Navigating Grief: Insights from Melanie DeSimone, Dominic’s Mom

In this heartfelt conversation, Melanie DeSimone shares her journey of grief after the tragic loss of her son, Dominic. She discusses the profound impact of child loss on family dynamics, the importance of community support, and the lessons learned through her experience. Melanie emphasizes the need for compassion, understanding, and practical strategies for navigating grief, while also highlighting her ministry, Heartache and Hope, which aims to comfort and support other bereaved parents.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:48

Well, hello and welcome back. On today's episode, I'll be talking with Melanie De Simone, founder of the Heartache and Hope Ministry, and author of a very popular blog entitled The Life I Didn't Choose. Recently, Melanie has started hosting small intimate retreats for other grieving moms. She has also been a guest on several podcasts, as well as being a gifted speaker. That's her life today. But in the spring of 2014, it looked very different. In April of that year, Melanie's precious 23-year-old son Dominic was killed in a motorcycle accident. I hope you'll listen as she shares about her grief journey and how God's grace and faithfulness carried her through that trauma that trauma and pain to a life today filled with meaning and purpose. And now here is my conversation with Melanie. Welcome, Melanie. It is so good to have you on our podcast today. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_02: 1:58

Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01: 2:01

Oh, absolutely. It is my honor to have you here with us today. Before we dive into your story, Melanie, why don't you just take a couple of minutes and tell our listeners a little bit more about you? Anything you want to share, family-related, work-related, ministry-related, just in that couple of minutes, and then we'll get into the uh we'll do a deeper dive after that.

SPEAKER_02: 2:25

Thank you. I appreciate that. So my name is Melanie D. Simone, and my husband and I have been married for over 40 years. We live on a small homestead in rural Alabama. We have four children, three that walk the earth with us and one that's in heaven. I have been a shepherd for over 25 years, both literal and figurative. I would say my figurative shepherding began many years before that, both with my own children and through lay ministry in the different churches that we belong to. One of my children, my oldest son is a veterinarian. My daughter, who is the oldest child, she's a nurse. And our youngest son is also working in my oldest son's vet clinic. Dominic, the son that's in heaven, is the middle son. And my husband's an architect and a structural engineer. He re-retired in 2020, got one of those sweet uh post-COVID deals. And so our days are mostly filled with taking care of our place, our home, and a lot of outdoor activities. I have horses and donkeys still. Uh, lost my last goat last winter time. I have cats. Yes, I am a cat lady. And um I do a lot of writing and phone counseling and in-person, all lay counseling. I'm not a licensed professional counselor, counseling over the phone and in with people. And that's really how my days are spent most of the day. You know, I would say I spend about four hours every day either writing, texting, messaging, and or talking to someone on the phone.

SPEAKER_01: 4:06

Yeah, that's a busy life.

SPEAKER_02: 4:09

It is. We have two grandchildren too. I should I can't leave my grandkids out.

SPEAKER_01: 4:14

Ah, how old are they?

SPEAKER_02: 4:15

They're six and three. And they're both boys, and they're growing up in the playing in the dirt and having fun. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:23

Like my That is great. That's great. Too many kids never have that opportunity. Kind of grew up the same way because my grandparents lived on a farm in North Carolina. So I always had the opportunities to hunt and fish and just play in the dirt and do just do stuff on the farm that you can't do in town.

SPEAKER_02: 4:44

No, you can't do it in the suburbs. It's uh, you know, I have a clothesline, you know, all the things, all the things that HOAs allow.

SPEAKER_01: 4:52

Exactly. Yeah, you have a lot more freedom in the country.

unknown: 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 4:57

And it was interesting too. Your your husband retired in 2020, and I I did too, three weeks before COVID lockdown. So it was an it was an interesting time to step away and be sequestered away for a while.

SPEAKER_02: 5:12

It was. It really was. Our family weathered that. My father, my mother had died in 2019, and so my father was in his 80s, and we were very careful, you know, to try not to spread, especially in those early days when nobody knew really specifically how it was being spread, or what, you know, or how to treat it well. So anyway, we we spent those we spent those months doing a lot of fun family things. We kind of made they were referring to them as pods back then, you know, like the few people that you would get together with, you know. Right. And we did we did a lot of in-person activities, but we did it with just the few of us.

SPEAKER_01: 5:49

We kind of did the same thing. We had a uh we had a small life group that you know we did life with. And so we've we figured out a way after the first few weeks to ke to continue doing that because you know it's it brings a lot of richness to life uh when you're able to live you know in the context of community like that.

SPEAKER_02: 6:14

Aaron Powell We're designed for community. I mean, that's one of the things which we'll we'll talk about later as we talk further, but that's one of the greatest blessings in this journey is to find a place where you feel like you have safe community.

SPEAKER_01: 6:28

You are absolutely right about that. And having both of us having lived through the loss of a child, probably understand the value of community better than most, because that's when you really discover the value.

