When a Parent Dies
Finding Healing through Grief
Welcome, Friends.
I’m Toni. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to connect with me – and I’m sorry you find yourself in this place called grief.
Maybe you cannot imagine finding any sort of healing right now. Yet, you want to get to a more peaceful and happier place. You want to leap past the pain. Society is all too eager for you to “move on.” But grief demands we travel through it to find any true sense of healing. And that’s tough.
I’ve created this site to encourage you to authentically grieve. To take all the time you need. And to consider perspectives that will help you discover your own path toward healing.
Thank you for letting me join you on this journey. Now, let’s get to know each other better. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to get personalized encouragement for this life after loss.
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About Toni
Toni Lepeska is a Memphis journalist, essayist and contributing author to two books. She uses personal stories and hard-won perspective to help “adult orphans” find their own path toward healing. Toni loves dazzlingly blue skies, big dogs suitable for tight hugs, and a man who married her at a chaotic time – around the beginning of life without her parents. She spent the next eight years sifting through the contents of her childhood home. Wrestling a tangle of emotions, she rediscovered the sense of safety she’d thought was lost forever. She found beauty in life again – and you can, too.
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All-time Most Popular Blog Posts
Rejection Letters: Stories Reconnect Mother and Daughter Beyond Grave
Her articles were never accepted for publication, but if she’d never written them, I would have lost the stories. I would have lost a piece of her.
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I call July “death month.” My parents died three years apart, both in July. I’ve been through lots of Julys now, and I’ve noticed three ways I’ve responded. I think they can help you, too.
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I stood frozen in the doorway of my parents’ walk-in closet again, my eyes darting from Mom’s red party dress to Dad’s sports jackets. Cleaning out a loved one’s closet is perhaps one of the most daunting tasks. I put it off for eight years. Here’s what I learned.
A Decade with Grief: 8 Behaviors That Transformed Pain into Peace
We know grief usually evolves, becoming less intense and feeling more survivable years after the death of a parent. But how does that happen? Can we do or not do certain things to slow down or speed up our journey? Well, in a way, yes. In this article, I want to share what changed my …
Toni's Latest Posts
Fixing Father’s Day
My father’s photograph hangs in our hallway. I am horrible at decorating. I did not nail it there. My husband did. That might not seem terribly odd except I did not ask him to nail up the picture. And … my husband never knew my dad. He had died before I met Richard. Nonetheless, Richard …
Tornado: The Roar in the Night
You never forget the roar. I was 8 years old when a tornado terrorized my family as we tried to survive in perhaps the worst possible structure to shelter us. I was tucked under the covers when the bedroom light came on, and the next thing I knew, my mother had pulled me out of …
Grief: Healing is in the Details
We are trained to look at the big things when we're grieving, but if we overlook the small things, we will miss important milestones toward healing.
Grief & Holiday Memories
You probably have a special memory you go back to this time of year, the season of the Grief Super Bowl, the annual apex of grieving. It’s likely a bittersweet replay. I go back in my mind to a little girl at a dining room table, feet on a trailer vent grate for warmth and …
The Duty of Legacy After a Death
Are you living with an eye toward legacy? What is legacy all about anyway? I think those of us who’ve had a parent die have thought about this word at least a little. And maybe we’ve wondered where it fits into our lives. The dictionary says legacy is anything handed down from the past, as …
Please Don’t Say “Happy Mother’s Day”
Would someone please tell church leaders not to say “Happy Mother’s Day” to every woman as she arrives for worship service? Please tell them they need a new script for the grieving. My mother is dead, and I am not a mother. And I am not alone in feeling left out by that welcome at …
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