Pictured: Layla at Lichterman Lake, Memphis, 2009 · Layla's original phoenix mandala · Layla and me in our last photo together.

More Than How She Died

By Daphne, Founder, Expansive Healing

Fellow Seeker, a gentle note before you read on: this piece speaks openly about suicide loss and grief — and even more about love, creativity, and legacy. Take it at whatever pace serves you today. And if it stirs more than this moment can hold, support is close by — text HOME to 741741, or call or text 988.

The Mandala

It had been just over a week since Fred died. I was in the Nashville area, staying with my elder daughter, Layla, and her family. Layla was cutting my hair in preparation for Fred's memorial service in PA. Mid-haircut, she was also working on the memorial collage for Fred's service, layering strips of glue-soaked newspaper around die-cut words she'd picked up at Michael's: Love. Peace. Joy. Family. She always talked when she was on a creative tear, hands moving fast, mind moving faster, and that day she was chattering about Fred's final wishes — the book he and I had planned to write together — and my next steps on my healing quest.

Mid-haircut, mid-glue, she stopped cold.

"Oh my God," she said. "I have it. I have it!"

She dropped everything and bolted upstairs. I sat there — haircut half-finished — listening to her tear through boxes for what felt like forever, until I heard her voice ring out from above: "I found it! I found it, Mom!"

She came running back down and put it in my hands.

"I drew this when I was healing from my own losses," she told me. "I only had a black pen — I was always going to colorize it eventually. It's a phoenix, rising up out of the waters of grief."

Then she said the thing I have carried every day since:

"I want you to have it for the cover of Fred's book because I believe Fred has risen above the confines of this earthly life to ascend to the heavens to be our angel — just like I believe you will rise from the grief of losing him, to soar to new heights, where you belong."

That drawing became the cover of what will eventually be Freed Spirits — The 12 Chapters of My Healing Quest, my teaching memoir based on the book material Fred and I wanted to write. The colorized version of Layla's mandala sits on the back of my Quest II card deck as well — a phoenix, still rising, for every Seeker who reaches that point in their own Quest. And six of us in our family, me included, now carry Layla's mandala as a tattoo. Mine is colorized; her siblings' and sister-in-law's are in black, just as she first drew it.

I did not know that afternoon in her kitchen how much I would need to hold onto that image. I did not know how soon I would be the one needing to rise. But Layla already knew something, in the way she always seemed to know things before the rest of us did. She had already drawn my way back home to my joy.

My Mentor in Loss

In the earliest months after Fred died, before I understood anything about what was ahead of me, my daughter Layla became something I didn't know I needed. She was my mentor in loss.

I was supposed to be teaching her how to survive hard things. Instead, in those months, it was Layla who walked beside me — her own grief for the loss of her two infants and for Fred, her stepfather, tangled together with my own grief. Yet somehow, in the middle of that tangle, she still had something steady to offer me. I did not know then how much I would need to remember that steadiness. I know now.

Her Message to Me

In those first months after Fred died, I was living deep inside the early chapters of a teaching memoir I didn't yet know I was writing. The first chapter, Chaos in Comfort City, began in total darkness. Layla was the one who helped me find my way out. From her own hard-won wisdom about loss, she walked me into the second chapter, Change Is Inevitable — Let the Quest Begin!, and showed me that a new life could be built alongside grief.

And then, suddenly, Layla died too.

Before I could tell her brothers and sister of her death, she came to me. Not in a dream. Not as a metaphor. As clearly as if she were standing in the room.

"Mama, it is up to you — don't let my life be about how I died."

I have carried those words every day since. Her death opened the third chapter of my story: Resistance on the TEAM. I was devastated. And I was determined to honor everything she had taught me about living with loss. Those two truths pulled against each other inside me, sometimes hour by hour.

Looking back, that is when I first began to recognize my TEAM, years before I had a name for it or the tools to work with it. My grief was loud. My Fierce Protector wanted to shut everything down. But underneath it all, a quieter voice held steady: my Wise Sage, the part of me rooted in my principles, in the "we" — my connection to something larger than myself — and in a deep knowing that this was my path. I couldn't see the ground beneath my feet for the first hundred steps, or for many chapters after that. But I knew in my heart I was walking in the right direction.

Choosing to Show Up

I want to be honest about something: I was not resilient in that moment. I was empty. Whatever strength I showed my other children in the weeks that followed, I faked — not because I didn't mean it, but because I did not yet have it to give honestly. I gave it anyway, and something I did not expect happened: the giving itself became a kind of ground to stand on, even before I felt steady on it.

I knew the statistics about siblings left behind after a suicide loss. But I also knew something more powerful than any statistic: my children still had a mother who could choose, every day, to keep showing up for them by demonstrating the road to resilience. That choice — to work toward resilience — was the thing I could give them, even on the days I had nothing else.

So I chose it. Not because I felt it yet, but because Layla asked me to, and because I wanted my children to hold on to how she lived — her amazing gifts, her unending creativity — rather than let grief have the final word. And here is what I want you to know, Seeker, if you are standing where I stood: the faking doesn't stay fake forever. When you keep choosing healing and positive growth, even on the days you don't feel it, somewhere along the way it becomes real. Mine did. Yours can too.

