Parenting Through Pain: Understanding Mental Health and Loss

Welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast. We help grow better parents through science, evidence and the lived experience of other parents.

Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our guest today is a pediatric nurse practitioner and a storyteller. Jackie Baker is also a first time author.

Her debut book is called Messy Hope for Mothers Grieving the Loss of a Child by Suicide. Jackie joins us today from Vancouver, Washington. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Oh, thank you for having me, Leanne. I'm looking forward to this conversation.

Difficult topic, obviously. Can you take us back, Jackie, to the moment that you realized that you needed to put words to your grief that you were feeling?

What was missing for you that led to the creation of Messy Morning?

It was interesting because I'm always been like an overachiever. I'm a firstborn, so we always have all our ducks in a row. And then after my son died, I had just finished my doctorate as a, a nurse practitioner.

My husband had just started a business and he was busy with that. My daughter got married, and all of a sudden I was like, what do I do now? I don't have something to keep me busy.

And so I signed up for an online creative nonfiction class. And it was nice, it was anonymous, my avatar was my cat, so no one knew it was me. And then I thought this would be a safe place to start writing.

And it was that I took 13 of those classes because it just, it just resonated with me. And I had, I'd always been a writer, but I've always been busy writing academic papers and, you know, other things like that.

And so to go into this type of writing, it was, it was so freeing. And I just remember one of my coaches was saying, you know, I was worried about the editing. And she goes, well, that's what editors are for.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I can just write now. And so that was very freeing. And that's what started that journey of writing my grief story and other stories of grief that I've had over the years.

I've lost many different people in my life. And so I started writing about those losses because that was easier than writing about my, my current loss with my son.

And then, But I also was journaling and I would just shove it away and I use that. I would bring it to my, when I saw a grief counselor, I would just read what I was writing. And so.

And that's where the stories about Sebastian came out. And then I decided to put those journals in the book to see what early grief looked like in my life.

When you talk about freeing, what exactly was it about this process of, you know, journaling and writing about the most difficult thing perhaps that you've ever been through in your life? What about that was freeing for you?

Well, I realized. So I had lost my mother when I was 18. So I'm going to go back, back a little bit. She was 36. It was sudden. She died of a stroke.

She died within two hours of the stroke. And I was in a place. I was a freshman in college. I had just left home. I was now homeless. I was struggling to survive.

And so I kind of like buried my mom and went back with my life. And I didn't do any of the grieving process at that time.

And it was like 10 years later when I wasn't there that a well meaning pastor said, you know, I think you need to see a therapist. And by this time I'd going through the motions on the outside, but the inside I was, you know, I was dying. I was making poor choices.

I didn't understand why. And it's. It's almost like what I talk about. If you don't talk it out, your body responds, you know, even in the midst of.

Even if you're not saying anything. So I was getting migraines. I, you know, wouldn't sleep well. I wouldn't, because I wasn't addressing what was going on, on at that time.

And so that's when I started learning with my son. I needed to write it out because if I could put it out on paper, it was almost, I called like sometimes a vomiting.

I was vomiting it out and just getting it out there. There was a release that happened. And then even articulating it to somebody and sharing it out loud was very freeing and very releasing.

And I remember I would read it to my husband and I'm like, okay, can I read this to you? And I would just cry because that was like a vehicle that allowed me to cry and to express what I was going through at that time.

Jackie, tell us a little bit about Sebastian. Who was he and how do you want people to remember him?

That's a great question. And I have a chapter in my book. It's called More than a statistic.

And because when Sebastian died by suicide, he became one of like, at that time, 44,000 people in the United States that had Died by suicide. And it just bothered me that I wanted people to know that he was more than just something that he had done.

And so I started thinking about and writing.

And it was hard at the beginning because I had forgotten about who he was because I was so enmeshed in the fact of what he had done and what he had done to me and it wasn't to me. But you know, I. That's the way I felt at that time. But my son, so he's my firstborn son, he was 23 when he passed away.

But growing up he was this precocious, beautiful little boy. He came out blonde hair, blue eyed.

