S3/E30- Kristin's Story (part 1): Loss, Compassion, and Showing Up for Others

In this first part of a two-episode conversation, host Bruce Barker sits down with Kristin, one of the founders and former Executive Director of a Colorado-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting families who have experienced child loss.

Kristin shares the early chapters of her grief journey and the deeply personal story that led her to create a safe haven for parents in their darkest moments. She reflects on her own loss, the compassion that shaped her work, and the emotional weight of walking alongside countless families over the years.

This episode explores:
• The origins of her grief and the impact of her child’s loss
• How her personal pain led to community support
• The realities of supporting grieving parents day after day
• The heart, strength, and vulnerability behind her leadership

Part One lays the foundation of Kristin’s powerful story.

Part Two continues the conversation as she explores what comes after years of serving others.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:35

Welcome to Don't Forget to Breathe, the space where grieving parents find voice, hope, and connection. I'm your host, Bruce Barker. Today we share another powerful parent story, a story of Veloma. I recently had the honor of sitting down with someone who has been pivotal in my own journey as a parent support facilitator, a person with a remarkable heart for showing up in family's darkest moments, and someone I'm grateful to call a friend. I'd like to introduce you to Kristen, one of the founders and former executive director of a Colorado-based nonprofit dedicated to supporting grieving parents who have experienced child loss. Kristen has shared her story many times, and she graciously agreed to share it with you today. Here is part one of our conversation. Kristen.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33

Hi.

SPEAKER_00: 1:33

Hi. It has been a long time.

SPEAKER_01: 1:37

Too long, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:38

Too long. So Kristen and I we go back a few years, and Kristen was a former director, executive director of a nonprofit in northern Colorado that supports parents who've had child loss. And that's how we connected um with some of what I think I've mentioned in previous podcasts about doing um support sessions, um, just facilitating groups for dads. And that's that's how we met and had have had amazing conversations. And it has been too long because we used to have the best talks.

SPEAKER_01: 2:15

That's what I was remembering when I drove to meet you today. That our first talk, I think we had put on our calendar for an hour. I think we sat there for five hours.

SPEAKER_00: 2:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 2:24

The the center was closing. We were, I think we could have just continued on. I just felt so um very connected to our perspectives, our our journeys, and it was an incredible conversation. And and also the similarity of um really finding meaning in supporting others in some format, different, different formats. But um, yeah, yeah, when I sighted it, I was like, oh, that's missing.

SPEAKER_00: 2:57

Yeah. It that was amazing. It was amazing how comfortable I was in a we'll just say in a building that is full of discomfort and that is full of like no parent wants to walk in there.

SPEAKER_01: 3:12

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 3:12

And but of how comfortable I was being in there and how inviting and warm and um inclusive this place, this physical place was. And then with our conversation, even more so. It just kept going. Yeah. So thank you for saying, hey, come do this. And because that's what I've I've been doing, and it's been great that I, you know, I facilitate these groups with with dads who've lost children and so many unique and different stories as we know, nothing's the same. And then even to be able to do some some dad's retreats. And I know, um, I don't take credit for it, but I know that it's helped, it's helped dads because they've told me. And so thank you for inviting me in to be able to help help these guys.

SPEAKER_01: 4:05

Well, and thank you for your just your bravery and courage to lean into that. Um the journey for dads, I think, is often not validated, not heard, not seen. And um it causes such increased sorrow and pain. I mean, what you and I have both lived through, it's enough. And you know, it's like our cup of sorrow is full. We don't need additional sorrows in the format of not being heard, yeah. Not being seen. And I think that's often what happens to men. And so I just want to tell you that I think you should take credit for a lot of um the moments that men feel seen and heard and really um cared for in your presence.

