“You need to suck it up” – words, spoken to me by one of my older cousins about a week after my son died, that rock me now as much as they did two years ago.  Pain is weakness leaving your body!  Real men rise above the pain!  Men don’t cry, they water their beards!  All of these sayings are nothing more than euphemisms that hide the truth about men and our “strength”.  The reality is that many men’s greatest weakness is the facade they build to demonstrate their “strength”; a paper armor that cloaks weakness yet offers no protection.

I am done hiding my feelings behind the paper veil.  It is only weighing me down and keeping me from truly healing.  The truth is I am weak.  I cry, a lot.  In fact I am crying right now.  I cry myself to sleep at night when no one is … Read More

The ReesSpecht Life Foundation owes a great deal of its success to Facebook.  Facebook’s open platform and ease of use, combined with its almost universal appeal, gave our fledgling movement a chance to grow that would be impossible anywhere else.  From our first “pay it forward” card experience, to our early fundraisers, Facebook was there to share our ups and downs as my family came to grips with loss of our 22 month old son, Richard Edwin-Ehmer Specht, in October of 2012.  Indeed, the foundation of our entire movement is rooted in the over fifty thousand people who hit that “thumbs up” button and decided to follow what we were doing.  Each month saw us growing by leaps and bounds thanks to the ease by which Facebook allowed us to share with our followers in a way that no other platform before or since could hope to match.

My … Read More

Every parent I know would sacrifice all they are, all they have, to protect their children.  It is an immutable instinct ingrained in everyone of us.  From the moment our children come into this world we are both blessed with unending love and cursed with perpetual fear of losing that love.  When your child dies, regardless of the cause, a certain feeling of failure washes over you with the realization of that fear.

A little over two years ago I found myself realizing that fear.  The pain of losing my little boy is as acute today as it was on that fall day in 2012.  Some say the pain of loss and the accompanying grief is commensurate with the love.  I can confirm the accuracy of that statement: Unending love produces limitless pain.  My father used to tell me that “Pain is nature’s way of letting you know you are … Read More