I had to be reminded by my therapist yesterday that my son died from a senseless, violent crime. As in, what I was telling her negated that very loud, inarguable fact. I had conveniently slipped into regret and shame — reworking my way through my past, his past, our lives together, my mothering — looking at everything that went wrong, everything that I wished I had done differently, everything that the 47 year old woman I am today would have done that my very young self could not.

She had to remind me that he did not die from single-parenthood; he did not die from his father disappearing from his life; he did not die from the loneliness he expressed during his childhood years; he did not die from being an only child or from being the child of a mother who, at times, worked 100 hours a week trying to keep everything going; he did not die from my inability to find a partner, a true father figure for him; he did not die from my slip into alcoholism during his teen years; he did not die from my inability to fully break the cycle of what I was born into. He did not die from his anxiety, from his chronic pain, from his insecurity or from the very human struggles he dealt with, the ones that many of us deal with.

He died from a senseless act of violence perpetrated by people who did not value his life; who did not value his place in our family or in our world; who did not see or care about the damage that they would do to his life, to my life, to his friends’ lives and to my family’s lives forever. The bullet or bullets that took his life, the reverberations that came from that gun, will echo for eternity.

For now, I sit here in both the silence of his absence and the noise of my busy mind — a busy mind that desperately tries to figure out how I could have done things differently and in turn, change what happened to him.

Grief is a multi-faceted and messy thing. It has its own life, its own path and its own needs. It does not listen to mine. It does not take a break when I want it to, tell it to or beg it to. If I dare turn my back to it, it cries out even louder to me. If I walk away from it, I come back to find it sitting in the corner, freshly cut bangs in its lap, broken toys around its feet. Grief needs me to hold it, to coddle it and caress it, to rock it gently and lull it to sleep.

I often wonder how I can feel and be so many different things at once. How I can be in shame, loss, and sadness and still experience fleeting moments of joy. How I can carry all of these things with me and still stop long enough to watch the swallowtails flit around the butterfly bush or look down long enough to see the feather of a stellar jay laying at my feet.

It often feels like Four Corners, where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet.– where I can be in any one of four states within seconds of leaving the other — where I can straddle two or use all of my limbs to experience all four. Or where, if I am lucky, I can manage to stand gracefully on one foot in the middle of them all, arms outstretched to the heavens above, staying centered within, remembering my place, remembering where we came from and where we will most certainly return to.

I am not shame. I am not regret. I am not fear or sadness or grace. I am the one who experiences all of these things. They run through me to remind me that I am human, that I am here as a child of the Universe, a child of my parents and the mother of my child. I am not perfect. I was not perfect. But I am perfect in the eyes of God.

Josiah died from a senseless act of violence. He was not perfect, but he was perfect in the eyes of God. His death was not the sum of all of my mistakes – it was the outcome of someone else’s.

May we all be so blessed to have people in our lives who remind us of the truth – who bring us back to ourselves, back to the center, to the middle of it all.

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When Grief Speaks is a selection of writings that originated as journal entries and Facebook posts when I was in early grief after my son, Josiah, was killed. They speak straight from the heart, from the depths of despair that many bereaved find themselves in. I offer them here to not only openly share myself with you, but also to connect with those who may feel as I once did. As grief unfolds and matures, it changes. We grow grief muscles that we never wanted. At some point, we find that we can carry what we once thought would crush us and in that, we find hope.

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