The Dental Mediator Kim Harms

I was born with seven fingers and spinal issues, likely caused by the Thalidomide my mother took for nausea during pregnancy. My beautiful and loving mother suffered from bipolar disorder, and when I was young, her illness took a terrifying turn. She sat in a car with my brother, sister, and me—waiting on the railroad tracks for an oncoming train. At the last moment, she changed her mind. That moment could have been the end of our story, but instead, it was just the beginning.

My parents divorced when I was three. My father remarried but neglected to tell his new wife that he had three children—until after they were married. When my mother was institutionalized, we arrived on their doorstep, uninvited and unexpected. Life was not kind to us in that home. There were moments when my siblings and I believed death would be a better alternative to the life we were living.

We survived. But my mother did not. When I was 17, she lost her battle with bipolar disorder and took her own life.

Despite the pain of my past, by the early 1990s, I believed I had finally reached a place of peace. I was married to an amazing man, had three wonderful children, and shared a successful dental practice with my husband. I thought the storms had passed, and it would be smooth sailing from there.

A devastating car accident left two boys dead and my husband and son injured. A few months later, I took my daughters, my niece, and my office manager’s daughter, Kara, on a trip to California. It was supposed to be a fun and exciting time—until Kara dove into a sandbar and broke her neck. I had to make the phone call no one ever wants to make. I had to tell a mother that her daughter, whom she had entrusted to my care, was now paralyzed.

Her mother blamed me. So did I.

Grief, guilt, and shame consumed me. And just when I thought we were beginning to heal—tragedy struck again.

In the mid-2000s, my hygienist lost her teenage son to suicide. She later lost another child at birth. My patient care coordinator was diagnosed with cancer. One of my dental assistants went to work on a Monday and died from a heart infection by Wednesday. My brother, Mike, suffered a fatal heart attack. My nephew, Zachary, died by suicide. Then my husband, Jim, was diagnosed with liver cancer. We sold half of our practice, and by some miracle, Jim was saved by a liver transplant. Finally, we thought, life would settle down.

On January 31, 2009, our world shattered when our son, Eric, died by suicide—just 45 minutes after a breakup. He was 19. A brilliant engineering student. A talented musician. A kind and compassionate young man. He had been on top of the world when he came home for Christmas. Two weeks later, he was gone.

When my hygienist’s son died, I remember wondering when she would be “back to normal.” After Eric’s death, I learned the answer: Never.

We do not go back to normal after catastrophic loss. We are changed. We don’t get over it—we get through it. We don’t move on—we move forward.

Loss is an inevitable part of life. When tragedy strikes, it leaves us gasping for air, grasping for meaning, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. And yet, the world keeps spinning. Work demands our attention. Responsibilities pile up. People expect us to function as though we are whole, when in reality, we are barely holding ourselves together.

Suppressing grief is not an option. Unprocessed pain festers. It manifests as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, even physical illness. I knew I was battling depression, and I sought help. But Jim struggled in silence. He believed he had to “push through” in the way his stoic Norwegian background dictated.

He never truly recovered from Eric’s death. And 12 years later, he, too, was gone. A body can survive grief, but a heart can still break beyond repair.

Loss has shaped me, but it has not destroyed me. Through my journey as a mother, daughter, clinician, teacher, and speaker, I have encountered wisdom from the most extraordinary people—Mayo Clinic doctors, mentors, grieving parents, and even genocide survivors in Rwanda and Armenia. Their resilience has strengthened me.

In the past few years as I face life alone, I realized one true thing:  I am still here.  And if I am still here, I still have a purpose.  I believe that my purpose is to use what I have learned to assist others to navigate the storms of life.

So I co-wrote a book for widows with Naomi Rhode; Naomi and the Widows Club. Then I realized that we don’t have a manual for how to leave our legacies as we age so I wrote one; Are You Ready? How to Build a Legacy to Die For. After that I realized that churches could use a concise 8 week program for widows to help them navigate the path from fear to joy so I co-wrote a Naomi and the Widow’s Club Workbook, and finally I joined with my fellow death doula widow Kathy Dempsey to co-host a podcast and now a book RethinkingDeath.Life.  

My goal is to what I’ve learned to encourage others prepare for and navigate the inevitable storms of life, through books, speaking engagement and personal coaching. Because while grief will change us, it does not have to define us. And even in the darkest moments, there is still a path forward.