How did I get here?
The story behind the story I wish I'd never had to tell.
This is a follow-up to my story “It’s Time: The Part We Never Told.” I will warn you, it’s a tough read. But it’s true. And it’s important. And we lived it.
When you write and speak freely about your story, it’s easy to take for granted that folks who are familiar with you or your work just know—the striking details, the context, the origin. So when someone asked me recently, “How’d you get here?” I realized people don’t just know by osmosis.
For those who are curious, here’s the Reader’s Digest version of how I got here. The full version—and I swear this is not a book plug but rather a strategic move to spare you all the details when you thought you were just reading a Substack post—is in First, Brush Your Teeth—Grief and Hope in Real Time. More about that in a minute.
On December 15, 2018, I got a call that my youngest son Chandler had been hit by a car and I needed to get to the hospital immediately. We learned that night that if he survived, he would be paralyzed and would have significant brain damage.
Eighteen days of terror and hope and plans to outfit our house for a wheelchair and hope and brainstorming spinal cord and brain injury rehab facilities and hope. And then dwindling hope. And then reality. And then total devastation.
I watched Chandler take his last breath on January 1, 2019. It was a privilege to witness his first breath. And to be present for his last. And it is a pain so deep, it will be with me until the final breath leaves my body.
I had begun writing on CaringBridge since about three days after the accident to keep people updated on Chandler’s condition. I was surprised to find that processing each day through my writing was cathartic and that people were telling me they were encouraged by my writing…that it was giving voice to unexpressed emotions they’d had.
I also learned that Chandler had wanted to become a writer. How did I learn that? From a conversation with Martin Dugard, a successful writer who knew Chandler from his job at Board & Brew, a local restaurant and social hangout. Chandler had asked Martin how to become a writer, and Martin had graciously opened up that conversation with Chandler.
After Chandler passed (see, I still avoid the actual word), these three realities converged. My writing was helping me process my grief. People were telling me my words were helping them. And my son wanted to be a writer.
I committed to writing every day for the next year and a dear friend helped me move from my Caring Bridge platform to my website that I still have today. I’ve said many times, as the poster child for “If You Give a Moose a Muffin,” I don’t do anything every day except brush my teeth and go to the bathroom. But I had three strong motivators. Chiefly, my son Chandler cheering me on.
Some days, many days, I didn’t want to write. And I heard Chandler saying, “Mom, you can do this.”
At the end of that year, I was relieved and afraid to stop writing. I wondered what a day would look like if I wasn’t putting pen to paper, a physical reminder that Chandler was not here that day. Would I forget, just for a day maybe, that I didn’t lose my son? Or would I feel separate from a story that will always remain the fiber of my being?
I soon fell into the rhythm of not writing every day. And I decided it was time to collect that year’s writing into one place where hurting people could read about grief and hope and what it looks like in real time. Thus, the title of my book First, Brush Your Teeth—Grief and Hope in Real Time.
So that’s just a brief catch-up of how I got here. Next time…where in the world did the title First, Brush Your Teeth come from?