And I went, I gave birth to you because you know, I'm dark haired, my husband's blonde, but I'm like, wait a minute, my genes are supposed to be strong here. And then they just came out. Just a shock of blonde hair that stayed with him his whole life. He never went dark. He had the blonde eyebrows.

He was too cute for his own good. I always used to say.

So when he was a young boy, it's when Zoolander came out and he would practice his blue steel look, if you're familiar with that movie. And he would just. It was early days of, you know, iPhones.

And I have like thousands of pictures of him on his phone just practicing that, that perfect look. He was a smart little boy, always curious, wanting to know everything, you know, he just loved the world and he was not afraid, you know.

I remember when he was 11 months old, climbing the play park at McDonald's and I had turned my back and I'm like, where's boy? And he was, he had climbed up to the top and he slid down and then he went right back around and I was just like, okay, there you go. And.

But he was always safe. He never broke a bone. But he was always very cautious and you know, but, but fearless. He played soccer, he played baseball.

He was really good at what he did. I used to tell him, you have to learn how to fail. Well because he was so good. It was winning was so easy to him at times.

He was a national chess player when he was like nine years old. So it tells you his little brain always thinking ahead. I remember one time he would.

He did simuls which means he played simultaneous chess games with like seven different players and he could just go through and do it. So that the way he was, you know. He got a soccer scholarship to play soccer his freshman year of college.

So he was a goalkeeper, loved playing soccer. That was his life. And, and he just, he loved, he loved the Lord. He.

But at the same time then about 8th grade, he started struggling with anxiety and depression. Like I say, a lot of kids do. But then his just kept spiraling more and more, started making, you know, I would say poor choices.

He, you know, he was self medicating with marijuana for his anxiety. He would tell me, we encouraged him see a counselor who, who promptly they diagnosed him with adhd.

And I, I believe my, my son did the diagnosis himself because we, you know, we grew up with him. I.

He didn't have adhd, but he was able to get medication for ADHD which he combined with marijuana, which I think just didn't help his brain at all at this time because he was a young developing brain.

And the research shows that there is some chemical imbalances that happen in young men when they take marijuana and other types of medication early in their life that there could be permanent changes. I know there's more research on, but I did see that he ended up in rehab for a while because he had made some poor choices. It was jail time or rehab.

And so we were able to get him into Teen Challenge which is a, a Christian rehab facility. And it was at that time he had his first suicide attempt.

And so we, he was hospitalized, we got him on some medication and he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and then got him into another facility. And it was six months after that that he, he died by suicide again. And not again the second time. I mean it was. He was successful that time. Yeah.

When you think back on all of that and as you recount it, what goes through your mind about what do you wish you had known or had access to while all that this was going on?

Because as you know, we live in a world now where the word suicide and you know, anxiety and all the things that you talked out there, they're talked about regularly. But when you're going through it, it's a very different story.

So what, what do you wish you.

Had and what kind of, you know, advice could you offer for parents potentially in the same situation?

And it's interesting, you know, as a healthcare provider who deal with, I deal with teenage teenagers with anxiety, depression and suicidal, active suicidal thoughts on a regular basis. So that was part of my norm.

You know, I mean, it's unfortunate, but that's was weekly, you know, I would see somebody and then it, you know, escalated during COVID during that time.

But when my son was going through that, we were aware that he, you know, he had these things going on and we did everything in our power that we could to help him. We did. You know, we got him counseling, we talked about medication, we talked about, you know, support groups. We.

I always said, I wish I had a magic wand, you know, that I could just say, this is going to work, because you could do all the things and it still may not be effective.

And that was hard because, you know, if we just found the magic pill or the just found the magic therapy group or the magic place to go, but, you know, our children have free will. I wish I always said I didn't want my children to have free will till they had.

They were 35 and married and had their own kids because I could take care of it, all right? And then I realized, you can't. You have to let them go. And even though we want to protect our children, sometimes we just can't.

And so looking back, I think we did everything. My husband and I, we went back and discussed this.

I remember many times, because the things that people talk about, like after a child dies in such a way, you go back and did I do enough? I mean, my husband struggled with, was I too hard on my son? Was I too light on my son? Did I not say the right thing? Oh, he agonized about that.