SPEAKER_02: 6:46

I think that's absolutely true.

SPEAKER_01: 6:49

Well, Melanie, why don't we spend a few minutes having you just tell our listeners about your son Dominic? Uh, because everything, you know, you and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago. We talked about just uh different things, and we of course talked about Dominic. And he sounds like an incredible young man. Sounds like somebody that most of our listeners would probably enjoy meeting. So just tell us a little about and then and tell us a little about the impact that you know that he made on who you are today.

SPEAKER_02: 7:22

Absolutely. So I'm gonna start by explaining that when I talk about Dominic's characteristics, I talk about them in the present tense because I believe with all my heart that he continues to live and be who he was created to be, even in heaven.

SPEAKER_01: 7:38

So I love that. I love that, and I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02: 7:43

You know, so so Dominic, Dominic is a vibrant person. He has a cutting sense of humor. That was one of his thing, one of his attributes that sometimes got him in trouble with friends when they didn't realize he was joking. Uh he died in a single vehicle motorcycle accident, April 12th, 2014. So it's been almost 11 and a half years in October, it'll be 11 and a half years. He was a law student at the University of Alabama, almost completed his second year of law school, and through generous and kind acts of his dear friends and the law school, I actually received his diploma posthumously. He was also honored at the graduation when they graduated. Well very special. But he was he was a fun person, a funny person, a wise beyond his years kind of person. He was a good friend to people. The day that he was killed at 1 a.m. on Saturday morning. So Friday, the day before he was actually killed, even though it was in the middle of the night, he had replaced an alternator on a friend's car because, contrary to what a lot of people think, law students are really poor. And so he basically he was a good mechanic and he would say, you know, you get the part, I'll put it in. So that's what he had done that day before. He shared whatever he had. That's a characteristic which I'm proud to say is common in all of my children. If they have it and you need it, they give it. He was really smart, he was very persistent, and he was athletic, and we miss him very much. You know, he he we used to always say the D S bones come as a committee because we homeschooled. And so our lives were very intertwined with one another, and our church slash ministry life was very intertwined with our home life. There was not a lot of segmentation in our lives. We just did a lot of things together. He was also a talented musician. He was a drummer primarily, but he could play pretty much any instrument that he ever touched and served in worship bands. And we just really miss him because one of the things that I think people don't understand about child loss is that the loss of the single individual is a loss of multiple relationships.

SPEAKER_01: 10:09

And the would you would you repeat that, Melanie? Because I want to make sure our listeners heard that.

SPEAKER_02: 10:15

Yes. So the loss of the single individual is a loss of multiple relationships. So he was the he was a middle child in every way. He was the third born in our family. Our daughter's at the top. We have three sons, but he was so he was a middle child technically, but he was also the middle son. He was the middle brother. So that made him like a double middle, uh, you know, and and when I lost him, I lost my son. When his siblings lost him, they lost their brother. When my husband lost him, he lost his son. How I related to Dominic is always going to be different than how each other each of the other people in my family related to him. Because not only do we lose that person, we lose who we are reflect reflected back to us from that person, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 11:10

So there's it does. That's that's such a very that's such a wise perspective, Melanie. Thank you for sharing that.

SPEAKER_02: 11:20

And I think that sometimes when people say I lost myself or I lost a piece of piece of myself, I think that's really what they're saying. So Dominic was a great debater. He was in law school. He was also a political science major. Well, I am a political science and a psychology major. So he and I had a unique connection in that way that he didn't have with anybody else in the family. You know, we would talk about certain things that other people didn't talk about, and we could talk about it from different perspectives. His debate skills sometimes frustrated all of us because he could also be argumentative. But the point is that whatever, whatever way, just like the Bible says iron, yeah iron sharpens aren't, you know, man sharpens man as iron sharpens iron, right? I lost that sharpening action. So I I I no longer have access to that. And that makes a huge difference. I mean, you know, we I know we'll get into the pain and the loss and the sorrow and all that stuff, but the actual part of who I was that he sent back to me is lost to me forever until now.

SPEAKER_01: 12:31

I understand that uh at a very personal level because not only, you know, as a dad, you know, when we lost Ryan, I lost my son, but I also lost who I consider to be my best friend at the time. And so it it it does represent more than one form of loss.

