359 - A Season of Tears - Sebastian's Mom

Jackie knew it was coming. That is one of the hardest things about this kind of grief. For years, she had watched her son Sebastian struggle with mental health and addiction, and there came a point, as she puts it, where it was no longer an if but a when. She braced herself. She prepared. She thought maybe that would soften the blow. It did not. Sebastian was Jackie's firstborn, a towheaded, blue-eyed dynamo who walked at ten months old and never really stopped moving. He was curious about everything, passionate about soccer, and a national chess champion not once but twice before he decided it was no longer cool. He played D2 college soccer, loved the outdoors, and could make a room come alive. He and Jackie were so much alike that they butted heads constantly, but they always knew they loved each other. His last words to her were I love you, Mom. He died by suicide in 2017 at the age of 23. He was in a rehab program. He was supposed to be safe. Jackie says she never found herself angry at God, but she was angry at Sebastian for a long time. She clung to Jesus anyway. She went to church and hid in the front corner of the earliest service where nobody knew her, and she cried for two years. She went walking every day and listened to her Bible, unable to read it, barely retaining any of it, but letting it wash over her. She could only get through the Psalms, underlining every lament. She told people simply: I cannot see God in the midst of this, but I know He is there. Where else am I going to go? She calls those first years her season of tears. And she allowed herself to be in it. What she has built on the other side of it is remarkable. After thirteen writing classes, years of anonymous essays on Substack, and the steady encouragement of a writing coach and a grief counselor she would read her writing aloud to, Jackie has written a book. It is called *Messy Mourning: Hope for Mothers Grieving the Loss of a Child by Suicide*, and it is written specifically for the mothers who know this particular grief, the grief that comes wrapped in silence, the grief no one quite knows what to say about. Jackie is clear: suicide loss is different. Not harder or easier than other losses, but different. The world does not know how to respond to it. People go quiet. Well-meaning things get said that land like stones. And beneath it all, there is still an unspoken stigma that Jackie is determined to push back against with every word she writes. Her son was more than how he died. Her season of tears was not the end of her story. And no mother who has lost a child this way should have to carry it alone. Messy Mourning is available on Amazon and at JackieMBaker.com, where you can also find companion resources including a journal, a 30-day lament guide, and a playlist her daughter made in Sebastian's memory.