LIFE | LOVE | LOSS
“They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity. Death cannot kill what never dies.”
– William Penn
THE CRACKS
“Finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay…
Celebrating cracks, crevices, and all other marks that time, weather, and love leave behind.”
– Wabi-Sabi
This month arrives different for me. This is the month that my son Joey took his life and I face another date on the calendar that makes me count how long it’s been since I have seen his face, heard his voice, felt his arms wrapped around me in a long hug. I have realized there is a muscle memory of the agonizing loss I felt when he left. My youngest child, still a boy at fifteen, barely two weeks into his sophomore year of High School. So much life in front of him. So many adventures yet to be made.
In my grief journey of losing a child I learned early on I am a calendar griever. Dates get me. This bothered me deeply in the beginning as why did one specific date hit my mind and heart heavier than others? It is not like I didn’t know he was still gone or that some how he could return…. It is just how my system processed losing him. His birthday hits me hard. His death date pulls at all my emotions, and I feel it viscerally as his mother, he is bone of my bone, blood of my blood and I experience his loss physically, mentally, and emotionally on these dates. It is an ache, a longing for something that is missing from me. It will be nine years this year since he was here.
Through the cracks of this pain I have found deep peace, made amazing friends I would not have met without this loss, learned new things I would not have made time to learn, loved deeper and wider, appreciated each day as the gift it is, sat in stillness that I might not have looked for. I am grateful for all of this.
I started following this artist named Matt Moberg and he recently shared something called “What Sidewalks Are For”. Below is an except from it that I thought applied to grief, loss and living life through the cracks of that pain.
“And I think this is how the best gifts are supposed to work.
I think that gratitude often begins where total ownership ends.
Because the holiest things in our lives were never really ours.
Everything is entrusted and none of it is possessed.
Tended to, but never kept.
The children. The rivers. The body. Each other.
This ridiculous little strip of earth where strangers walk their dogs
and teenagers cut across the lawn and someone’s grandmother moves slowly toward the bus stop carrying two grocery bags in her arms and an entire invisible century is in the bend of her back.
Love has always been a terrible financial arrangement.
No warranty. No favorable interest rate.
We invest everything and we retain nothing.
The miracle though isn’t that the bill arrives.
The miracle is that we keep reaching for the check.
That we keep repairing what other people are allowed to walk on.
That we pour ourselves into things without receiving the deed.
That we plant trees whose shade will fall on somebody else’s shoulders.
That we patch the cracks knowing that winter is already backstage cracking its knuckles.
Peace is realizing:
There are worse ways to leave this world than having made one square of it a little kinder before we go.”
So, I leave you this month with a simple invitation, let’s spread some extra kindness, to ourselves, to others, smile at strangers, hold open a door, pay it forward if you can!
All my best,
Genna
MENTAL HEALTH MOMENT
“You were unsure which pain is worse –
The shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.”
-Let’s rethink grief – williscc.com
The Out of the Darkness Walk with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is Saturday September 4th, details are below. If you need help, get it, share what you are thinking and feeling. Get things on the outside so they don’t destroy you from the inside.
Event Venue: Veterans Memorial Park
City: West Jordan
Date: 09/05/2026
Walk Start Time: 9:30 am
Walk Chair: Melanie Jeske
Walk Chair Email: mjeske@afsp.org
The Next Adventure 