Next week, a special guest post

When I first started this blog, I figured it was a way for those that knew Aimee to travel alongside my and Rowan's journey of grief, and for us to commiserate. However, as time has passed and the readership of this blog has grown a LOT (nearly 53,000 page views to date), I realized at some point that this blog has morphed into helping people who are going through similar circumstances, many of whom have never previously heard of Aimee or me or anyone else in the family.

My sister Shannon (left) with Aimee at
a family picnic a couple of summers ago.

So if this blog is more than just my rants, but also about people feeling reading it so as to feel like others are going through the same thing, it made sense to me that once in a while readers should also get the perspectives of others in my story. To that end I invited my mom and my two sisters, Aimee's mom (Donna), and Aimee's brother Justin and his wife Caroline all to write posts for this blog if they so felt moved.

The first person to accept my invitation was my sister Shannon. And she clearly had a lot bottled up, because she wrote four pages full of thoughts. While she gave me permission to edit it down, I think instead I will simply split it up into two posts, which will appear on Monday and Tuesday next week.

Her perspective on hearing about Aimee's death, helping me and the family through Aimee's memorial, her own triggers of grief, and how her life has been changed since Aimee's death are all very powerfully related. And I think that many of you will relate to how she has felt as she has walked through her own journey of grief.