Just agonized about that. It kept him up at night, you know, if only I had done this. If only I had done this.

But it came down to we did everything we knew, possibly with the tools we had at that time, you know, and so we couldn't change anything. I don't think the only thing that I think was a blessing. And I know for some parents, this is not the case.

My son did not die in our home, and he had asked to come home. And because of the choices he had made, we chose. We couldn't do it at that time because of what some of the things he had done. And.

And someone said that was a blessing because he could have done what he did at home and we would have had to have found him. So to me, that was, I mean, a small blessing. I just. Yeah. But nonetheless, a horrible thing to have had done to. For a parent to survive that.

Yeah, definitely.

Given that lived experience, given your role in terms of being a nurse practitioner and as you said, dealing with kids with all kinds of different, you know, tough issues that were. That they're dealing with. How is all of those that. Or has it reshaped or impacted your understanding of loss of compassion and of care?

It's a very good question. I remember after my son died, I requested That I didn't see any child with suicidal thoughts.

I, I just, there's just no way I could do that objectively. I just, I was such, so grieving.

I went back to work two weeks after my son had passed away because I had just started this new practice and I didn't feel like I could leave.

And I was kind, I needed something to keep me busy at this time besides my writing, you know, so I went to work every day and then, but I did request, I said, no, I cannot see these kids, so you've got to give me at least a year. And, and if they showed up on my schedule accidentally, I actually went out and just said, no, I can't do it, I cannot.

And other, my other providers in the office were gracious to take those kids from me. So then after a year or so then I was like, okay, I can start doing this again. I think I can start doing this again.

And the big thing that I saw when I walked into the room knowing that this was going on is all of a sudden I was like, oh, I know how this mom feels. Because I'd never, of course I didn't know how that was.

And I mean, I could empathize and do all the things you learn in nursing, you know, how to be give those open ended questions. But it just dawned on me like, oh, I know how she feels and it feels, it, she is scared, she is worried, she is wondering all those things.

And then I looked at the, you know, the patient and I'm like, but I remember how my son felt and I know, I remember, you know, struggling with those feelings that they were feeling. So it gave me more compassion. It definitely did.

And I, and I think, and I got brave enough where I would say to the mom, I really understand how you're going through. I know how you're going through. And then if, and then they would look at me and it was kind of like, oh, you get it.

I didn't have to say anything else. But there was that shared moment of one mom to another mom or a parent, another parent.

And it just changed the relationship with us, you know, I mean, I was, you know, they, they trusted me, they trusted my care, that I could do that. I knew I wanted to do the best for them as well.

But I also learned too that, you know, again, I always, the hard part about healthcare providers is that we don't try to become godlike, but in a.

Way.

We become this godlike person because we're supposed to be all knowing and we're supposed to. We can dispense this information and this medication and this diet, and if you just trust us, as everything's fine.

But then what I've gone through is like, I am not God.

I cannot control how they're going to respond and how they're going to react to the information that, you know, I'm going to give them and the wisdom. I can only give them what I know.

And then I have to trust that they're going to, you know, look at the information and utilize that the best way they can. But, yeah, it's. I just knowing. And I always go in now, and I just. I pray for these families and, you know, and.

But I thought I could be really objective now. I can separate my loss with the. What's going on in the exam room. And that's been a blessing. I'm just real thankful that I can separate that. And.

And I've. I've talked to a lot of families over the years now since my. My son has passed away, and it's just been. It's been.

I want to say, a blessing, but I respect and treasure that relationship that I have with these families.

When we talk about suicide, we're talking about a loss that really carries with it several unique layers. There's the stigma, there's the unanswered questions. There's certainly guilt. And you alluded to some of those pieces.

What have you come to understand about those layers, Jackie, that people on the outside perhaps often miss?

You know, one thing I. We talk about the five stages of grief, and then later on they have added the two more layers.

You know, it's talking about the guilt and the shame that come with that. And that's part of.

Of when it comes to suicide that I think a lot of people don't understand because we as parents feel like we should have been able to control this. And we have so much guilt that if I didn't, you know, if only I had let my son stay home, if only I hadn't sent him there.

