Jack Gindi
If you’ve been following my work, you know that last year I lost my eldest son, Shaun.
Nothing prepares a parent for that sentence. Nothing prepares you for waking up in a world that looks the same but feels entirely different.
A little more than a year has passed. I’ve learned that time doesn’t heal grief. It teaches you how to carry it. Some days feel steady. Others still knock the wind out of me. What has surprised me most over this past year is how many parents are walking this same road. In the United States alone, an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 families lose a child or young adult every year.
We are living through a quiet and deeply troubling moment in this country. After decades of steady progress, child and youth mortality rates have reversed course. In the last five years, deaths among children and young adults have risen drastically – driven by fentanyl, mental-health crises, gun violence, and despair. One public-health researcher called the shift “a red flashing light.” Behind every number is a family standing in the aftermath, trying to breathe through the unthinkable.
I know that place.
What I want to share here isn’t advice. It’s simply what helped me survive the first year after Shaun passed, moment by moment, breath by breath.
Earlier that day, before I knew Shaun had passed (November 20, 2024), I recorded a short video and posted it online.
“Don’t build a home in hardship. Don’t make mourning your address. Don’t let yesterday steal your tomorrow.”
At the time, I had no idea those words would become a lifeline, first for me, and later for others. After Shaun’s passing, I couldn’t imagine ever standing in front of a camera again. I wasn’t trying to get back to “normal.” That life no longer existed. My work, my health, and my sense of purpose all had to change.
Grief doesn’t just break your heart. It disorients you. It pulls you out of your body, out of your relationships, and out of any sense of direction. In the first months after Shaun’s passing, I gained weight, slept poorly, and felt the edges of myself blur. I wasn’t broken. I was overwhelmed.
What helped me wasn’t trying to fix my grief. It was giving myself something steady to return to.
L.I.F.E
I leaned on the same L.I.F.E. Mapping process I had originally built for families. It helped keep me going when everything felt unstable. I used it to notice when my body was taking the hit of grief and needed care, to stay connected to what I was feeling instead of shutting down, and to make sure I didn’t disappear from my family and friends.
Doing this didn’t make the loss easier. It helped me to keep living while carrying the loss.
Some days, “mapping my life” meant nothing more than getting outside and walking. Other days it meant sitting quietly and letting the tears come. Sometimes it meant reaching out instead of pulling away. And sometimes it meant remembering that even in grief, life still asks for presence, not perfection.
What I’ve learned this year is that grief doesn’t want to be rushed, but it’s not a place to live. Mourning is necessary. Pain needs processing. But if we don’t gently orient ourselves, if we don’t check in with our bodies, our inner world, our relationships, and our sense of meaning, grief can quietly become isolating.
For anyone walking a road of grief now, please hear this. You are not weak for feeling lost. You are human. And you don’t need a grand plan to survive. Sometimes a simple reminder, a daily check-in, or a steady structure is enough to get you through the next hour.
I don’t have your answers. I only have my story. But I believe this deeply. Our greatest heartbreak can also become a doorway to new meaning. Love doesn’t leave us when our loved ones pass on. It changes form. It asks us to carry it differently.
Shaun still walks with me – in my life, my work, my choices, and the families I support. His life ended in shock and pain, but it continues with purpose.
If you’re reading this as a person who has lost someone you love, or fears losing one, know this: You are not alone, and you don’t have to figure life out all at once. Stay connected. Stay honest. Take care of your body. Lean on others. And don’t let grief be the place where you live. Onwards, one breath, one day at a time.