SPEAKER_00: 5:01

Well, thank you. Yeah, that's it's draining for everyone because we get into a we get in the space when we meet and all the all the shields come down, all the armor comes off, and I I commend these men for being uh vulnerable and showing the strength and that vulnerability to to go to spaces that some want to avoid and most want to avoid, but then actually getting into a place, and that's been kind of the common comment of I feel connected in this, like you guys get it. Like I've heard that phrase so many times, like, no, but you guys get it. And I think that's that's what we're looking for, and that's really even the point of this podcast is connecting parents because it's a it's a place where we all get it, where you can be seen and you can be heard and you can connect, and you know you're not alone because it's really easy to feel isolated and feel alone, even though if you're if you're a couple, you know, you you you might feel that your spouse gets it, but your spouse is getting one side of it, and it's still easy, easy to get isolated.

SPEAKER_01: 6:20

It really is. It's um it is the most independently like coped with process, I guess I've ever personally gone through, and what I've watched people go through, they can be surrounded by all the love and support, but you really have to find your own way. So it is can can be incredibly isolating. It also can be these moments of looking across a room at someone and just seeing in their eyes that you don't have to say much because of that commonality of I I get it. You know, bottom line is I I see that soul of yours and that it's shattered by this this moment in time where your identity, your belief that these bad, tragic things only happen to other people. Yeah. Then you become the other people. You know, before the death of our son, I would absolutely read obituaries if a child died, and I could not even I, you know, I was one of those people that said, I can't imagine. And those those poor other people. And then in that moment, when our lives shattered without his physical presence, realizing I have become a member of that unthinkable club, that unthinkable um worst nightmare for any of us. When we become parents, we imagine that there will be losses in our life that will be very, very sad. But the reversal of life's sequence to be outliving your child is there's a Sanskrit word that's veloma, and it literally means out of the natural order. And I think valoma to me is such a word of um fullness of this experience. It is out of our natural order, and um it takes so much courage to just in the beginning to survive it, yeah, and then to transition to a place where you want to survive it, I think is very two different things.

SPEAKER_00: 8:44

Very different things, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:47

Our journey of Veloma um, you know, began, gosh, Bruce, over 30 years ago. And you know, it's one of those stories of an everyday moment on a Wednesday morning. Me alone with our son for one of those magical days of mom kiddo playfulness, a morning of not having true breakfast, but counting pretzels and orange juice as breakfast and being outside catching bugs in our jammies and um not having to answer to really any outside influences. I was working in a very corporate, very driven job. So Wednesdays to me were my protected day, my day to just be so carefree and to be taking the lead from a three and a half-year-old, very energetic um little guy who didn't sit still for a moment and also somehow knew that Wednesdays were the day to um give ourselves permission to be both of us very childlike. Yeah, you know, and um for me, that moment in time of um having our first our first child who I think when we had him in our early 20s, believing, well, this is you know, our child, and then realizing like he's the first for everyone in our family, the first grandchild, the first nephew, the first. We'd we'd have birthday parties for our Zachary, and he would um have 30 adults watching him. You know, it was like the Zach show, and it was such a beautiful um combining of generations. He was absolutely our whole world. And to realize he's not ours, we're sharing him. We were both still going to college, so to share him with people at that age that couldn't imagine being parents, but definitely wanted him in their lives. So our friends in their early 20s, our very young grandparents, he became such a light in so many lives. And to share him was such a gift of um of awareness that he could become that. And then, you know, on that Wednesday morning of a space of one minute to the next, of he's gone, you know, an unthinkable accident in his bedroom and no warning and no chance to say goodbye, no miracle recoveries, no medical interventions, um, just silence and disbelief that um this is now our reality. And I remember as the awareness continued that this had become our reality, and you know the emergency personnel made it clear that there was nothing that could be done there or hospital, etc., just screaming the word why. And I think for 30 years I've thought, why? Why have we become the others? Why our son? Why this? Why? And it feels softer to not be wanting to scream that word from the mountaintops anymore because I don't think I'm gonna get an echo back of any answer. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 12:27

Um are you able to, are you comfortable sharing what happened?

