Hearing My Daughter’s Voice from Heaven: How “Always With You” Helped Our Family Heal After Suicide Loss
Have you ever missed someone so much that you would give anything just to hear their voice one more time?
It’s a kind of longing that refuses to sit quietly in your heart. It makes you ask questions you never thought you would. It makes you replay moments, search for signs, and wonder how the world can keep moving when someone you love is no longer physically beside you.
When my daughter Maddie passed away by suicide in the summer of 2022, she was only 14 years old. There is no gentle way to say that. No sentence makes it easier to carry. The loss of a child is the greatest grief a parent can go through, and when that loss comes by suicide, it leaves a family standing in a place they never imagined they would be.
I am Shannon, Maddie’s mom, and Always With You: A Short Story of My Spiritual Journey That Brought Comfort and Healing to My Family came from that place. It came from the ache of missing my daughter, the silence in our home, the questions that had no simple answers, and the comfort I began to feel when I realized that maybe Maddie had not gone as far away as grief tried to make me believe.
This little book is written from Maddie’s perspective in Heaven. In it, she tells the story of how she is still with us. She visits her dad when he is sad at work. She stays close to her brother, Brandon. She joins me when I bake, shop, listen to music, and move through the ordinary parts of life that suddenly became so hard after she was gone.
Dear grieving parent, I know this pain can make the world feel unfamiliar.
I know what it is like to walk past a bedroom door and feel your heart stop for a moment. I know what it is like to hear a song, see a favorite store, remember a family trip, or touch something your child loved and suddenly feel both grateful and broken at the same time. Grief after losing a child does not stay in one place. It follows you into the kitchen, the car, the holidays, the quiet nights, and the smallest routines.
For me, healing did not begin because I stopped missing Maddie. I will never stop missing her. Healing began when I started speaking to her as if she were still near me. I would say goodnight. I would tell her I loved her. I would let myself believe that Heaven does not break the bond between a mother and child.
Always With You is not a book that tries to explain away grief. It does not pretend there is an easy answer to suicide loss. I am not a psychologist or a grief counselor. I am simply a mother who lost her precious daughter and found comfort in feeling that she was still beside us. I wanted to share that comfort with another family who might be sitting in the same kind of pain, wondering how to breathe through another day.
Maddie was more than the way she left this earth.
She loved reading under a beautiful tree. She loved animals. She loved music, piano, choir, Fleetwood Mac, baking cookies, shopping with me, playing video games with Brandon, going to Hawaii, snorkeling, visiting Durango, and being with her family. She had pets she loved, traditions she enjoyed, and little things that made her Maddie.
Writing the book from her voice helped me remember all of that. It helped me hold on to her life, not only her loss.
And maybe that is what I want another grieving family to know most. Your child’s story is not only the day they left. It is every laugh, every favorite song, every holiday memory, every hug, every inside joke, every messy ordinary moment that still belongs to you. Nothing can take that away.
There are still days when grief is heavy. There are still moments when I miss Maddie so much it hurts in a place words cannot reach. But I believe she is with us. Not far above us. Not somewhere unreachable. Right beside us.
I believe she visits in dreams. I believe she sends signs. I believe she is there when her dad needs comfort, when Brandon needs his sister close, and when I need to feel like my daughter still hears me. The belief has helped our family heal.
So if you are reading this as a parent, sibling, grandparent, or friend who is grieving, I want to say this gently: you are not alone.
There is no perfect way to grieve. There is no timeline you have to follow. Some days you may feel strong, and some days you may feel like you are back at the beginning. That does not mean you are failing. It means you loved deeply.
Always With You is my small offering from one grieving heart to another. It is a story of Maddie, of our family, of Heaven, of signs, of ordinary moments, and of the love that stayed. My hope is that it brings comfort to someone who needs to believe their child is still close.
Because I believe our children do not stop loving us. I believe they stay near.
And I believe that even after the deepest loss, love still finds a way to speak.
If you are looking for comfort and healing, click here.
