who rode the special needs bus by choice every single day so she could sit beside her twin sister Morgan, who saved her lunch seat without fail, who never met a stranger and never stopped looking for someone to love. In that first episode, the word that kept coming to me as I listened was compassion. It still does. Now, nearly four years later, Jam is back. And what strikes me most about this conversation is simply that she is here. That she is still standing. That she is still showing up - for Morgan, for her husband, for the families her foundation has served, for the women in her Starlight support group who have become some of her closest friends in the world. She didn't think she would survive this. She is surviving it. We talk about what these four years have looked like from the fog of the first year, the harder truths of years two and three, and now, the slow, uneven work of figuring out who you are on the other side of the worst thing you have ever lived through. We talk about the , which has helped ten families navigate burial expenses, sibling travel, and the crushing practical weight of sudden loss. We talk about Morgan and the particular heartbreak of watching a child grieve in a language she cannot fully speak. We talk about finding your people, even when they live a thousand miles away. And we talk about what it means to still be figuring it out at year four. To not yet know exactly what God is asking of you next. To be healing without yet being whole. Jam says it simply and beautifully near the end of our conversation: I honestly thought I would not survive it. And I am. It may not be pretty every day. But I'm surviving. I want to say to every single one of you what my friend Michele used to say to me, again and again, when I told her I couldn't do this: You are doing it. It may not be pretty. It may not look the way you thought surviving was supposed to look. But every single day that you get up and live your life without your child, that is the work. That is surviving. And you are doing it. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/40988870

Episode 344: Even Though, We Will - Noah's Dad 04/16/2026

Episode 344: Even Though, We Will - Noah's Dad Abnormalities. That is the word that changed Matthew and his wife Hannah's lives forever. They went in for a routine ultrasound, their almost two-year-old son Walker playing happily beside them in the waiting room, and left knowing that their lives would never be the same, and that their son Noah was unlikely to live. What followed was six months of hurrying up and waiting. Six months of grieving a diagnosis before they ever had to grieve a death. Six months of doctor's appointments and phone calls and learning, in real time, what it means to carry an impossible weight while the rest of the world keeps moving. Noah was born with Trisomy 13, a genetic condition that is almost always fatal. He lived for 57 and a half hours. And Matthew will tell you, that was 57 and a half hours more than they ever expected to get. In this conversation, Matthew shares what those hours looked like, what those six months looked like, and what the six years since have looked like. He talks honestly about the fog of grief, about learning to let people in, about the two questions he and Hannah developed that he believes saved their marriage. He talks about the moment a mentor told him it was okay to have a good day, and how he wept on the phone, because he couldn't imagine it. And he talks about how, five years after Noah's death, he sat down to journal on Noah's birthday and realized something that took his breath away. Noah is the only son he never let down. He was fully present for every moment of his son's entire life. Out of that realization, and out of six years of quietly sending care packages to families navigating terminal diagnoses, came the Even Though We Will Foundation, and a book by the same name, released this week. The title is their family's mantra, rooted in Psalm 23. Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we will fear no evil. Not because Andy died, this happened. Not because Noah died, this came to be. But even though — and in that even though, something beautiful still can. Matthew also writes about something rarely heard from a grieving father, what it looks like to watch your favorite person in the world suffer, and feel utterly powerless to fix it. What it means to be a doer, a leader, a fixer, and suddenly not be able to do any of those things. And what it means to fall back on a faith that, in the end, held them both. Even Though We Will is available now at and on Amazon. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/40897145

Episode 343: Not Alone - Gwen & Marcy 04/09/2026

Episode 342: Still Standing - Jake's Mom 04/02/2026

Episode 342: Still Standing - Jake's Mom Before Angie lost her son Jake, she used to say something that I think many of us have said — or at least thought. If something ever happened to Jake, you would just have to bury me with him. Period. End of discussion. There was no way. And then the unthinkable happened. Jake was Angie's only child, her greatest surprise and her greatest blessing. Born in August of 1995, he grew up to be a man of quiet, steady faith — the kind that didn't ask for recognition, that just lived itself out in the way he treated people, the way he loved his wife Hannah, the way he'd get genuinely excited talking about heaven. He loved the outdoors, he loved to hunt and fish, and Angie always called him her simple man. In fact, when he got married in 2020, their mother-son dance was to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man." On March 8th, 2023, Jake was on his way to work when he was killed in a car accident. He was twenty-seven years old, just two years into his marriage, and days away from closing on the house he and Hannah had planned and saved for together. Now, three years later, Angie is still here. Not because it has been easy. Not because the grief has softened into something manageable. But because one foot in front of the other, one whispered Jesus at a time, God has held her up when she was sure she could not stand. In this conversation, Angie speaks honestly about what these three years have looked like. The shock that she now understands as a mercy from God. The struggle to pray when the words just wouldn't come. The Bible study group of bereaved moms that has become her lifeline. The therapist who told her that one of the ways she could honor Jake was to lean into Jesus, because that was Jake. And how after he said it, she started hearing it everywhere. Lean in. Lean in. Lean in. This is an episode about surviving what you were sure would kill you. About faith that isn't tidy or triumphant, but shows up anyway, kicking and screaming sometimes, and keeps going. If you have ever said there is no way I could survive this, this episode is for you. Here is Angie, three years in, still standing. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/40709925