If only, you know, I didn't let him drive. I mean, you know, for whatever reason, it's really easy for us to put that in our head.

And then the shame of suicide, even though it's spoken everywhere, especially if you're a person of faith, there is this. I call it. It's like this unspoken shame and guilt that comes along with being a Christian.

You know, when you think of the Ten Commandments and thou shalt not kill and then the history of the church about suicide and, you know, when Judas you know, died by suicide and the assumption and you know, everyone says he went to hell and but then you extrapolate that, that people who die by suicide then are selfish and they're going to go to hell. And so I think there's that unspoken. It's just kind of like been carried on generation to generation.

And so my hope is like, no, I wanted to question that and say, is that really the case? Is that really how we looked at that? And so, but the thing is there's so much shame and guilt.

A lot of parents can't bring that to the table because I know I tried to start a suicide support group at my church and I had one person signed up and I go to a big church so you know, thousands of people. And I was surprised. And then I realized, oh, you know, it's because we're ashamed of what happened to our child.

I mean, irrational as it is is, it's totally irrational, but it's real at the same time, if that makes sense. It's just like you can't control that. And so there's this. The guilt that I could have controlled that or.

And you know, and the well meaning people who say things, you know, to you that aren't helpful. And so you tend to isolate and keep yourself away from those that could help you.

And it was easy for me to, to want to pull back as well because I didn't know anybody, or at least I didn't know anybody that would admit that they had lost someone this way. And then now over the years people have said, oh yeah, this, I lost this person by suicide, or my sister died by suicide, but it was 20 years ago.

And again, but nobody knows those stories.

So on that note then, Jackie, how does a mother in particular begin to process a loss that is both deeply personal and at the same time, as we've just discussed, often painfully misunderstood?

How do you begin? That's the. Yeah, what do you call that? The, the million dollar question. Right. Because it's, it's each, it's individual for sure.

And a lot of it I think depends to, on where you're grounded. You know, for me I was grounded in, in the Bible. My faith in Jesus and having that layer of, of already foundation there was so instrumental for me.

And that's not always the case for a lot of grieving moms.

But I know for me, I just remember there's the Bible verse where it talks about if you build your house on the rocks and the storms come and go, when the storm is over, you're left still standing. And it just said it's, it's, you're standing. It doesn't say you're better or you're, you know, things are going to be great. It's just like.

So mainly it's telling me the roof probably came off, the windows are broken, you know, but the house is still there. And so for me, I, I think for moms, it's like, it's, it's. I call it a tsunami.

You're, you are hit by something that's so unexpected and then there's just debris everywhere. And know that that debris is normal. That is, it is, it is a fact. That is something you have to wade through. You can't avoid it. You can't deny it.

You can't pretend it wasn't there. You have to go through it. And my hope is that people will find someone to go through that with them.

And if it's not someone that's gone, who has also, you know, been through suicide, survive that, but just someone that they can, a safe person that can help them walk that journey with them.

I had people to walk that with me and, and then I've become that person for other people because you, you, you, you need someone to help you because you, you just can't do it because your whole world is shattered and shaken. And now moms will talk about who lost a child. You know, you have the before and after the line of demarcation, I call it.

That's like, well, before Sebastian died. And then it's like your life is now after Sebastian died.

And you will always live that way, you know, and it's, and, you know, oh, yeah, I remember before and I remember after, but it's, it's just, it's sudden. It happens, but it gets better and. Which is. You can't imagine that something horrendous that can actually get better.

But the other thing I would tell people, it takes a lot long than the world likes to let us know. Because in our, you know, I always say in our Western culture, like North America culture, you know, it's like one year, you should be done.

But it doesn't work that way. And especially with. I think the statistics show that suicidal grief takes a lot longer. We're talking five to seven years.

And I would say that was true in my life. I was going through the motions, you know, and everything.

Oh, thing was good, but I think it was year seven and now I'm going on year nine and, and you'll always do that too. The year, whatever the year is that I started going, oh, life is good again. Where did that come from? But it wasn't going through the motions anymore.