SPEAKER_00: 12:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 12:56

As you said very well. So we know from personal experience that losing a child does change us. And it changes us sometimes very profoundly. So for you, Melanie, I'd just like for us to talk a few a few minutes about what that looked like for you. Because a lot of times you'll hear parents who have lost a child talk about their before and after life. So let's just talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02: 13:51

But you know, you go through a suburb and you see that one overgrown yard and you're like, well, don't those people ever cut their grass? And now my first the first thing I think of is what happened. Did somebody die? Is somebody in the hospital? You know, what happened to them that keeps them from doing what I know they've been doing all along, you know, if it's someplace you pass frequently. So that's a change that I know about myself. Dominic was a very bold person. And I would say that before he died, I was much less likely to have good boundaries, much less likely to speak out sometimes about what I need from another person. And I don't mean that in just like a selfish way. I just mean in a in a healthy way. You know, I'm sure, you know, I could be a doormat. And so that's one thing, but I couldn't be because I couldn't be a doormat and survive his death. So that was really where the rubber meets the road, you know. So I call pe I call these people life-sucking forces. And I'm sorry if that offends anybody, but yeah, but we all have them. And before I would just always pick up the phone or always do or always go, okay, sure, I'll do that for you. And I learned that I couldn't do that anymore because I literally did not have it. It was, it was literally like trying to ask a car to run on empty, no gas, no fuel. You just but you still got to go. So I learned about that changed me. Another thing that changed was it changed the direction of my own personal ministry before we'd been doing a lot of other different kinds of things in churches and stuff. And I really felt like that the Lord was calling me to comfort others with the comfort I had received, and that this was a finer, more refined, pointed ministry. It still includes things like Bible studies and other things, but it's predominantly about reaching out to bereaved parents. And I also found that I could be a really good advocate because, you know, again, Dominic was in law school. And I think sometimes I'm channeling him in that respect that I will stand up for anybody anywhere to have the right to grieve as they need to, as long as they're not hurting someone else or hurt harming themselves. I will absolutely stand between them, you know, and anybody or anything to say, hey, you they get to do this. This is how it is. You you don't get to decide for them how they're gonna go through this this experience.

SPEAKER_01: 16:22

Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_02: 16:24

I think it drew our family closer in certain ways. It also all of my children were adults when Dominic died. The youngest was 22. And uh and I think it changed maybe how I relate to my adult children because even though we like I said, we homeschooled and we had shared a lot of things, I had losses in my life as an adult while they were growing up that they didn't share. But now we shared this loss as adults, and I could see how it was shaping them, and I had to make space for them to grieve as was appropriate and safe and helpful and healthy for them, even if it cost me something to make space for them, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01: 17:16

It does. And I would just just ask, you you said that it changed the way in some respects that how you related to your other children. That that does happen to any family who has lost a child if there are more children in the family that are living. So what uh people may be wondering, so how did you handle that, Melanie? Because, you know, we know that siblings who have lost another brother or sister are known as the forgotten mourners.

SPEAKER_02: 17:52

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 17:53

And there are a lot of reasons why that exists, but it is a it is the reality. I mean, we watched what our daughter went through, and she was 10 years older than Ryan.

SPEAKER_02: 18:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 18:06

So how did that look for you and how how do you relate to your living children now as a result of that?

SPEAKER_02: 18:16

Well, I think there's there's about four or five key points that I usually share with parents who do have earthbound children. Is number one is I am I told I had two of my kids were here when the deputy knocked on the door when Dominic died. And I told them immediately, I said, number one, we're not making a saint out of Dominic. Because sibling rivalry does not die because a child dies. And we would like for it to, but it doesn't. And and it's too easy to make that unreachable child into something he or she is not and never was, because they are no longer present to irritate anyone or you know, or say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing, you know. And and and as time passes, we tend to paint it with a rosy glow. And so so that was the first thing. That's the first thing is to recognize that your children that are still here with you are still looking to you to provide guidance and support and love, even though you may feel like you don't have it to give to any of those things to give. Now, does that mean you're not gonna fail? Absolutely not, because you're going to, because that's the nature of parenthood. You failed some in the past, you're gonna fail some in the future, is how it happens, you know. So I would say number one, you know, be careful not to make your child, the the missing child or children, some kind of saints that the other children feel like they have to live up to.

SPEAKER_01: 19:51

Happens very easily.

SPEAKER_02: 19:53

It does. And so a very practical way of doing that in our particular house, and I'm not I'm not saying it's necessary or that it's the best practice for other people, but we do have pictures of Dominic, but except in a couple of a couple of kind of unobtrusive places, his pictures are always couched within like the wall of all the family pictures. Sure. They're not, I don't have a separate section just for him. And then I I always tell parents that my fear cannot circumscribe my other children's lives. So are we scared? Do I, you know, I mean, it was like three years. Our doorbell doesn't ring much because we do live in a rural area, but it was like three years before I could hear the doorbell and not literally jump out of my skin because the deputy did ring the doorbell. And so yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01: 20:44

And I was I was just gonna throw this in for somebody else who who is in an early season of grief. And they had that knock on the door, they had that phone call, and now when that happens, it's you know the response is almost the same, and that goes on for a while. And that that's because the kind of trauma that you went through yields symptoms that you typically find with PTSD. And sometimes parents end up with PTSD for a while.