SPEAKER_01: 12:32

Yeah, you know, we had had this glorious morning and then he um we needed to take a brief nap. I needed to actually change out of my jammies to go into the real world. So I thought that'd be appropriate. And um during his his after reading a book and and telling him that we would go to the movies, um, I checked on him in about 10 minutes and he had somehow in some custom um made curtains that my mother-in-law had made strangled on the the curtain cord um from his toddler bed. I thought he was just standing, but in fact he was tangled. And um, you know, I tried everything I could with my own CPR techniques and calling the MS. And after they um started to arrive, calling my husband and screaming into the phone, honey, our lives have changed forever today. Um and just knowing that the truth of that, that and seconds after them arriving, saying that into the phone so he could race to the hospital, there couldn't have been truer words. Right, you know, yeah. Looking back three decades later, there really could not have been truer words that our lives changed. Um, forever. Our entire axis of like the earth. Everything shifted. The earth gravity, the earth spinning shifted, and days and even months afterwards, it's kind of shocking to see other people's lives re you know. I remember driving down the street and thinking, those people in that car right there don't know that life should have paused. How can anyone's life be continuing when our life changed in this moment, you know, just like I I said into the phone so um profoundly on that mor morning to him, that afternoon to him. Um I think in the years that followed, we did what most grieving parents that I've witnessed over the years, uh, as you mentioned, just forming an organization that was meant to see the true stories of bereaved parents. I've worked with probably thousands of of families and to see that the commonality as they too are screaming the word why internally, externally, they are wondering um how do we navigate this? How do we shift from waking up in the morning and thinking, oh I'm awake again?

unknown: 15:16

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00: 15:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

This, you know, I was assessed actually immediately in the hospital for being a suicide risk. Um, because of the words I was saying, and I'm sure they were shocking to the people there. But to me, there was this moment of just disappointment that I had to continue to breathe in and out. Yeah. Um that I did continue to breathe and out. No action taken to stop me breathing in and out by myself, but certainly not a desire to continue to do that.

SPEAKER_00: 15:53

Oh, I know 100%. I mean, I think I've spoken about that even on the podcast. Uh, you know, what you said about driving down the road and you know, in the car next to you. And and for me on the on you know, my side there was just anger and looking in the car next to her and going, you don't have a clue what has happened to me. You don't have a clue what's going on outside of, you know, I again, as I was saying, and from a very mean perspective of like, you know, you don't have a clue what's going on outside your little world because it like everything shifted. It was and it was a perspective, everything. And I totally get the waking up. I mean, it resonates so much with me. For the first year, every morning I woke up, I was so angry. Like, why am I still here? And it's the same thing. I didn't, I didn't feel that I had, you know, again, however it would be defined quote unquote suicidal thought, other than I didn't want to be here.

SPEAKER_01: 17:04

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 17:05

She wasn't here, I didn't want to be here, I didn't see a purpose. Um, my only child, and I wasn't married at the time. Why? So I totally get, and that's just it is is I can't say, and and I hope none of us do, you know, to say, hey, I know how you feel. It's not that, but we just get it. Yeah. And so I get where yes, it's different.

SPEAKER_01: 17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 17:33

But I get where you were coming from.

SPEAKER_01: 17:35

Yeah. Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 17:35

I had I had to say something because it just resonated so strongly with me.

SPEAKER_01: 17:40

Yeah, I I appreciate that connection to that moment because I think it's scary for people that love us to hear that. So I often would stuff those thoughts down and put that mask on, that very, very heavy mask of I'm fine, I'm here, yeah, I'm surviving. Look at me. I'm working, I'm with friends, I'm filling my life. But here's my darkness is that I woke up again. And my first thoughts were, why? Yeah. The same why of why did this happen? Why our son, why our sweet, sweet boy was as you said, probably my first year of reality of why am I here? Why not me?

SPEAKER_00: 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:34

Why uh what can I do to trade and allow him to have his life back?

