Season Topic: Facing Our Fears After the Death of Our Child
Grief triggers can happen any time, any place and with no warning. And when it happens in public, it can be very unnerving.
Laura is once again joined by Pastor Lynn Breeden, who has been dealing with grief triggers for over 30 years, after the death of her five-year-old son, Joel.
This is now a normal part of life for those of us who have lost a child, and there is just now way around it. However, there are many ways to handle ourselves when these triggers stir up our deep, painful loss. Some are healthy, and some are not so healthy, and much of it depends on where you are in your journey.
This is something that will plague us for the rest of our lives. Laura and Lynn hope and pray that you find their discussion not only helpful, but comforting and encouraging.
Lynn Breeden’s life was forever changed on October of 1987, 
when her son Joel Brian died of cancer at the age of five. After coming to terms with this loss, her greatest desire was to help other moms through their own loss, so they do not have to grieve alone. Lynn founded Mourning to Dancing, which is a non-denominational ministry, with the sole mission to offer comfort, hope, and encouragement to mothers who have suffered the loss of a child. She also currently serves as the Pastor for Bremen United Methodist Church in Bremen, Indiana.
Birthdays
This week we don’t have any birthdays to share with our listeners.
If you would like your child mentioned on the podcast the week of his or her birthday, click here to fill out the short form with the needed information.
The special song written for our children’s birthdays I Remember Well can be heard here. (It is the song that plays in the background of the birthday segment.)
Links referred to in this podcast episode:
Here is a link to the song Lynn talked about “Who You’d Be Today” by Kenny Chesney.
For more information about the When Tragedy Strikes course, and to sign up to get updates and know when it is open click here.
To find out more about the award winning book, When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life with Hope and Healing After the Death of Your Child, click here.
To contact Pastor Lynn Breeden, click here.
Find Mourning to Dancing on Facebook.
And please remember to Hold On Pain Eases; there is HOPE.
I want to partner with GPS Hope financially to help give support to grieving parents.
You are safe here. No masks needed…
Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope) is here to walk with parents through the darkness of child-loss, guiding them to a place of hope, light and purpose.
It is a safe place for anyone who has lost a child from this earth. There is no shame or judgement in where you are in this journey, including if you are struggling in your relationship with God or your faith has been completely shattered.
To have Laura come and speak or sing at your event, contact us at office@gpshope.org.
putting the death of Becca behind me! She will always be in front of me. Our children are our legacy. They are supposed to keep going when we leave this earth. Even if she isn’t with me anymore, I can’t leave her in my past and go on without her.
The first year of special dates is always difficult for anyone who has lost a loved one, but for a parent who has a child missing it can be almost unbearable. For us, Thanksgiving came first and brought with it the memory of how the year before, Becca had insisted on hosting the family, even though she was wheelchair bound. Then came Christmas, Becca’s favorite holiday, and then the pain of the first time she was not there to celebrate her birthday, and so on. Eventually it came around to the one-year anniversary of her death.
year be harder than the first! I see two reasons for this. First, I braced myself for those one-year markers. I knew they were going to be hard, so I tried to prepare myself for them mentally and emotionally. The second year it was more like I was caught off guard. I’ve been through this before; it should be better this year, I thought, so all of a sudden, those dates were here, and they just hit me like a brick wall.
Grief recovery for a bereaved parent? No, not really. Yes, it is possible to get to the point where we can have memories without the pain. It happens gradually, but for the rest of our lives there will be times where the pain returns, because all we have are the memories of our child. The goal is to have that happen less and less, but it is naïve to think we will get to the point where we no longer feel pain within the memories and therefore have “recovered,” as the article I read suggested.
