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Rising Up-Because Love Lives Forever

yellow sunflower with a yellow center, My Forever Son, My Forever Son, My Beloved Dylan, Summer, Forever Summer and Rising Up Because Love Lives Forever
Sunflower in Summer Sunshine, My Forever Son

Rising Up-Because Love Lives Forever

Introduction

About this Post

ABOUT THIS POST: Rising Up–Because Love Lives Forever is a powerful and emotional exploration of love and loss. The author, who lost her only child, her 20-year-old son, to suicide June 25, 2012, writes about the enduring impact of her son’s life and her ongoing struggle with grief. The author’s personal experiences and reflections add authenticity and depth to the writing.

The inclusion of direct quotes from the author and other parents who have experienced similar loss brings a sense of community and understanding to the content. The images, beautiful photographs from the author’s gardens, complement the writing and add visual interest.

Peach Daylily opening in beautiful, frilly edge petals in late summer, My Forever Son, Rising Up--Because Love Lives Forever
Peach Daylily, My Forever Son

Rising Up-Because Love Lives Forever

About this Blog

ABOUT THIS BLOG: Losing My Only Child to Suicide: My Forever Son Backstory and About My Forever Son detail my journey to creating and writing this blog.

What Happened? and About Dylan provide a glimpse into Dylan’s (and my) life. Remembering Dylan: Twenty Years shares some of Dylan’s story.

Included below are resources and strategies for coping with suicide loss and finding hope and healing. Resources for coping with guilt after losing a child to suicide and professional resources offer additional support resources for hope and healing.

Rising Up-Because Love Lives Forever

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The author, Beth Brown, lost her 20-year-old son Dylan, her only child, to suicide June 25, 2012. She is well-acquainted with grief. She’s also a professional writer. As adjunct faculty in English at a local prestigious university, the award-winning author has taught courses in writing, American Literature, and British Literature.

The author’s published works include books about adolescent literacy and teaching writing. Her poems have been featured in poetry journals, poetry readings, and poetry workshops.

Poems for Grief, Hope, Healing

For this blog, the author writes poems for grief, hope, and healing after losing a child to suicide. Some of these poems are included in a collection of poems on this blog: Find Hope Here: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide. A book of poems, Bury My Heart: Poems About Losing a Child to Suicide, is available now on Amazon Kindle.

When I lost Dylan to suicide over a decade ago, I didn’t feel I could make it through my first year of grief. I could hardly make it through one breath, one hour, one day at a time. I collapsed, my world collapsed, and my world as I knew it stopped spinning.

Wanting desperately to know why my son had taken his life, I turned to books, support groups, and online resources:

  • How had other parents made it through their first year of grief after their child’s suicide?
  • How would grief feel in the second year?
  • Would the excruciating pain of losing Dylan ever end?
  • Was there any hope anywhere on the horizon?

Journaling was my saving grace. Writing helped me cope with profound loss. In 2015, I launched My Forever Son: Grief, Hope, and Healing After Losing My Son to Suicide. I began by posting my daily journals, though this blog has grown to encompass poems, songs, narratives, and informative articles. The photographs of all the beautiful flowers are ones I’ve taken of my gardens. They bring serenity along the way.

Pink Rose with Rose Buds and Green Leaves, My Forever Son, Rising Up: Because Love Lives Forever
Pink Rose and Rosebuds, My Forever Son

Resources & Strategies

Peach rose with green leaves and a few water droplets, My Forever Son, Rising Up-Because Love Lives Forever
Peach Rose, My Forever Son
Resources and Strategies for Coping with Suicide Loss
Sweet Bay Magnolia in Bloom in Late Spring, My Forever Son, Losing My Only Child to Suicide My Forever Son Backstory and Coping with Unfathomable Loss After Suicide Loss Year 3; also Books for Healing
Sweetbay Magnolia in Late Spring, My Forever Son
Resources for Coping with the Heaviness of Guilt in Suicide Grief
Peach flowering quince branch in full bloom, My Forever Son, My Forever Son Backstory and Embracing Hope and In Losing You, I lost Me Too: Grief in Year 3 After Losing My Son to Suicide

Resources for Hope and Healing

Rising Up–Because Love Lives Forever

Yellow heliotrope flower surrounded by vibrant green leaves with small green insect in summer, My Forever Son, Rising Up-Because Love Lives Forever
Yellow Heliotrope in Summer, My Forever Son

Rising Up Because

Love lives forever.