SPEAKER_00: 18:42

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 18:42

Um, and I feel like what you know, what we did was what most grieving parents do is just it's like a multiple choice of let's try A, B, C, D, X, Y, Z to try to fill our lives with something. And whether it was we filled it with ridiculous pets, that you know, animals have always been my kind of solace. And but these were pets like lizards eating crickets. They were not feeling a need to nurture any or you know, um that would that didn't do it. Um traveling didn't do it, you know. It's like pack your bag, your grief's going with you. It doesn't matter whether you're sitting on a beautiful beach or in the mountains or grief sitting right next to you. And yes, I think it's very our instincts say, let me get away from this space, especially when a child has died in a home. It was so confusing because all of his memories were in this home in such a short-lived life. But also right there in the living room, that's where that's where the paramedic was. Right there in the kitchen was where I gave him CPR, right there is his bedroom, right there is the fingerprints on the front door, right in the exact same space of the more the most joy I'd ever experienced in my life of being a mother was also this trauma of I can't look at these spaces. So let me try to travel and go other places, but then you'd be there, you know, and the Most beautiful external environment, and you'd you'd look kind of around and think, Oh, here's my companion, grief. And it's still with me, and the trauma is still with me. And so I feel like we we tried so many times. Sometimes we clung very tightly to each other as a young couple, and sometimes we kept busy with really meaningless tasks. Sometimes we pushed each other away with anger and confusion on how the other person was coping with this. I often called my husband the garage griever because he would just disappear into the garage. And part of it, I believe, was seeing my pain and not being able to fix that. Yeah. Not be able to be my protector, which he has always been in our marriage, um, of just a steadiness and uh, you know, corny, but my rock, right? And and he was crumbled. He was not a rock. He was, we were both just shatters of what we used to be. So for him to see me like that, for me to see him like that, we did not make us closer for a long time. And we did this very differently. You know, often me really wanting to talk with others and gain from their wisdom and just be in their presence. So we became part of the national organization, Compassionate Friends, right away, became chapter leaders, and he was such a good sport about it. It was the last thing he wanted to do. But he, you know, would would go to these support groups and help with the newsletter and for me to also be able to give him the grace that he needed to be in his own space of literally and figuratively the garage, which gave him space away from my sorrow and him not being able to do really a lot about that. You know, we it was like we were two trees in a forest that were both timber, you know, like we were flat trees. We weren't other losses in our lives. We'd been able to lean on each other because one of us was still standing strong. But now I feel like both of us had been cut to just our roots. Yeah, you know, and um I feel like we we did fill our lives with four more children and we did really try to embrace joy, but it's an absolute unfillable void. And I think we really rushed into that part of our lives and didn't do a lot of our grief work because for me personally, just the why um searching for that, I was scared of doing the grief work because it seemed so scary, you know. Um, it is scary, yeah. And um it was, you know, more than 10 years later that as you referred to, I met with two other women and we formed this organization that was really an incredible part of my journey of responding as soon as possible to people's trauma and grief and sitting in living rooms and emergency rooms and funeral homes and morgues, and I mean there was no place that we would not meet people where they were at. And feel like I kind of w I didn't find my why, because I don't think there is a why, but I found some purpose and some meaning and some um but a bit at the sacrifice of my own well-being, my own uh joy, yeah, a bit. I've never trade those years, but now moving into a new chapter, completely away from that outreach that I did for so many years, it's been giving myself permission to uh think that uh it's okay for me to find joy. It's it's okay for me to um not want to be immersed in sorrow, to have to continue to feel great empathy for this journey and to um of of child loss and to um absolutely want people to have all the support they can possibly find. It's like puzzle pieces of I'll get some from here, I'll get some from here. And I think we all kind of have those of how am I going to find my my spiritual self, my mental self, my intellectual self, my emotional self, my relationship. You know, I mean it's kind of like a pie chart. And um, I wanted to answer that question the best I could for others, and now to believe that it's enough to answer it for myself.

SPEAKER_00: 25:29

We'll pause our conversation here. As we close part one, we've heard Kristen's history, her loss, her heart of service, and the depth of what she's carried while supporting so many grieving families. But there's another layer to her story. What comes after giving so much of yourself to others? In part two, Kristen shares openly about stepping back, rediscovering her footing, and asking the important question, what's next for me? I hope you'll come along for the rest of her journey. I'm Bruce Barker, and until part two, don't forget to breathe.