It’s anniversary weekend for us. We’ve now been married for 19 years—14 years since the death of our son.

There’s a statistic floating around that 90% of marriages end in divorce after the death of a child.

Especially in that first year after Lachlan died, anytime David and I were having a hard time aligning in what we needed from each other in our grief, it always made me worry that this was the beginning of the end for us… after all, they say most marriages don’t survive this…

This worry added pain and stress to what was already indescribably hard.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐬, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐠𝐞.

Newer data shows that only about 16% of marriages end in divorce after the death of the child, and only 4% of those say it was due to the death.

If 50% of all marriages end in divorce, the low rate of 16% for bereaved parents is quite remarkable.

Highly stressful life events can be polarizing for a couple. The strong get stronger, and the marriages that are really struggling might be stretched to the point of breaking.

It still takes an extraordinary amount of grace, communication, forgiveness, and humility to get through such a stressful life event, but 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝. In fact, you have every reason to believe you will be stronger as a couple for having weathered this storm together.