CLEVELAND — February is Youth Mental Health Awareness Month, and we know processing emotions for our kids can be really tough. One Northeast Ohio mom is hoping her journey of helping her son understand grief will help others as well.
In 2019, Cleveland native Monica Garrett lost her husband, Montel, in a fatal motorcycle crash.
"I can still remember the day as if it happened yesterday," Garrett says.
She says her husband was a good man. Montel and Monica were in the Army, stationed in North Carolina when the crash happened.
"He spent 20 years active service in the US Army. He loved to ride motorcycles. That was just his thing to do," Monica says. "I'm texting him on the phone, trying to get a response and I'm thinking that he wasn't responding because he was on a motorcycle."
After losing him, the grief became so much to bear, Monica asked the Army to move she and her son, Maceo, back home to Cleveland.
"We couldn't live in the house anymore. It was that hard," she remembers.
As she moved through her own grief, she realized her little baby boy was feeling it, too. Maceo began to ask more questions about his dad. So when she struggled to speak about it with him, she decided to write instead.
"When Dad Disappeared is the topic of the book, and it explains what happened with his dad," Monica says.
She published the book last year. It recounts how they found out about Montel to teach Maceo about those emotions at a young age. Now a certified grief coach herself, Monica says writing the book also helped her with her emotions when everything else was broken.
"As much as my body wanted to get up and go work out at the gym, I couldn't. I had to take it one day at a time. One week I'll go to the gym for one day, and as the weeks progressed, I'll go two days a week, and then three days. And now I'm up to five days," she says.
Not only did the book give her something to do, but it helped both she and Maceo cope together. Something she says many people avoid.
"A lot of people also think that just keeping busy will keep them from having to not deal with it. But you have to find time to deal with it. Not dealing with it, is not dealing with it."
Monica says dealing with it is the ultimate gift she can give her son as a mother.
"Just to be totally honest. To be open and honest with the kids because they are little humans and they want to know."
When Dad Disappeared even has prompts at the end that encourage kids to write a letter to their loved one or draw a picture with them. Monica says she's even donated to the book to other families in the news who lose a parent, like the family of Cleveland firefighter Johnny Tetrick.
She is now also working on another book where kids realize they've all lost someone special and bond over their experiences together. To purchase a copy of When Dad Disappeared and learn more about Monica, click here.
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Editor's note: Video in the player above was originally published in an unrelated story on Jan. 26, 2023.