Over the last two weeks at the Double J, we had the incredible privilege of walking alongside two groups of families who have experienced every parent’s, spouse’s, child’s, sibling’s, or friend’s worst nightmare—the loss of a loved one to suicide.

People often ask what happens at a Jae Foundation retreat.

The truth is, it’s difficult to explain.

It’s not a conference.

It’s not counseling.

It’s not about having the right answers.

It’s about creating a place where people who have carried unimaginable pain alone finally realize they don’t have to carry it alone anymore.

Over four days, strangers become family. Stories that have remained hidden are spoken aloud. Tears are shared. Laughter returns. Hope begins to quietly find its way back into hearts that wondered if they would ever feel it again.

One of our retreat participants captured that experience far better than I ever could.

With permission, I’d like to share the words they wrote following our time together.

In Common

We ascend to the Double J,

With anticipation, anxiety, a dare to hope.

We all share in what has been lost

Which is somehow, less and more,

As we mourn them in nonconsensual

communion.

His plan or purpose, we dare not ascribe,

But in quiet reverence, in searing anger,

Our unresolvable isolation,

Reverberates together in hallowed song.

Our departed left notes, left last words,

All left a discernible silence that deafens,

An abandoned desolation—

Unrequited questions

Of what could have or should have been.

What lays in common,

Is that we remain.

They left us.

Left us,

Together.

We share their lives in anecdotes, sentiments,

Chasing vapors of their identities,

Hearing whispers of their echoed voices,

Dancing in the dark light,

Guttural howls of our hearts crying out

In that last red moon of Wyoming,

Cracking windows to our souls,

Basking in those ranch wheat-gold fields,

They are found within us, together.

Some share their hope in a time to come,

Some take solace in their final rest,

But here together, for some the first time,

We find irreconcilable solace

Incomprehensible apart from one another.

In our new in-common family,

Together forever in memory.

As I read these words, one line continues to echo in my heart:

“What lays in common, is that we remain.”

That is the mission of the Jae Foundation.

We cannot change what happened.

We cannot erase the pain.

But we can make sure that those who remain never have to walk alone.

Thank you to every volunteer who served, every donor who made these retreats possible, and every participant who had the courage to show up with an open heart.

Because of you, families who arrived carrying isolation left carrying something different.

A community.

A family.

Hope.

It’s Boot-Check Time!