I’m Sarah Stewart, and we lost our daughter Mary Mitchell about four and a half years ago, at age 5, to a cruel disease they call Childhood Alzheimer’s. This is how God is working in me to live deeply through a new group I’ve started called Good Grief. 

“The idea came from God. It was sometime in that first year after Mary Mitchell died. I just started thinking about the moms I know who have had kids die. I use the notes app on my phone for everything, so I made a list. And over the years, the list grew. I think it was just the Holy Spirit. Something about this January -just the fact of it being the start of a new year- the Lord really stirred my heart. And I thought, ‘Okay. It’s time. I know too many women who share this unbearable, unspoken thing with me to not do something about it.’ So, I started reaching out. One by one, I messaged them. Some of these women I had met when we got Mary Mitchell’s diagnosis. Some I only knew through Facebook. I hadn’t messaged a couple of them since 2020, but I pulled up Messenger anyway. Typed out my heart. Told them about the group. Asked if they’d want to come. They did. A few weeks ago, we met for the first time. It was really important to me to meet in my home. This is where Mary Mitchell lived. This is where she died. It’s my safe haven. And I wanted it to feel safe for them, too. This is the club nobody wants to be in. Everyone was coming into it with the same feelings. I started by offering water or wine. Everybody went, ‘Oh, wine!’ The wine was a big hit and helped take the edge off. We had 15 women show up. There are 21 total who have said ‘Yes, I want to be a part of this.’ Maybe we’ll never have a meeting where all 21 come, but they’ve all said they want to. We’re calling it Good Grief. It’s not a Bible study. There’s no agenda, no books to read, no grief curriculum. It’s just a place to come, to be, to share. A place where we don’t have to explain what it feels like to bury a child or to know that one day, we will. Everyone here already knows.

I told them ahead of time, ‘Just come prepared to introduce yourself. Share a brief summary of your story, however much or little you want.’ We started at 6. I had an end time (the older I get, the more I appreciate things with an ending time!) of 7:30. We wrapped up at almost 9:30. These women were just so eager to share. Most of them, including me, had never done anything like this before. There was a mom there I had never met before that night. I didn’t know her story or the loss she carried. She cried from the start. She was emotional the whole time. Before she even shared what had happened to her son, she said through her tears, ‘I have been wanting a group like this for so long.’ And yet, when it came time to leave her house, she suddenly felt like she didn’t want to come. We all said the same thing- we had all looked for an out. Because it’s the kind of thing where you want to be there, but you don’t want to be there. You know what it’s going to stir up in you. She said that the whole drive over, she was praying, wrestling. She didn’t want to go. But she kept thinking about her little boy. He died when he was two and a half. And she said, ‘I kept thinking he would want me to go. He would want me to show up. He would be really proud of me.’ That really struck me because I’d never thought about that perspective: for me personally with Mary Mitchell, what she would have wanted me to do. So that was very impactful. And then this mom shared how her son died, which was too tragic and personal for me to share with you. After listening to her, I had no words. I sat there, stunned, thinking, ‘I can’t imagine.’ Isn’t that so strange? I’ve buried a child. But even so, I hear these stories, and I still think, ‘I can’t imagine.’ It continues to remind me that the Lord just did not create us in this world to experience death.

When we got Mary Mitchell’s diagnosis six years ago, my dad told me something that stuck with me. He said, ‘There’s still good in the hard.’ Every time something beautiful happened in the middle of our world falling apart, he’d say, ‘Put that in the good column.’ And for six years, I’ve watched that column grow. The bad column is awful- it’s as bad as it gets. But the checks in the good column just keep coming. And this Good Grief group, hard as it is to accept what connects all of us, is a check in the good column. Like I’ve said, this is the club no one wants to be in, but here we are. Normally you walk into a room and feel like nobody understands your story. But in this room, you knew instantly you weren’t alone. The group was multigenerational: women in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s. Some lost children years ago. Some had just buried their sons a few weeks before. Some were still waiting, knowing their child’s diagnosis will one day lead them down this same road. And yet, in the hardest place, we met each other and found an immediate sense of belonging. I texted a friend from the group the next day and asked, ‘Is it just me, or did we just meet 15 of our new best friends?’ She felt the same way. That’s only by God’s grace. Only He can take 21 tragedies and somehow turn them into something like this- something sacred, something healing. And the thing is, not everyone in that room knows Jesus. But they showed up. They stepped into something that felt like holy ground, where we all felt seen and known. That’s what all of us want, right? To be loved, to be seen, to be known, to be understood. And I can’t help but think, ‘Just what all is God up to here?’

For our family personally (well, Mitch and me, at least), we are tired. I mean, I’m 42 with a two-and-a-half-year-old! But we are also joyful. As you probably already know, God has so graciously added an indescribable blessing -our daughter Poppy Jane!- to our family through adoption. There are days when I can hardly believe how different life looks now. A little over four years ago, we were in the deepest sorrow. And now? Now we are here, exhausted and overwhelmed, but also full of laughter and love and healing. Having Poppy Jane is so much fun. Watching her grow, seeing her hit milestones Mary Mitchell never did— there’s sadness in that, but there’s also just a sweetness. And Reynolds? He’s still the best big brother. He and Poppy Jane are ten years apart, which is not at all what I would have planned. But it’s been one of the greatest gifts. Their friendship, their bond— it’s been a big part of my healing just watching them. They’re each other’s best friends and I feel very grateful. Mary Mitchell is still part of our joy- her presence hasn’t faded. We still have pictures of her all over the house. For Christmas last year, I got a stuffed pillow made with her picture on it. We call it the Shugie Pillow. (Shugie is her forever nickname.) Poppy Jane will point to it or to a picture of Mary Mitchell and I’ll ask, ‘Who’s that?’ And she’ll say, ‘Shugie!’ It’s sweet. And it feels very redemptive and just very kind of the Lord to allow us to experience such joy after such loss. This journey has taught me over and over that, because of God, there is good in the hard. The checks in the good column are endless. And ultimately, that’s the purpose of Good Grief: to help each other fight to see the good in each of our hard stories.”