Episode 341: Still His Mama - Raiden's Mom 03/26/2026

Episode 341: Still His Mama - Raiden's Mom When Samantha first came on this podcast in Episode 282, she was only a few months out from losing Raiden. She was raw and fresh in her grief — and yet even then, just four months into her loss, she reached out to ask me about Andy. She stepped outside her own pain to offer comfort to someone further down the road. I knew then that she was someone special. Fourteen months later, she is back. And the question that quietly runs through everything she shares is one that every grieving parent eventually faces: How do I keep being my child's mama when my child is gone? For Samantha, the answer has taken the shape of bubbles. Raiden loved bubbles the way only a little boy can — rain or shine, indoors or out, in the bathtub, in the yard, anywhere and everywhere. That love became the name and the heart of the Raiden Bubble Project, a space Samantha built out of the sudden quiet of life after losing her only child. What started as something to focus on grew into water safety advocacy, autism awareness, and a community where other lost moms feel safe enough to reach out. Her own therapist tells her she has learned things from following along. Mothers she has never met write to thank her. Lost mamas find their way to her, and she holds space for them. She also created the Little Love Lost Mamas, a small close circle of moms who have become like family. And she has been working to bring a memorial arch to her community, a place where anyone can come, padlock the name of someone they love, and know they are not alone. Every single thing she has built is her still parenting Raiden. We also talk about the new baby boy arriving soon, Ryatt. Samantha is clear about something that I think many people need to hear: Ryatt is not a replacement for Raiden. He is someone she gets to share Raiden with. That is the kind of love that doesn't end when a life does. It just finds new ways to live on — in bubbles, in community, and in the quiet, faithful work of a mama who never stopped. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/40629765

Episode 340: Thankful In, Not For - Mikael's Mom 03/19/2026

Episode 339: 8:15 - The Moment Everything Changed - Chantal's Parents 03/12/2026

Episode 339: 8:15 - The Moment Everything Changed - Chantal's Parents In this episode of Always Andy’s Mom, Marcy speaks with Jean and Shelly about the loss of their daughter, Chantal, and the grief journey that followed after losing a child to cancer. Jean remembers the exact moment everything changed: 8:15, the time Chantal died. That moment became the dividing line between the life they once knew and the life that followed. Together they share the long and difficult experience of Chantal’s cancer diagnosis, the exhausting treatments that followed, and the heartbreak of losing a child. They also talk about how grief continued to unfold in the years afterward and how healing slowly takes shape over time. Jean reflects on something many parents feel deeply after the death of a child — the instinct to fix things and protect the people they love. His book, grew out of that realization and explores the helplessness many fathers feel when faced with a loss that cannot be repaired. Music has always been an important part of Jean and Shelly’s lives together. After Chantal’s death, that part of their world felt quiet for a time, but eventually music began to return, offering another way to carry love and memory forward. Shelly also shares a moment that surprised her. Around the five-year mark in her grief journey, she realized that life felt recognizable again. It wasn’t the life they once had, and grief was still present, but she began to feel like herself again. In this conversation they discuss: • losing a child to cancer • how grief evolves over time • the different ways parents process loss • music and writing as ways of expressing grief • and the ways families continue honoring the child who died Nearly two decades later, Chantal is still remembered in simple but meaningful ways. Each year friends and family gather on her birthday for pizza and Caesars — her favorite — raising a glass and remembering the girl who continues to shape their lives. This episode is a powerful reflection on grief, love, and learning to live with what cannot be fixed. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/40411620

Episode 338: Scars & Seasons - Keyan's Mom 03/05/2026

Episode 338: Scars & Seasons - Keyan's Mom After six and a half years and more than 300 episodes, I took a month away from the podcast to rest, spend time with my family, and tend to my own heart. When it felt right to return, there was only one person I wanted to talk with. Stephanie — Keyan’s mom — was the very first bereaved mother I ever interviewed when this podcast began. Even before that, she was someone I met in a grief support group just weeks after Andy died. She was further down the road of child loss than I was, and I remember quietly watching her, wondering how she was still standing. Somewhere in that watching was a small hope: If she can do this, maybe I can too. Now, eight and a half years into her grief journey, Stephanie shares honestly about what life looks like today. She talks about the days that still knock her off her feet, the complicated guilt that can come with laughing or enjoying time with her living children, and how grief doesn’t disappear—it changes shape. For five years, Stephanie poured herself into serving other grieving families at Starlight Ministries. 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. Together we talk about: • what it means to be years into grief and still hurting • the tension of holding joy and sorrow at the same time • the freedom of allowing grief to change as the years pass • the difference between being healed and being cured This episode is about scars, seasons, and the quiet courage it takes to keep learning your grief as it changes. If you are years into loss and wondering why it still hurts sometimes… you are not alone. /episode/index/show/andysmom/id/40326200

Episode 337: Surviving the Long Haul - Gwen 02/26/2026

Episode 336: Family Grief & The Weight of Big Emotions - Gwen 02/19/2026

Episode 335: What Shapes Our Grief - Gwen 02/12/2026

Episode 334: Why Grief Is So Hard - Gwen 02/05/2026

Episode 333: What is the Color of Your Heart? Addy's Mom 01/29/2026

Episode 332: What Remains, What Grows - Hunter's Mama 01/22/2026

Episode 331: The Quiet Work of Grief - Cody's Mom 01/15/2026

Losing a Child: Always Andy's Mom

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