SPEAKER_02: 21:18

100%. I would I would absolutely agree. And and one of the things that gosh, we can go down so many different roads. One of the things that you have to learn, and this is this does this does refer back to the fear not circumscribing your children. One, you can put in place some very practical things like our family. If if someone in our family is traveling, you know, they text, landed, got, you know, got where I was going. They give you, you can we can contact one another. I do not have life 360 on all my grown children. That I I respect their privacy. But that may be very, very appropriate for younger children with families that that have younger children. That's 100% appropriate. But, and I tell my kids up front, I say, you know, I'm not trying to run your life, but I need to know that you're safe when you arrive somewhere or whatever, or at least have a contact for somebody who's going to be with you, something like that. So there's some practical things you can do. And then there's other things that you can do for your own, for your own body when you're talking about bodily responses. You know, anxiety and fear, especially if they're a result of some kind of trauma, it may not quite rise to the level of what would be diagnosed as PTSD, but it's very similar. And we have we have to learn to understand that because our body reacts, it doesn't mean that the danger is truly close to us, because that's like our little reptile brain. You know, it goes, oh no, something's gonna come after us, but or something bad's gonna happen. And you have to look around and say, okay, really truly, is there danger here? So one of the things I had to do was come to the grips to the fact that it's no more likely, and and I know that I know several families who have experienced child loss multiple times, and it does happen, but it is no more likely to happen today than it was the day before Dominic died. It's just the way it is.

SPEAKER_01: 23:14

And it's hard to think of it that way for a long time.

SPEAKER_02: 23:19

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: 23:20

You know, because that just seems, I mean, that's that's uh it it just leaves that indelible impression in your brain. And so you react for a long time instead of thinking through how you're gonna react. And that applies to our our child our living children as well, as you said. And I I've certainly experienced that and just thinking in a more you know, dad in our roles as dads, we tend to be the protector and defender of our families. And man, I'll tell you, it it really makes my wife and I both more defensive and protective of our daughter. And like you said, when she goes somewhere out of town particularly, we do like to ask her to send us a text, let us know you're okay. You know, it's not like we dwell on it. And I know that I hear I hear you saying that, but sometimes I think it's probably a little difficult for our living children to understand that level of uh of intensity about their safety.

SPEAKER_02: 24:30

But I think that goes, that goes as we're talking about siblings, I think that goes to a general principle of how to deal with grief within our families and also within our friend, or especially our close friendships, is transparency, authenticity, and honesty. So we need to, with our with our children, we need to say, hey, I realize your peers may not be asked to to be under this kind of scrutiny or to be or to be sending these texts or making these phone calls, but it's really important to me and I would really appreciate it. And it's a small thing, and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna micromanage you. I just want to know your your location or whatever, you know, because like I'm sure with your own daughter, you don't ask her then to give you an itinerary of you know where she's going for dinner and all the other stuff. It's just like, okay, you know, I my plane arrived up safe, and that and then we do the same thing. And then the two other things I would say about your children and and I is there's got to be space that is that is safe for them to do their own grief work. So it it's not okay for us to demand because I hear this sometimes from other bereaved parents, they want their living children to participate in a particular thing, you know, maybe some kind of memorial thing or doing something. And if that doesn't feel good to them, if that doesn't feel right to them, if that doesn't feel safe to them, you've got to respect that because they're of course too, you know. And then the final thing is let them tell their own story. So now if you've got if you've got school age children that are very young, it would be entirely not only appropriate, but uh but correct to let their teachers know, you know, especially if something happened over the summer or if they're going to a new school or they're getting new teachers, you know. I just want you to know that Susie lost her brother last year, and there may be these are dates like maybe birthdays or you know, around the holidays or anniversaries of death that I'd like you to be aware of. And that's appropriate. But if you've got children that are, you know, in their teens and going forward, it's up to them if they identify as siblings lost survivors. And it's not right for us to always identify them on social media or other things without their permission. You know, let them tell their own story.

SPEAKER_01: 27:11

Totally agree. Totally agree. Uh and uh as referring back to what you said a few moments ago, Melanie, when you talked about being honest and open and transparent, I think uh particularly for our maybe younger children or younger teenagers who have lost a sibling, they need to, we need to help them understand that we're not the same people that we were before. If they notice changes in us for positive or negative, that it it's a part of what happens in the grieving process.

SPEAKER_00: 27:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 27:55

And yes, we're the same people, but in some ways, no, we're not the same people. Because I think if they understand it, yeah, then then they can handle it and respond a lot better.

SPEAKER_02: 28:07

And also we're not the same family we were. Again, back to the whole relationship thing. So everything shifted. And so so you've got they they no longer have the same family that they had the day before. It's a whole different family. Everybody's changing and parents are changing. And and even young children can understand when we say to them, you know, mommy's sad. I know you want me to go to this thing, whatever it is. I don't think I can do that. Would it be okay if Aunt So-and-so goes with you in instead? Would that be okay with you, you know? And and you can you can make arrangements, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 28:47

Absolutely, of course. But yeah, it does, it does affect the dynamics of families, even extended families.

