The Pratt's Guide to Heart Warrior Parenting

Before Christ (B.C.) and After Death (A.D.). Your first living memory. Your last tragedy. Our lives are all marked by a series of Year Zero events. It’s the point in which life as we knew it is obliterated and a new world order takes its place in our minds. The clock does not turn back and “the time before” falls away behind a shimmering, impenetrable veil of what may never be again.  Liam’s death marks a Year Zero in our lives. In my mind, I will now and forever mark an event as happening before or after we lost our son. Some of the readers here also mark time from this point, mostly family and close friends.  For my 1 yr old, Josie, this period of time will fade naturally behind the veil of baby memories and her only touchstone with her brother will be in photos and videos. How grateful I am that we have those methods of sharing the love her brother had for her. I am constantly impressed by Eliza’s memory, but as a 4 yr old, her memories of Liam will likely fade as well. I...

     In the US, when someone we love dies, there are a myriad of ways we convey the death of a person to those around us: They “passed on.” They are “no longer with us.” They are “in a better place.” It’s all very sterile and removed from the reality of death. The way we speak about death points to the way we expect the family and friends of the deceased to act. We should be sad, but not too sad. After all, the person we loved is “in a better place.” We should feel sorrow for a certain amount of time, but then we should “move on.” To someone who has experienced the death of someone very close to them, all of these cultural norms feel insane, but surrounded by a homogeny of expectations we start to feel that maybe we’re the ones who are a little bit crazy.             But we’re not crazy. Our Western traditions are not random- we’ve been indoctrinated into a culture based on a massive misinterpretation of Christia...