July

July is National Bereaved Parents Month. It is also Disability Pride Month. I live in both those worlds.

By midlife in America, 1 in 13 white mothers and 1 in 8 black mothers have already endured the loss of a child. They are your neighbors, co-workers, church members, and friends.

They might be you.

They are me.

I often feel as if losing a child is so horrific, even the English language shudders to acknowledge it. We have nouns like widow, widower, and orphan—identities shaped by loss. But when a parent loses a child, English offers no comparable noun. Instead, we borrow the adjective bereaved, a word descended from the Old English verb bereafian: to rob, to deprive, to take away by force.

It is fitting that there is no unique word because words truly fail to describe the loss of a child. What is taken by force when a mother loses her child is irrevocably soul-ripping. It alters who she is and who she was going to be.

On February 21, 2026, I was given the title bereaved mother. I didn’t just lose my son. I lost my identity, my hopes, and my dreams of the future. Losing a child defies the laws of nature. It is not meant to be.

There were several occasions during Wesley’s twenty-four years that I cried out to God, begging Him to let me keep my son. Each time He answered yes, until the last when He answered with a resounding, “No.”

Though I stood on the precipice many times, I never imagined the human heart could endure a pain this enormous and this deep. I am only four and a half months without him, and I cannot fathom a world in which grief ends. It has already become part of who I am. I will carry the loss of my precious son into every new day, every missed holiday, every memory for which he should have been here. I am told life will form around the loss.

I am hopeful to learn to love the woman who survives.

It seems every month has various populations for whom dedicated awareness is applied. July is also Disability Pride month. My beautiful son, Wesley, had multiple disabilities and he gave the best hugs.

Being a bereaved mother of a child with disabilities is a horrible club to belong to, but I have found support during my loss the same way I did throughout his life —entire, loving, and compassionate. Parents of children with disabilities are ferocious advocates for their children and for one another just as much in death as in life.

Dedicating months to different groups, to me, boils down to people wanting and deserving to be seen.

Sadly, we already know children pass away. We know people with disabilities exist and are valuable members of our community.

Raising awareness seeks for us to do more than know.

If naming July National Bereaved Parents Month reminds us to ask a bereaved mother about her child and Disability Pride Month nudges us to strike up a conversation with a person with disabilities, then it is helpful. Remembering to do that after July is the challenge.

And I know we are up for it.