SPEAKER_00: 28:55

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 28:55

You know?

SPEAKER_00: 28:56

Oh, definitely.

SPEAKER_01: 28:57

Yeah. It you you learn as you go how far reaching that loss actually is, because it touches far more lives than we think about. And and that's it's just a learning process. And you know, we have to learn to give grace to each other and and be understanding because everybody's journey is different.

SPEAKER_02: 29:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 29:21

Do you do you think that having lost Dominic has made you a better person in in any way?

SPEAKER_02: 29:29

I think there's things I've learned in the process of grieving him. And I'm always very careful to let parents know that I do not believe that God visits child loss on us to teach us anything.

SPEAKER_00: 29:45

I agree.

SPEAKER_02: 29:46

You know, and and some people can fall into that mindset, like we were talking about, are what we think and how we react instead of responding. And so a huge part of grief work is working through these different feelings. So, but yes, I do think I I guess the only the best way I could say is that I have expanded both in my spiritual life and in my emotional life and in my personal life. I've I've expanded in ways that I don't think I would have if I had not lost Dominic, because I wouldn't have been forced to, because we're not, yeah, we we stay in our comfort zones as long as we can, and that's normative human behavior.

SPEAKER_01: 30:31

Totally true.

SPEAKER_02: 30:33

So I I feel like I feel like I'm a I feel like I'm a more welcoming person. We always had kind of an open door policy in our home, but I think on a very personal level that I will when I I see people, just like I said about the grass thing. I I tend to extend more grace. And I think that that's who Jesus has called us to be, you know?

SPEAKER_01: 30:58

Yeah, I agree. And and sometimes we don't learn and expand in that direction, as you were just just saying, unless we go through something that is very that challenges us to the very core of who we are. But I agree with you. I think it does give us a greater capacity to love, to be compassionate and kind and and more understanding and less apt to be judgmental. It doesn't, I'm not saying it goes away. We don't become perfect people, don't mean that at all. But I think it does, I think God can use that to round off the rough edges of who we are, and and and we can become a better version of who we were before.

SPEAKER_02: 31:47

Well, I think about the story in the New Testament where Peter has the dream about all the different food coming down from heaven because he's been ugly and you know he he he went back with the Judaizers, the early Christians that were Judaizers, and so God gives him this dream. Well, you you think you can't eat pork. Let me show you what all you can eat, you know. And to me, that's that's kind of how I feel, you know, that through meeting so many different parents with so many different backgrounds, yes, we share child loss, but we don't we don't share a lot of other things, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 32:22

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 32:23

Um and it's made me stop and think and be just be so much more able and willing to meet people where they were, where they are, rather not where they were. And I think about the book of John, you know, it's encounter after encounter and after encounter between Jesus and individuals. And each time he meets that person exactly at their point of need, he welcomes them, he loves them, he extends grace and mercy, and he he uses where they are to help them see who he is.

SPEAKER_01: 33:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 33:05

And and he does, but he takes each one gently to that place, you know, and that's I think I'm more like that now than I used to be.

SPEAKER_01: 33:13

Yeah, I have uh in conversations I've had with other grieving parents, I would say that most share that same that same perspective, Melanie. And I know it's God has used that in our lives in ways that we never would have even thought to ask about, you know. It's like you said a few minutes ago, sometimes we we love our our comfort zone. We love that that little predictable zone of life that we are involved in, and we wouldn't think about asking God to send something that he could use to make us better. So in his wisdom, coupled with his grace and his kindness, he does allow us to experience things that we would have never in a million years thought would happen. But he can also use that for good, not only in our lives, but in the lives of other people, much like what you're doing today by sharing your story and being transparent about what it did to your life and your family's lives.

SPEAKER_02: 34:20

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 34:21

Yeah. You know, Melanie, I think a lot of people who maybe people are listening today, I should say, who are in a much earlier season of grief than we are. It's been 10 years for us, 11 years, 11 and a half years for you guys. When you think back to those early weeks and months, are there things that that you could share with with our listeners that helped you? Granted, it's not cookie cutter, and what helped you might not necessarily help somebody else, but it might. And sometimes I think people wonder, you know, how am I ever going to feel any better? Is this ever going to stop hurting so much? And sometimes there are things that we can do, but our brains are so muddled in those early, in that early season that we might not have thought about it. But if somebody shares what helped them, who knows, maybe it could help.

