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Healing and Recovering After Loss
Thank you for visiting this very special page. I have been trying to share more with you about losing my mom, Julie McDonald, for two years now. We lost her at the young age of 61 to colon cancer, in February of 2007. By the time she was diagnosed on Jan. 2, she was already stage IV. It was too late; the cancer had spread to her liver and she died in 31 days.
We were literally in the middle of moving all of our family back home to Atlanta after being gone for 18 years, something that would have been a joyous time, especially for the two of us, for years to come. I dropped everything and put life on hold to spend most of those 31 days in the hospital with her. It was like time stood still for us. On her last night I sat by her bedside and held her hand for more than 5 hours as she slipped away to be with our Father in heaven. A lot of amazing things happened after that and in the weeks and months that followed, somehow she was still with me.
My family was very supportive and so were our readers, I am so grateful for that. The doctors told us my mom probably had a year and a half to three years to live, even the day before she passed away. This left our family in complete shock but I think God just decided to take her home and relieve her of all the horrible pain quickly. People all over the world were praying for her. She had an incredible hope until the very last day that He would heal her but that if that didn't happen she was also okay to go home. She was my best friend and this was a HUGE loss for our family. My life will never be the same, I don't even know how to do life without her. As I know many of you who have experienced a loss like this understand.
I ended up taking three months off from my work and a year later (only when I developed daily migraines due to "too much" stress from trying to handle the daily gut wrenching grief--of going on without her--on my own), I was blessed with 10 months of grief counseling with a wonderful Christian counselor who had lost both of her parents twenty years ago. She was a an absolute Godsend! I highly recommend the counseling AND at a much sooner time than I finally went. I was stubborn and waited until I had to go. Don't be stubborn--like me! Make sure you have someone to help you through your grief. No one wanted to talk about my mom and deal with me crying every day, so they avoided the subject. A counselor is trained to help you through the pain, they can handle the tears. :o)
Although I am unable to share any more at this time, I think this is a pretty good start. I want to at least go ahead and add some of the wonderful resources that I would like to recommend for families who are grieving and I will continue to write more as I can. I was talking to one of our readers recently and was able to tell her about these books that I recommend, then I realized I still needed to create this page for ALL of you. So, now it is started. Mom would be glad! :o)
God Bless You
HUGS,
Michelle
P.S. This sunset photo that I also use in our logo for BetterBudgeting.com was taken (by me) on our last vacation with my mom to South Carolina. It is VERY special to me. Please do not copy it.
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