It was like I loved what I was doing again. I loved the quilting. I loved being with my friends, and it gave me joy again.

So what would you say then, Jackie, helped you most in the immediate aftermath of finding out that you lost your son by suicide? Were there things that surprised you, that also helped you, as you know, once you found that out?

Oh, let's see. I was numb most of the time. I would say, like, the first six months to a year. I will tell. I have no memory of the funeral, who was there.

But what surprised me was that all the people that came around and. And held my hand and who. Who were there with me, and I. What was surprising is something my husband said.

And because I'm very much like an independent person, I can do this on my own, and you can't do this on your own. And he. He told me, if someone asks you to do something, we're going to say yes.

And that was huge for me in the immediate after that, you know, and it was. It was specific enough, like, can I mow your lawn? And I'd be, oh, no, I can do it.

And then Steve would look at me, and I'm like, oh, yeah, please, can you mow my lawn? And they go, great, can I mow it tomorrow? And I would just say, yes. And then they would say, can I bring. You know, I want to bring you a food.

And instead of worrying about, I can't eat that because I'm not eating pasta or whatever, I would just say, yes, I'll worry about my diet another year, you know, because you can't worry about those things in that intermediate. But I just found that that was so helpful to let that go.

In fact, in my room, I had this armoire that I had bought, and I had bought it on Facebook, Marketplace. And then my son died. And, you know, I was thinking, I don't know how I could get that.

And I had a friend of mine, he said, oh, I'm just gonna get that for you. He went. He got his truck. He brought it back. It seems so silly, right? But it wasn't because he needed something.

He wanted to help me in some way, and it was such a practical way to do that. So I think in the immediate thing, how people just stepped up and. And just carried us along, and I didn't have to think.

I had friends that came two weeks after Sebastian passed away, and they're like, and then she just told me, I'm coming in two weeks. I'm going to help you pack up his room. And, you know, she didn't give me a choice. She just said she was coming. And.

And I remember, and that was just awesome because I wrote a chapter in my book, said grieving would be so much easier if it was just me, because I wanted to just pack up his room and get rid of it and organize it. And my husband didn't want to go in the room he didn't want even existed. And my daughter wanted to wear all of Sebastian's clothes.

And so that tells you how all of us are just, you know, grieving so differently. And it was lovely when she came. I just went and bought a whole bunch of Costco Totes, and she just put everything in. In there.

And then we had someone put them in our attic, and they're still there, you know, and it's okay. They're. We. I didn't need to get rid of them. My husband doesn't have to deal with them.

And my daughter can go up and pick up clothes that she still does. She goes up and finds clothes. She goes up and reads his diaries, but they're there for her, you know, and so that was really helpful as well.

So just little things like that. We're. We're so beneficial to us in the long run. Yeah.

And then it helped me when other people were who lost children, like, oh, this is how I can be helpful. And someone told me, especially for those that are wondering how they can help someone, and they said, it depends on the.

Where you are, how well you know them. So if you know them really well, you can go right in and be available.

But if you're, like, just friends with them, you know, like occasional friends, you see them at church, you can. You can ask, and then you can provide, like, outside support. But if you don't know them, you can always pray for them.

So the closer you are to the person and their loss, the more helpful and beneficial you can be, I think.

Take us through, Jackie, your approach in writing. Messy Morning. You know, you talked about journaling and having all these thoughts and ideas on paper.

But when you sat down to write this book, what was your sort of strategy? What do you want? Parents, in particular mothers, from whom this book is written, specifically, what do you want them to leave with?

I wanted it to be like a handbook, a guide, because when I was going through this, I mean, I bought every grief book out there, you know, and there's lots of great ones, and there's quite a few on suicide as well that were really helpful. But I didn't. I wanted to address the. What it was like to be a mom specifically because I think moms grieve differently. We are.

If you're a mom, you know, and you've given birth or you've adopted or something, you bond with this child, that no one is going to take this away from you, you know, or unless something happens like this. I remember my pastor once, once who's going through the book of Genesis, and he talked about when.