SPEAKER_02: 35:27

I'm a huge believer in the uh uh idea and the truth that's both scriptural and even if you aren't a believer, it's it's borne out by cognitive cognitive behavior therapy, is that we can choose certain things even even when we feel like we can't. And sometimes they're teeny, tiny, tiny little things. So I would say in the beginning that what helped me in terms of personal practice, you know, of course, having friends and family and people that came alongside, that was huge. But if you're talking about what did I do in a day that maybe helped me, one is I journaled. And there's lots of good grief journals out there that if you, if you're not the kind of person, I had journaled for years. So it was very natural for me to continue to just keep writing. But if you're the kind of person that's never journaled, you can find prompts online or you can buy one of the one of the scripture-based grief journaling books that are out there. And so writing down what that does, and this this goes to taking our thoughts captive, when when you just are thinking about stuff, we've all had this experience that when we are thinking, it's kind of like like a foggy cloud in our brains. But when we're forced to tell someone else about it, which is also like journaling, you could also just tell somebody about it. When you're forced to put into words what's floating around in your head, you are suddenly much more aware of exactly what you're feeling, exactly what you're thinking. And then you can evaluate it. Is this aligned with truth? So one of the things that I always tell parents is that feelings are real, but feelings can lie.

SPEAKER_01: 37:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02: 37:23

I can feel terrible, I can feel this is never gonna end, I can feel that God doesn't see me, I can feel that no one loves me, and that this is that I'm never gonna survive this. But that is, those are all legitimate. But that's not that's not true. You know, you can survive, you know, you it will, it doesn't, it it actually will end in heaven. On earth, it's not gonna end. So that's another thing I will tell parents. You get stronger and better able to carry the load. And if you do the work that grief requires, you can rewire your body, you can rewire your brain to some extent, even in the face of great trauma. And if you need professional help to do that, please, please, please seek that help, whether it's medication or counseling or whatever. But a lot of us can do this through personal practices. So one was journaling, the other one was physical activity. So one of the things we're created mind, body, spirit, and soul. So our bodies respond to sunlight. Our bodies respond to physical movement. So if I would find myself in a grief spiral, I might journal for a while. And then when I felt like that was not being fruitful anymore, if I'm sitting, I stand up. If I'm standing up, I walk. If I'm in a certain room, I go to another room. That was very helpful. Not ruminating as best as I could, you know, at the very, very early days, a lot of us just we just want to hold the picture, or for me, it was my son's pillows from his bed. He had an apartment. We want to just hold those things, and that's appropriate and good and helpful. But if you find that two, three, six, eight weeks down the road that you can't move your chair or out of your bed, let someone help guide you to a more fruitful way of not moving on. Nobody, I don't want anybody to think I'm saying telling them moving on or get over, but you can move forward because this is the thing. The sun's gonna rise, the sun's gonna set, and the calendar's gonna keep going. If you have other children in your life, their lives are gonna continue to move. And if you if you sit in that one place and you don't make any attempt, and some of us need people to help us make the attempt. I know some of us are so profoundly broken, you may have, you may enter grief already with some kind of major depressive disorder or anxiety disorder. You need to get with your healthcare professional and discuss that because medications can be adjusted, counseling can be added. So journaling, physical movement, having a plan for the day. I'm a big write things down person. So at the time I had a large herd of goats and my I had brain fog, grief brain, it was terrible. I couldn't remember things. And so I would set out a little three by five card for myself. I either did it first thing in the morning or I did it the night before and put it next to my coffee pot. And I would have three non-negotiable things I had to do that day. Now, at the very beginning, they were things like go feed the goats, because that needed to be done every day. And it was not, I mean, it was something I should have been able to do anyway, but it seemed insurmountable, like an insurmountable task initially. But as of time went on, one of the things I did that first summer was I sewed bookmarks. Somebody had given me a bunch of fabric scraps, and I set my sewing machine up on my kitchen table, and I was like, I am not going to bed until I make three new bookmarks every day. Now, people can laugh at that or whatever, and it was a, it was just, it was just busy work. But it but as when I'm sewing and I'm trying to get that seam straight, I can't also be actively anxious.

SPEAKER_01: 41:17

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 41:18

You know, a another thing that I did was I read good Christian books on grief. One of the first ones I read was uh Lament for a Son by Nicholas Woltersdorf. And I loved it because it was in short bursts. It was easy to read, and as we all know, our attention, most of us at when we're grieving our the loss of a child, our attention span is really short. So I could do that. I could do that. Another one is A Grace Disguised by Jerry Sitzer. I had read uh Grief Observed previously by C.S. Lewis, and I will caution people in reading that one. He's a he's the kind of writer that every word for another writer would be worth a paragraph. So, so if you if that is challenging to you, just set it down, come back to it later, not a problem. I would also say if you're able, you know, read some scripture. I know that for myself, I was down, I had just come through a three-year period where I had gone through the Bible literally one chapter at a time because I had decided that I had I'd studied scripture for so long, read it so many times, it was kind of getting rote. If it sounds terrible, but it was. And so I slowed myself down, you know. And God brought a lot of verses to mind when I was journaling. And sometimes I would look them up, but I was not reading long passages of scripture in the early days.

