This year I’m ready to give grace to my grief

I went back to work a little over a month after losing Austen, my 9-year-old daughter who passed away from complications of Dravet syndrome. Many asked me how I could do it, but the decision to go back to the classroom was never a question in my mind.

Although I knew it’d be hard to go back to the school she loved so much without her, I also knew I needed work to keep me busy and sane.

Busy might not be the best word. I was assiduous. Weekdays over the past 10 months have kept me continuously on the go while taking care of 18 3-year-olds. During school days, my brain had to focus entirely on the needs of my students, so I was able to take my mind off my grief.

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But the busyness of the weekdays made the weekends even harder. Those hard and sorrowful thoughts were so pushed to the side during school days that they burst through as soon as I had a quiet moment to sit and think.

So I’ve been keeping my weekends busy, too. I spend time with extended family, run every errand I can think of, or clean my house for hours on end. I thought that was what I needed to not succumb to my grief and to be there for my other three children and my husband.

A new stage of bereavement

As we come up on the first anniversary of Austen’s death, I don’t regret my choice to spend the past year the way I did. I think I needed the year that I’ve had in order to keep going. I know if I’d chosen not to go back to work, I would’ve spent day after day in bed, crying and not thinking about anything beyond my loss. The busyness kept me sane.

But as much as I feel I needed the past year to be able to survive the trauma of losing Austen, I believe I need the opposite in the year to come. I no longer need to simply survive losing my daughter, I now need to learn to live with it.

With that, and after a lot of prayer, I’ve decided to take at least a year off from teaching. My husband has a job that takes us all across the country, and we’re going to travel with him. I hope that with a slower pace — and continuous therapy — I’ll be able to take the time I need to come to terms with my new normal, to figure out who I am now that my world has been turned upside down, and to learn how to make new memories with my other children while keeping Austen’s legacy alive.

I’ll forever be grateful for my school district, as well as the parents and students. Not only were they amazing to Austen, they were often my rocks over the last year. They have no idea how much each one of them held me up, how every hug, prayer, or word of encouragement gave me the strength I needed to make it day to day.

I don’t think this is a goodbye from teaching, but simply a “see you later.” I pray this time will help me be a better mom, wife, friend, and even teacher. My grief will never go away, but I pray I’ll be able to learn to not only endure it, but to sit with it, face it head-on, and live through it all.

Note: Dravet Syndrome News is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of Dravet Syndrome News or its parent company, Bionews, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to Dravet syndrome.

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