Learning to Live Again Trauma & Grief Counseling

01/18/2026

Holding space for anyone moving through this quietly. 🤍

01/18/2026

First responders - your mental health matters! Stop the stigma. You arent weak, you are human.

“Just snap out of it” doesn’t work—especially in first responders.

For first responders and corrections officers, the brain is trained to stay alert to danger. Repeated exposure to trauma, violence, death, threats, and chronic unpredictability physically reshapes how the brain functions.

PTSD isn’t a lack of willpower. It’s a nervous system that has learned—correctly, at one time—that staying on high alert keeps you alive.

• The amygdala fires faster, even when the threat is no longer present
• The prefrontal cortex has a harder time slowing reactions down
• The stress system (HPA axis) stays activated far longer than it should
• Memories don’t file away as “past”—they show up as now

This is why certain calls, smells, sounds, tones, or environments can trigger intense reactions without conscious choice. Your brain is doing exactly what it was trained to do—just in the wrong context and at too high a cost.

Healing isn’t about “being tougher.”
It’s about retraining the brain and nervous system to recognize when you’re safe again.

You’re not broken.
You adapted to survive.

01/15/2026

As I was reading the morning news, I came across this quote by one of my favorite authors, Robert Frost. He said, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” The challenge with grief is, for a period of time, mine stopped, yet the world kept turning.

Infuriating! Disrespectful! How is it possible that no one else can feel the gravity of this loss? How can life go on when mine has come to a crashing hault?

This is the gravity and complexity of grief. Yes, life will eventually begin moving forward again, but it never truly goes on. Everything is different. Foreign. Loud. Blinding. And in time, (however long that may be) I will find ways to learn to live with the empty place you have left in my life, and begin to move forward. To honor you and take you with me every step of every day.

Some days I will crumble. Some days I will laugh. One thing will never change. Everyday I will miss you.

01/07/2026

I didn’t know there would be a day
your voice would stop showing up.
No warning came with the silence,
no lesson taught me how to stand alone.

I thought time would explain things,
or at least soften the edges.
But grief isn’t something you solve—
it’s something you learn to carry.

Every plan I made included you,
even the small, ordinary ones.
Now the future feels unfinished,
like a sentence cut short.

I move forward because I must,
not because I’m ready.
Some days I’m strong in quiet ways,
some days I’m just breathing.

Loving you didn’t end with goodbye,
it simply changed its shape.
I hold your absence carefully,
as proof that love was real.

— May God Grant You Always

01/07/2026

Some days, it feels impossible.
The weight of grief presses so heavy I can barely breathe.
I want to collapse, to scream, to let the world see just how shattered I really am.

But then I think of you.
And I force myself to stand up when I’d rather fall.
I force myself to keep moving when all I want is to stay curled up in the dark.

I try to hold it together—for you.
Because you were strong.
Because you showed me how to keep going even when life was cruel and unfair.
Because the love you gave me deserves more than me giving up.

So I stand a little taller, even when my knees are buckling.
I dry the tears, even though they never really stop.
I smile at the world, even when inside I’m still breaking.

It’s not because I’m brave.
It’s not because I’ve “healed.”
It’s because I carry you with me, and I want to make you proud.

The truth is—I don’t always get it right.
I’m not always strong.
Most of the time I’m still just surviving.

But every bit of strength I can find…
every breath I can take when it feels impossible…
is for you.
Because of you.
With you.
Written by: Aimee Suyko - In Their Footsteps

01/07/2026

Grief is a response to loss. It is not something to quickly be dismissed or to “get over”.

Grief is love without the clear outward direction it once had. Deeply felt in every facet of life.

Grief never ends. You learn to carry it.

Grief forever changes you. Tears spill when least expected. Frustration and anger arise as culture tells you “to get over it” or to “move on”.

In grief, you do not “move on”. You move forward, learning how to navigate life with a part of you missing.

Grief is love that never ends.

11/27/2025

Don’t stop saying their name.
Don’t hold back because you think you’ll upset me.
I’m living with this every day.
You’re not reminding me of anything I’ve forgotten.

What hurts is when you don’t talk about them.
When you change the subject.
When you act like the safest thing to do is pretend they were never here.
That part hurts more than anything you could ever say.

Say their name when you think of them.
Say their name when a memory comes up.
Say their name even if the moment gets emotional.
I’d rather feel something real than sit in a room where we pretend they never existed.

I miss them every day, and the holidays only make it harder.
Hearing their name tells me someone else still remembers them too.

So please — don’t avoid it.
Say their name.
It’s the only thing that will actually help me get through this holiday season.

11/26/2025

11/25/2025

11/16/2025

PTSD in Grief: When the Past Won’t Stay Quiet

People often think PTSD only comes from war, accidents, or violence.
But many grieving parents quietly live with a form of PTSD every single day.

It shows up in ways we don’t expect.

A sound.
A date.
A song.
A place we used to go with our child.
Something small happens, and suddenly our heart is racing… our chest tightens… our body feels like something terrible is happening right now even though the world around us hasn’t changed.

This is the part of grief people don’t talk about.

PTSD in grief isn’t “living in the past.”
It’s your nervous system remembering the moment everything shattered.

It’s the replaying of the phone call.
The hospital room.
The last hug.
The details you never asked to remember but can’t seem to forget.

And it is not a sign of weakness.
It is a sign of love so deep that your body still feels the impact of losing your child.

If this is you, hear me:
You are not broken.
Your mind is not failing.
You are reacting the way a heart reacts when it’s been traumatized.

You can heal.
Slowly. Gently. In your own time.

Take deep breaths.
Ground yourself in the present moment.
Reach out when the memories feel too heavy.
Let someone say your child’s name.
And allow yourself to feel what you feel without apology.

Grief can look like PTSD, and PTSD can live inside grief but neither defines who you are.

You are a warrior of the heart.
You are surviving the unimaginable.
And you, dear mama, are not alone.

www.mychildlefthomeforheaven.org

11/13/2025

One of my special clients in the grief community shared this with me. She said it says it perfectly. Does this resonate with you?

Long grief isn’t a season.
It’s permanent.
It stays with you. It settles in.

You learn how to keep living, but it’s never the same life.
There’s the one you had before and the one that came after.
You don’t go back. You just learn how to exist inside the after.

You stop expecting normal to return.
You start seeing that this is normal now.
You can have a good day and still feel the emptiness sitting right beside it.
You can be surrounded by people and still feel alone in a way you can’t explain.

You rebuild. You laugh. You find new pieces of life, but nothing feels untouched by loss.
It changes how you think, how you trust, how you hope.
Even joy feels different — smaller, quieter, earned.

Long grief is a slow acceptance that this is it.
There isn’t a finish line.
It’s the knowing that you’ll always love them, always miss them, and that both can exist inside the life you’re now living.

That’s what long grief is —
a lifetime of figuring out how to live with a wound that will never heal.