SPEAKER_01: 42:48

Right. That goes right in keeping with what you were saying a moment ago, Melanie, is that you know, your grief brain is uh is sort of reminiscent of when we talked about COVID brain, uh the COVID brain fog. It's much like that with the grief brain. And so to sh, you know, to sit and read a long passage of scripture or multiple chapters in a book might just seem totally overwhelming. And so instead of trying to read something, you just put it aside and don't read anything. But yeah, small bites at a time. That's that's what I'm I'm hearing. Just introduce yourself a little bit at a time.

SPEAKER_02: 43:36

And and specifically when I began writing the blog, I purposed if if anybody ever goes there, you'll find a few longer ones, but typically they're 500 to 750 words and and broken up into short, choppy bits because I knew that I was not I was not up for some, you know, multi-page anything at when passed. And then the other thing here get connected to other bereaved parents if you can. That's huge. That is really huge. Because you need a sounding board where where you can go and say, and there's lots of online groups, and I'm sure you you probably have some links when you do the pod with some of the links in the pod notes. But if you can have a place where you can go and say, I'm feeling this way, I'm facing this issue, I don't know what to do. The first anniversary of my child's death is coming up. You need somewhere where you can go and and get wisdom from others who walked ahead of you. And also who will just affirm, no, you're not crazy for feeling this way. You're not, you're not out of bounds, you haven't transgressed in some way, you know. And so that's super, super helpful. And then if you have, you know, don't overlook your non-bereaved friends. I had two non-bereaved friends who came once a month to my house, brought lunch, sat with me all day. We talked about all kinds of stuff. And they never corrected me, they never chastised me, they just listened. If I felt like crying, I could cry. If I didn't feel like crying, I didn't, you know, I didn't feel like I was dishonoring Dominic in their presence because they they well understood how much I loved him. And that's another thing that bereaved parents think that if they're not actively demonstrating some kind of emotion that that they people will think that they didn't love their child or don't or have gotten over it or whatever. But that was very helpful to me too.

SPEAKER_01: 45:42

Those those are really good words, Melanie. And those, you know, if for those who are listening, maybe maybe you could just zero in on one of those things that Melanie just shared. And if you if you don't feel like you can remember that because you've got grief brain, then there are there will be a transcript of this episode provided in the uh summary section. So take a look at that if you would like. Also, you can visit Melanie's blog site on her website. You can visit her blog, and there are what, there's 10 years worth of blog messages on there for people to plug into, and I'm sure would would be helpful and encouraging and just help you in in rediscovering meaning and purpose in your life again. So check that out. But Melly, I also want you to talk a little bit more about your ministry and what it is that you offer through that ministry and how people can get in touch with you.

SPEAKER_02: 46:49

My well, about a year ago, it's been just just a little over a year. I've been in the grief community, as Greg mentioned, for over, well, it'll be 10 years will be the first blog post. September 16th will be 10 years of writing the blog. So I've been in the grief community for 10 years, but uh I decided that the Lord was leading me to offer some additional resources to both the grief community, but also those outside the grief community who minister to those inside the grief community. So, like ministers, pastors, churches, social workers, other people. And so I founded Heartache and Hope, which is a 501c3 nonprofit. It's very low-key. This is not a source of income for myself. It's every every bit of the ministry funds are used to fund ministry opportunities for other people. So I do in-person monthly gatherings in my local community. I think I've been really praying about it. I'm probably going to switch to virtual shortly so people can look for that on my Facebook page, which everything's posted as public setting. And I also have a public Facebook page called Heartache and Hope. And I post the blog and encouraging quotes and other things there, resources that I find out about. I post there for other parents to find and access. I do mom retreats. One of the things that the Lord really laid on my heart was basically what you're talking about, Greg, that, you know, we're we're comforted with comfort so that we can comfort others. We've most brief parents feel this expansion in their hearts, this desire once they get over that initial breath-robbing few months or years of our journey where we want to reach out to others. Because my greatest desire is that no one living in darkness thinks that darkness is all there is. I don't want anyone who is who is in the midst of child loss to think that they are literally never going to be able to do this, that they're never going to be able to carry this, that they're never going to be able to see any good in the world or find hope again, because you can and you will.

