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For over three years, I provided training for foster and adoptive parents to help prepare them to understand the grief experienced by neglected and abused children prior to placement in their homes. For another 10 years, I developed safety plans for children and their families recognizing the pain, emotions and grief all these individuals experienced.
Working and life planning with over 17 different populations in the mental health field were not adequate preparation for the actuality to be faced 16 years after entering my second career choice. Zac's death gave me the opportunity to gain a new world view by experiencing reality like no classroom, training or other life experience of grief and loss could ever afford. There is no comparison between personal experience of grief and loss and a classroom explanation due to the individual emotions connected to the experience.
I am grateful for and humbled by the opportunity to have known my son in this life. He was a wonderful human being who shared his life with us for 21 years. He is now an incredible spirit on the other side. I want to share who he is now for I am also discovering what an admirable and esteemed spirit he is now on the other side.
"Reality is what your heart feels."
~ Zac
12/16/2005
A child's death is a parent's worst nightmare. My world shattered after Zac's automobile accident. My entire way of being changed on October 1, 2000.
With a Master’s degree in Clinical Child, Youth, and Family Work and over 25 years of experience, writing a book and communicating with the dead were the furthest ideas from my mind on October 6th when we buried him. But he knew of our plan. He knew I was supposed to write a book to help others understand death, dying, grief and reclaiming life.
With over 25 years of experience working with child victims who suffer grief and loss issues, I thought I possessed an understanding of the process, feelings and behaviors of those who grieved.