What I Believe

I have advocated for education, for support groups, for compassion, ever since — and for the rejection of one cultural notion in particular: that suicide is selfish. Naming that belief plainly has been one of the most freeing things I have ever done, and I want to offer you that same freedom.

I believe suicide is a mental health crisis. It is not an ego-based choice made from a healthy mind. Layla did not choose to leave the people who loved her because she stopped loving us — she never once stopped loving us. She was in a darkness that mental illness had built around her, and that darkness lied to her about what was true. Knowing that has let me hold onto everything true about her instead: her light, her gifts, her fierce love for this family, all of it real, all of it still hers.

That belief is not an abstraction for me. It is the ground I have stood on to keep loving her fully — her struggle and her life, both — without letting the struggle be the whole story. It is also the ground I want to offer you, if you are carrying a loss like this one: you are allowed to hold both truths too, and you do not have to hold them alone.

Her Legacy — Alive, Still

Layla's creativity, her humor, and her giving spirit did not end when her life did. They live on in the mandala she gave me, in the chapters of my story she helped me write, and in every Seeker who encounters this work and finds a reason to keep going — to search for the tools that lead to resilience, healing, and positive growth.

I am grateful for her, every single day. And I believe — I know — that those of us who loved her continue to honor her legacy each time we engage in our own positive growth and learning, each time we take another step on our own Hero's Journey. She was, and is, one of my biggest sheroes.

To Layla

My beautiful girl — if you are reading this somehow, and I believe you are — here is what I want you to know:

Your life was never about how it ended. It was about your light, your gifts, your fierce and generous heart, and I have spent every day since making sure the people who come through this work know that too.

Sissy — the name your younger siblings always called you — today I remember and honor the fun times.

Like our family jam sessions playing Rock Band. Or the day we all took turns on your Wii Fit. First it plumped my avatar out into a marshmallow puff — I was incensed, but you were downright infuriated on my behalf! Then came the balance tests. Thanks to my thirteen years of ballet, my "Wii Fit age" came out in my late twenties — while yours, at twenty-something, came out in your late thirties! Oh, that REALLY sent you into a tizzy!

Or when you, Fred, your sister, and your sister-in-law took me shopping for my wedding dress. You and Fred kept bringing me dresses slashed up the thigh and plunging to the navel — and your little sister and sister-in-law wouldn't let me out of the dressing room to show you, because they were so scandalized by the attire!

And what about that family trip to the beach when you were a teen? You were nearly hysterical over what you were sure was an indecently dressed man jogging toward us! Everyone around us was ready to go set him straight — until they saw a sweet little old man trudging along as best he could at his age, minding his own business, in his tan-colored Speedo!

And I will never forget your first real Montana snow, after you moved up from Tennessee in 2005. Your sister and I had already lived through a couple of Montana winters by then. So when it really SNOWED — a good eight inches — and you started out the door in stilettos, I gently questioned the wisdom of that wardrobe decision and offered you a pair of my winter boots, or your sister's. Your reply: "Mom, you know me better than that! Those winter boots are flat ugly — they are NOT fashion!" Off you went. That evening you came home from work and announced, "So where can I get some of those ugly winter boots?"

Oh my goodness, all of these memories bring such joy to my heart.

I remember you. I love you. I am grateful, every single day, for the gift you were — and still are — to me. Your creativity, your humor, your giving spirit are alive in this work. And I am still, every day, choosing to meet you where you wait for me — by lighting the way for someone else who is struggling, the way you once lit the way for me.

Heal Yourself. Heal Your World.

— Mama (Daphne)

Love for Layla

On Saturday, October 17, our family in Montana and many of our friends here are taking part in the Help Center's Run for Your Life fundraiser as a team, Love for Layla, to honor her. We'll be there alongside many other teams, all raising funds for the Help Center.

If Layla's story touched you, I would be so grateful if you'd support our team with a donation in her honor. Every gift, no matter the size, goes to the Help Center and helps light the way for someone who is struggling right now.

Scan with your phone's camera, or click the link below.

➤ Support Team Love for Layla

You Are Not Alone

Layla felt alone in her struggle. That is one of the reasons — in large part, the reason — I do this work at all. Whether or not anything else on this site resonates with you, I want you to know help exists, and it takes many forms.

Some of the people who helped light my own way back are gathered on my Heroes and Sheroes page — the authors, teachers, and friends whose books, programs, and presence I leaned on, and still lean on, on the days that are hard.

And if you or someone you love is struggling right now, my National Resource Directory and Southwest Montana Resource Directory (for my community here in Montana) are here for exactly that — real places, real people, real help, close by or a call away.

You do not have to find your own way through this alone. In her darkest moment, Layla did not know how many people and how much help were waiting for her. I want you to know.

Help is here. Hope is here. And so are we.

A Note on This Work

I'm an instructor, educator, and certified neuroplasticity coach — not a licensed therapist, counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, or medical professional of any kind. What I share here is inner companion work, meant to walk alongside the professional care you may need or already have, not replace it. Full disclaimer: expansivehealing.com/disclaimer

If anything in this post stirs grief, memory, or difficulty that feels heavier than this moment can hold, please reach for support: a therapist, a sponsor, a support group, or trusted people in your life. You can also text HOME to 741741 to reach the Crisis Text Line, or call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — both free, private, and available 24/7. You deserve both this work and that support.

More support: National Mental Health Resource Library · Southwest Montana Mental Health & Community Resource Library