My son lives yet still.

I will be with Dylan again.

As long I live, Dylan lives too.

Dylan lives on through all that I am.

Dylan’s voice is now my own.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son

Rising Up Because

I will not let the world forget my son lived. My memories, stories, and writing keep his life going on. I did, in the beginning of my grief, believe I was telling Dylan’s stories. I now see I am telling my own.

Grief has brought me to the edge of myself–that place in despair where I have screamed: “Bring it! Just Bring It!” then collapsed into tears.

And it’s brought me to that place where I can’t stand any more pain, where all that’s left is surrender. Not willingly. Not because my heart has healed. And not because I’ve finished grieving the loss of my son. That place where sky meets sun in the middle of a storm, that rainbow, love living with loss, loss still there but love shining too. That’s surrender.

I straddle love for and loss of my son. In the beginning, I could only see pain. But I’ve learned to live carrying both loving memories of Dylan and this impossible pain of devastating loss.

Beth Brown, My. Forever Son
Orange Hot Cocoa Hybrid Tea Rose Single Bloom with a drop of water on a petal representing a tear, My Forever Son, Rising Up Because Love Lives Forever

It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
Edge of the water pond with rocks and purple phlox beginning to bloom, My forever son, Finding Hope, Healing, and Resilience in Nature and Rising Up Because Love Lives Forever
Water’s Edge in Spring, My Forever Son

Rising Up–Because Love Lives Forever

Rising Up Because

“You will be able to live with [the pain]. It just becomes part of you.”

A bereaved parent, My Forever Son

To those of you that still feel you aren’t even sure you want to be here and you can’t imagine ever being happy again. The pain does change, it softens. You will want to live again and be able to enjoy life again. It will never be like before but the crushing, all consuming pain you feel right now will soften. You will be able to live with it. It just becomes part of you.

A bereaved parent who lost her son to suicide, Surviving Suicide Grief: Does the Pain Ever End?, My Forever Son
Pink Rose with Yellow Center in full bloom, with rosebuds and green leaves, My Forever Son, Bury My Heart, A Poem About Losing a Child to Suicide, Healing Words, and rising up-because love lives forever
Pink Rose in Bloom, My Forever Son

My son, my love, my pain, my heart, all beating on inside me, an ache I’ve learned to carry which at some point these past 8 years, has become a part of me.

My Forever Son, Carrying Ache and Love in Suicide Loss
Pink phlox gracefully spilling over a stone rock, serene water in the background, My Forever Son: Chronicling Grief, Hope, and Healing After Losing My Son to Suicide, "A Glimpse of Hope" and Rising up because love lives forever
A Glimpse of Hope, My Forever Son

That place where sky meets sun in the middle of a storm, that rainbow, love living with loss, loss still there but love shining too. That’s surrender.

Beth Brown, My Forever Son, Rising from Grief: Embracing Hope and Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide

Rising Up–Because Love Lives Forever

Watercolor art rendering of deep pink flowers, pale pink and purple flowers, and 2 butterflies. The art represents serenity, My Forever Son, Rising After Grief: Embracing Hope and Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide

Rising Up Because

I am having to reinvent and invent anew absolutely everything about my life now.

Because there are no templates for my way of living.

Because in the midst of great darkness, I can only live if I can learn to see.

Because I know I will see my son again when God sees fit and it is time.

Beth, Dylan’s Mom, My Forever Son

Rising Up Because

I am his mom! I have always and will always love and talk about my son.


I know my son lives on–just not here on this plane, in this realm, on this earth as I so know it.


I find him yet still in so many ways. Losing Dylan has defined me.

Beth, Dylan’s Mom, My Forever Son

Dylan, My Forever Son

Rising Up Because

I carry on carrying on because in the rising, I carry Dylan too. We are one. Always were. Always will be. And some day, some day–we will be together again.

Photo of the Author, Beth Brown, with a quote: "You will be able to live with [the pain]. It just becomes part of you.

You will be able to live with the pain. It just becomes part of you.

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Mr. Lincoln tea hybrid red rose in full bloom in June photograph close up, My Forever Son book jacket to 19 Poems to "Beat Still My Heart" and "My Child on Earth Above, In Heaven's Care" song, and poem "If Only a Mother's Love Could Have Saved You" and Table of Contents, Sorrow Buried in Love, and 5 ways suicide grief is different and Rising Up Because Love Lives Forever

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