Robert Braid, Client Experience Manager

I’ve experienced a lot of ups and downs, ebbs and flows, and life-altering changes in my lifetime. However, none that were quite so life-changing as when I was 13 years old and my mother died suddenly in an accident.

Nothing can prepare a family for how to deal with such a tragic loss.

In one moment, life is just exactly as it is.

Parents are going to work.

Kids are going to school.

Extra-curricular activities are happening, and life feels just as it should – relatively predictable.

I was at home with my brothers and grandma when we received the phone call from my father that would forever change our lives.

In a split second, everything was different.

Life would never go back to “normal”.

No matter how badly we wanted to, we couldn’t go back in time and prevent this from happening.

No matter how many “should have” and “could have” moments came to mind, nothing could be done to change what had happened.

She was gone.

This was our new reality.

All we could do was seek out support from our friends and family and other trained professionals to help us grieve the loss of our mother and wife, along with the many plans for the future that would no longer come to fruition.

I am forever in debt to my friends, family, community members, fellow church members, family counselors, and kind strangers who helped me and my family at a time when we were incredibly vulnerable. We could not have done it without them.

Having experienced such a devastating loss myself, I have felt called to support others through experiences of grief and loss and unexpected change. Everyone deserves to feel supported when navigating major transitions. Everyone deserves to be treated with compassion and kindness.