The following excerpt is from LOST to FOUND: Surviving the Death of Your Child, by Basia Mosinski, available at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1720222657
Grievers are “heroes” and here’s why… we eventually got out of bed. We eventually decided to live instead of praying to die. How do I know this? Because in the work that I do with grieving people, I hear grief journey stories that are proof that many people do indeed survive the death of their child or loved one. Each person who lives another day chooses to live to honor their child or children who no longer have that choice.

Many of us would have given anything to be the one to die instead of our child. We would have bargained our own lives to grant them theirs. Some of us sought out help from grief coaches, therapists and groups to help us find something to hold onto. All of us became seekers of those who “get it”… another parent who has experienced a similar tragedy.

 

Basia Mosinski

Basia Mosinski, MA, MFA is an online Grief/Hope/Wellness Specialist. Basia was a Keynote Speaker at The Compassionate Friends 2018 National Conference. In 1993, Basia’s stepson Logan died in a head-on train collision in the midwest where she and her family lived. Within two years, her marriage broke apart and more losses compounded. Logan’s death took her on a journey through pain to inner healing and growth. Along the way, she participated in The Phoenix Project a 12-week intensive process for healing grief and loss. She not only participated in the process she later became a ritual elder of The Phoenix Project, working with Dr Jack Miller. In December of 2001 Dr Miller invited her and several other practitioners to give a weekend of healing to families impacted by 9/11 in New York. Basia was so moved by that work that when she returned to Chicago, she enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she was teaching to gain a second masters’ degree in Art Therapy. When she graduated in 2005, she relocated to NY where she became the Assistant Director of Mental Health at Gay Men’s Health Crisis while maintaining a thriving private practice, sharing office space with Dr. Heidi Horsley. In 2014, Basia moved to Southern California to live close to her only child, her grown son, Richard, his wife and her granddaughter. 9 months later, Richard died suddenly from a pulmonary embolism on a flight from Chicago to Orange County. In addition to helping others on their journey of healing, Basia is helping herself through the shock of what has happened by using what she has learned along the way and through writing a book about her process and the ways that she and her family are coping with the loss of Richard through texting, photos and ‘sightings’. Basia is the Executive Director of Only-Love.org. and chapter leader of The Compassionate Friends_Newport Beach

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