One Year Without Jonathan

November 13, 2014 was the kind of fall day that made you forget winter was on it’s way. A gift of gold shining brightly as the last of the red and orange leaves fell off the trees. I thought I felt the promise of new adventures in the air and I felt like anything was possible. Anything was possible except the impossible.

That evening, I came home to find my twelve year old son, Jonathan, dead in my back yard. It was shock and horror. I felt as if lightning struck me down and cracked me open, leaving me exposed to die myself.

The next year was an arduous journey through anger, guilt, despair, misery. I was given spiritual messages, visions, dreams from my son and he lead me out of the darkness into an even brighter world than I had left on that November day.

He showed me, through his death, how to transform myself. How to turn my grief into personal growth, how to turn anger into forgiveness.

Grief is a very difficult topic and I find that most people feel like it’s too sad to talk about. It’s real life though. If you can’t talk about the grief, how could you understand my transformation? How would you ever know that beauty can come from such a dark place?

I detail this journey in my book, One Year Without Jonathan. I wrote it initially as a journal to help release my emotions. I put together my journal entries along with my photography to make a story. People say that it’s a sad story, but to quote The Beatles, you can, “Take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let it into your heart. Then you can start to make it better.”

One Year Without Jonathan can be purchased on Amazon. And you can follow the same title on Facebook for information on Book Clubs, Book Readings, and Photography grief support groups.