My Journey

My name is Stacy, and my journey with grief is also a journey through trauma, faith, and eventually finding hope again. It became profoundly personal when my brother passed away unexpectedly at the age of 37. A year later, I experienced the deepest heartbreak a mother can face when my oldest son, Coty, died by suicide at just 24 years old. Four years later, I lost my mother after her long battle with COPD.

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Within that same decade, I also lost two grandmothers, two grandfathers, three uncles, and an aunt. Every loss mattered and left its own mark, but losing my son, my brother, and my mother within such a short period of time changed me in ways I couldn't have understood before living through it myself. Grief didn't come alone. There was shock, fear, anger, confusion, unanswered questions, and the lasting effects of trauma.

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My faith is an important part of that story, but it wasn't always the strong faith I have today. I believed in God before these losses, but I wasn't deeply rooted in my relationship with Him. I wasn't consistently in church, reading my Bible every day, or living with the kind of dependence on God that is now such an important part of my life.

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After the losses, especially after losing Coty, I didn't immediately run closer to God. For a while, I went the other direction. I was angry and hurt, and there were times I felt betrayed. I asked God questions I couldn't answer: Why my son? Why my brother? Why my mom? I couldn't understand how a loving God could exist alongside so much pain, and grief gave me plenty of reasons to keep my distance.

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Looking back, I see those years differently now. Even when I was angry with God, I was still talking to Him. Every time I cried out asking why, every angry tear and every desperate thought was, in its own way, a prayer. I thought I had moved away from Him, but He had never moved away from me.

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That realization became an important part of my healing. Over time, I began to understand that God wasn't the source of the death and destruction I had blamed Him for. I began to see Him instead as the One who had been with me through it; the One who had carried me through some of the darkest and most broken years of my life, even when I didn't recognize that He was there.

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My relationship with God slowly changed. The anger didn't disappear all at once, and neither did the questions. I still don't have answers for many of them. What changed was realizing I didn't have to understand everything to trust that God was still with me.

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Somewhere along the way, faith stopped being something I simply believed and became something deeply personal. I began going to church, spending time in Scripture, praying differently, and learning who God was rather than allowing my grief to define Him for me. The more I came to know Him, the more I began to understand His grace, His mercy, His comfort, and the hope we have through Jesus.

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That hope has become one of the greatest anchors in my grief. I still miss the people I love. There are still tears and days when grief catches me completely off guard. Faith hasn't erased any of that, and I don't believe it's supposed to. What it has given me is the assurance that death doesn't get the final word.

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The promise of eternity means something very different to me now. Revelation 21:4 tells us there will come a day when there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain. I hold tightly to that promise and to the hope that the separation I live with now is temporary. Someday there will be no more sickness, suffering, funerals, or goodbyes.

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Walking through grief and trauma has also taught me that healing isn't a straight line. There were seasons when simply surviving took everything I had. There were setbacks, unhealthy ways of coping, questions about God, and days when moving forward felt impossible. Healing has been much slower and messier than I once imagined it would be.

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It's also taught me that grief and faith can exist in the same place. We can love God and still have questions. We can trust Him and still cry. We can have hope and still deeply miss the people we love. I don't believe faith requires us to pretend we're okay when we're not.

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All of this now shapes the way I walk alongside others through Grace in the Stillness. The love I have for Coty, my brother, and my mother will always be part of why I chose to pursue grief and trauma coaching, but so will what God has done in my own life. I know what it's like to feel lost in grief, to wrestle with God, and to wonder whether life will ever feel meaningful again. I also know what it's like to slowly discover that hope can grow in places that once felt completely hopeless.

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My role isn't to tell someone how they should grieve or to push them toward where I think they should be. I want to meet people where they actually are and give them room to be honest about the grief, trauma, questions, anger, love, memories, and everything else they're carrying.

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My faith is at the heart of who I am and the work I do, and Grace in the Stillness is Christ-centered. At the same time, I want people to know they don't have to arrive with a strong faith, all the right answers, or even certainty about what they believe. I certainly didn't. There is room for questions, and there is room for the person who is still trying to find their way.

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I can't promise anyone that grief becomes easy, because that hasn't been my experience. What I can offer is compassion, understanding, and a willingness to walk beside someone as they begin finding their own way forward.

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For me, Grace in the Stillness has grown out of learning that even in the deepest heartbreak, God is still present. He can bring hope into places that once felt consumed by darkness, and He can take parts of our stories we never would have chosen and use them to reach someone else who is hurting.

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That is what I hope to offer here: a place where grief is allowed to be grief, where faith doesn't require pretending, and where we can hold onto the possibility that there is still hope, still purpose, and still grace in the stillness.