BROADCASTS.com

I’m seven years old. The screaming and crashing is freezing me into paralysis. I finally make my way into the living room to find my six year old sister, Teresa screaming in the arms of a neighborhood teenager. I see the front door off the hinges. I don’t know where my mom and step-dad are, or my two year old sister, Shirley. I set my fear aside and finally get up the nerve to ask the teenager what was going on. Her only words were, “Shirley was hit by a car”. The next day I’m sitting in class trying to keep my emotions together asI’d been told not to talk to anyone about what happened to my little sister. My teacher sees my silent tears dripping onto my paper and takes me outside. “I’m not supposed to tell”, I relay to my teacher as the flood waters break open with no containment. I see the fear in my teachers’s eyes as she holds me tight and tells me she’s a safe person to tell and I spill my secret in dread. School isn’t over; I look up and see my dad at the classroom door with my other sister in tow. My teacher walks me to the door and we get into our pastor’s station wagon to begin the drive home in deafining silence. We pull up to the gate of our backyard and the car stops. My dad turns to look at my sister and I as we sit in the back seat in trepidation. “Shirley died this morning”, my dad tells us. “She’s in heaven now”. My world changed dramatically that day. It took a turn from loving, comfortable peace and inhibition to feelings of abandonment, terror, trauma and tragedy. Teresa and I were not allowed to go to the funeral. There was no closure, no understanding and nobody ever thought to help us through the grief which would haunt us the rest of our lives. In our search for answers, we both ended up in funeral service careers. It was here that I began my funeral eduacation, as I had not completed high school. I gained degrees in pshycology and sociology, not to become a psychologist, but to better understand the human psyche in order to help myself and the families that I worked with. My experience with death and loss did not stop with my sister. After numerous losses of family and friends throughout the years, then losing my son in 2010, my husbnad in 2015, and going through a horrific injury with multiple surgeries, I could no longer work in funeral service. Yet, I missed working with the familes and helping them through some of the worst times in their lives. I did learn to accept death and loss as an innate element in the circle of life. I also learned that grief does not just encompass death and dying nad how faith and love are so intergral to our journey in healing after loss. These and other reasons are why I’m so passionate about helping people move through grief and find new life, beyond loss. The losses that we encounter through life often leave us with a lack of direction on how to proceed without whom or what we’ve lost. I can laugh again, love again, and have redefined my life to live in joy and happiness. Please let me help you on your journey to your new dream! https://annahayes.life