Shelley Ramsey

Shelley Ramsey lost her seventeen year old son in a single-vehicle car accident. She chronicles her deeply personal reflections and her arduous journey through grief in “Grief: A Mama’s Unwanted Journey.” Shelley and Phil have been married over thirty years and live in Virginia. In addition to Joseph, they are the adoring parents of adult sons, Curt and Wyatt.

Articles:

Holidays and Bereavement After the Loss of a Child

Today we usher in the month of November. The holidays are quickly approaching – first Thanksgiving and then Christmas quickly followed by New Year’s. I remember well the pain of those first holidays without Joseph. Prior to his death we were very traditional in the ways we celebrated, but now we didn’t know how to fill the gap among us. Learning to do that was a process. We discovered quickly that we each needed something familiar because life had become so unfamiliar. Since they were part of the fabric of our family, we chose to hang on to many of […]

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Child-Loss Journey is Easier When Sharing with Others

When a husband loses his wife, they call him a widower. When a wife loses her husband, they call her a widow. And when somebody’s parents die, they call them an orphan. But there is no name for a parent, a grieving mother or a devastated father, who has lost their child. Because the pain behind the loss is so immeasurable and unbearable that it cannot be described in a single word. It just cannot be described. —Bhavya Kaushik, The Other Side of the Bed Each of the cards, notes, and e-mails that arrived following Joseph’s homegoing was cherished, but […]

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