After Adam and Eve had eaten the apple and God was telling him, this is what's going to happen, and he had told Eve, you know, your pain, your punishment is going to be pain and childbearing. And. Oh, okay, yeah, it's. It's. You know, childbearing can be very painful. But what our pastor said. But that carries on, on your whole life.

You will always have pain because you love your child so much. You know, it just.

It never goes away, you know, and you always worry about them, even if they're adults, you know, what they're wearing, what they're, you know, are they getting enough food, are they doing the right choices? Are they. You know, it just being a mom, just that. That worry never goes away. And I. I think that's part of that.

What happened in the Garden of Eden afterwards.

Words.

And so I.

When I realized that I wanted to put into words things that were helpful to me, things that I didn't like, things that I wanted to tackle, things that I never heard people talk about. And so that's in other grief books. And so that's when I came through. I'm like, okay, I want to talk about the first part.

A lot of people talk about, how do you survive that first. First year and maybe the second year? And so I talk about that.

And then when you're in the midst of it, what are you doing, you know, to get through that initial grief? But I also wanted to talk about moving on and how do we get past something like this? And how do you.

Initially, my book was like Surviving the Unsurvivable. But then I. But I thought, but there's hope. I wanted to know that there is hope from something so horrific.

And I wanted to show that hope and hopefully see it in my life that I was able to see hope through it all.

And then that's where the hope for mothers, because I thought there is hope, and I've seen it, and I know that other moms can experience that as well. So that's how it all came together.

And then I also wanted to get practical tips that, that, you know, I have friends, you know, that their children have died of other things. And we would get together and say we're going to write a book about stupid things people say.

And, you know, and so I, you know, I have a section on in there about how, you know, how we can help and what you can do. And.

And then as a grief share, I'm a grief share coach as well, through my church and some of the things I learned from grief share, actually, it was kind of cool because I became a grief share coach out after I had just, you know, had my outline done. I'm like, they cover pretty much everything I'm covering. I'm like, good. I'm on the same page.

So it was kind of nice, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm saying some new things that I'm reiterating, like, yeah, this. This needs to happen. Yeah.

So on that point of hope, and we're almost out of time, but I do want to ask you, you have. You talk about hope that can sit honestly beside sorrow. How do you define hope? Hope now? And is it different?

And if so, how is it different from how you understood hope before your loss?

I would say hope before my loss was, you know, that things would get better, that life would turn out the way I wanted it to be.

You know, we always, as moms, we have certain dreams and plans we have for our children, and then we quickly discover that they have a free will of their own and they're not going to do it the way we want them to do because life would be better if they just listened to their mom. Right? But then after his death, hope became much deeper.

It was no longer an absence of sorrow, but it was the presence of God in the midst of my sorrow that the only way I could get through something was a relationship with God. And because of what he did on the cross for me, and I realized that, wow, God watched his own son die on the cross.

He gets my pain in a way that someone who hadn't lost a child got it. I was like, wow, he did. He watched his son die. And I'm like, so he knows how I feel.

But, you know, in some way, I kind of know how he feels, you know, after losing his son. And then.

And that's when I write about messy mourning and the grief I talk about, the hope is kind of like a scarlet, the scar, you know, when you first get injured, you know, it takes a while to knit and get there and heal. But that scar is always there. And it's a reminder of what had happened, but it's healed and it'll never, the scar will never go away.

But it's, it's, but it is what it is right now, but it's just a reminder of how bad it was but now how good it is now that the healing has happened. And so it means I can still miss him every day, but I can still believe God is good in the midst of all that.

And that is such a talk about an oxymoron, right? How can you say that?

And it's like, but only because of that relationship I have with God that it means I can cry out over memories and still stress that Jesus is near in the midst of my pain. And it means that death does not have the final word, but my loss, my hope. And I can anchor my faith in that.

And it holds me when I can't hold myself.

That is a very hopeful message, certainly. Jackie to end on Jackie Baker, first time author. The book is called Messy Morning Hope for Mothers Grieving the Loss of a Child by Suicide.

Thank you so much for your time and sharing your story with us today.

Thank you, Leanne. I appreciate it.

To learn more about today's podcast, guest and topic, as well as other parenting themes, visit whereparents talk.com.