SPEAKER_01: 49:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 49:15

And that's really the heart of who of my ministry, in the heart of who I am. So the mom's retreats are these, these intimate four-day retreats at a property that my family owns. They're very small. The maximum number of people that we can accommodate is six plus me, so seven of us. And I can just tell you, I have I've finished the fourth one in August, and I will be having the fifth one in October. And I have seen the Lord move in so such amazing ways. They're offered free of charge to the people who come, and that's through the donations that we're the generous donations that people have made to the ministry. I also do a Blue Christmas event for people in my community. And what I hope to do is to I speak to groups and do podcasts and other things. I've been at conferences. Our Hearts are Home does a conference, and they do two annual conferences a year. And what I hope to begin doing is to develop the four-day retreat into a one-day retreat. I'm going to offer a pilot of it in October to a group in Texas because I know some, there's a lot of local groups that meet, and it might be helpful for them to have, you know, maybe a five-hour event where they got get the meat of the retreat. It won't be the same experience, but it'll it'll give them about most of the information that I give out. But my heart is really for bereaved parents to understand that they can stay connected or reconnect to God, that they can that they can take their feelings to the Lord and lament, and that He will help them align those feelings with truth. And that when we feed ourselves truth, that then we gain perspective, which will ultimately lead to purpose, because the way we find purpose post-child loss, in in my opinion, and based on scripture, is I've got to orient my, I've got to position my story within the eternal story the Lord is writing. So I'm part of this greater narrative. And when I can recognize that, then I can say to the Lord, okay, so what do you want me to do with this? What and it and for some people, it's doing a podcast or doing a ministry or doing retreats. But for some people, it is as simple but equally important as walking beside that person that you hear about that also lost a child or frankly has had any other profound loss. You can come in with a mercy and say, Hey, I'm here. You, you know, you're not gonna be one of those people that says, Hey, tell me if there's anything I can do. You're gonna actually go with the paper plates.

SPEAKER_00: 52:05

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 52:06

You're gonna go and you're gonna, you're gonna drive them, you're gonna drive them to the doctor's appointment because I didn't drive for like six weeks after Dominic died because I I didn't trust myself to drive because I couldn't focus, I couldn't pay attention. And and so, and then once you've, you know, once you you're connecting with God, you're consulting his truth, and you can begin to recognize that your story is part of a bigger story. Well, then, you know, I want people to be equipped to persevere because that's what God has called us to do. You know, people a lot of times think of victory as coming in first across the finish line. But if you look at scripture, that's that has nothing to do with victory in the kingdom of God.

SPEAKER_00: 52:53

So true.

SPEAKER_02: 53:00

And I uh Ephesians 2 10 is one of my favorite verses, you know, for we're God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good works which he prepared beforehand for us to do that we may walk therein. So there's a whole bunch to that. God is the one making me for what purpose? To do the good works, not my good works, the ones he's already set up. All I gotta do is just keep walking. And all I have to do is be the me God created me to be, even the me post-loss, the me that's chiseled by heartache to do what? To do the good works that God created for me to do. And that means he's gonna put them right in my path. I don't have to go somewhere special, I don't have to get on a plane and travel to another country. It's the people and the and the just that are there already, you know, or the people that I meet. And he does, he has all that, and then that is gonna be ultimately something that in eternity, I believe with my whole heart that in eternity God is going to reveal to us the ways in which our threads have been woven into this big tapestry.

SPEAKER_01: 54:13

That is so well said. And, you know, Melanie, the work that you're doing is so important. All the different aspects of what your ministry looks like. So for somebody who's listening today thinking, you know, maybe I might want to possibly go to one of those retreats, but I'm not really sure. How could they get in touch with you and just learn more about it? And so they can make a, you know, make a decision at some point.

SPEAKER_02: 54:43

Well, there's a couple of ways. And I and I'll be honest with everybody because you and I had talked that this podcast may not come out for a little while. So I hope by then I've updated the website, but if so that it reflects this. Because there's such limited space on the retreats, what I did for the past retreats is I just put it out there on the on the website, which is heartacheandhope.org, and you can go under events. I may change that slightly because there was a lot of confusion over whether, even though the the website is set up to automatically drop people back to the wait list, I think there was a lot of confusion about that. But you can either message me on Facebook, which anybody can find me on Facebook, Melanie D. Simone. You can go to the website, heartacheandhope.org, and send an email. There's a a place to contact through there. And I will be opening up probably by December or of 2025 or January of 2026. I'll be opening up the dates for 2026. And that's how you would do it.

SPEAKER_01: 55:54

For those retreats.

SPEAKER_02: 55:55

Correct. For the retreats, yes. And if anybody wants to contact me for any other reason, they can do it that way too. They can go through the through their the website. There's a contact button there, and then you can get me on Messenger through Facebook because I check all of those.

SPEAKER_01: 56:13

Yeah, perfect. And I will include links to all of all of those that Melanie just mentioned in her episode summary. So just be on the lookout for that. And I just want to say thanks again, Melanie, for your transparency, for your honesty, and giving us a glimpse into your grief journey, which is very personal. But I think every time we do this, not only does it benefit us, but it also benefits the people that are listening who may be in a very different place on their grief journey. So thank you for that. Thank you for carving out time and your schedule to come and be our guest today.

SPEAKER_02: 57:03

Thank you for having me. I really, really appreciate it. And I hope that the Lord continues to bless the work you're doing through the podcast.

SPEAKER_01: 57:11

Thank you so much, Melanie.