How do we talk about grief? Sometimes, we just don’t. This is the place where the conversation surrounding death is normalized, even celebrated. This is an invitation to tell your story. What happened? How’d you deal? How did you NOT deal? What did you learn? What’s your best advice?
If you’d like to give your grief a voice, we’d love to share it.
STEPHANIE MANTHE
Stephanie is a mother of two, a digital marketing manager, wife, daughter, sister and a great writer. She wrote about the experience of losing her mother two years ago and agreed to share an excerpt here.
In Her Stead
Seven years before my mom died, we were told to prepare ourselves. The doctor somberly explained to us what was happening in her body as end-stage liver failure left her careening on the edge of a medical cliff. A bag hung from the tube in her abdomen, draining the built-up fluid from her belly. In her brief moments of waking, she would talk to my sister as though she were her own mother, long deceased, planning trips to the summer lake home, long sold.
In darker moments of waking, she saw enormous spiders crawling up the walls and the clock. It was the ammonia reaching her brain. From the withdrawal. The lack of boxes of Franzia Chablis.
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AMBER Johnson
Amber Johnson is an award-winning filmmaker who recently created and directed Visitation for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. The show explored the grief experience from funny to poetic to painful by mixing performance and video projection. When not filming or directing, Amber can be found raising chickens in her backyard. Click below to read Amber’s story of trauma and grief.
STAY TUNED!
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MORE STORIES TO COME!
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