(A special anniversary blog marking eight years)

Eight years ago this week, my son Tommy went to sleep and never woke up.

There is no way to prepare for a sentence like that becoming part of your life. No training, no roadmap, no language that helps it make sense. There is only the before… and the after.

And yet, over these past eight years, I’ve come to understand that alongside the grief—that deep, disorienting, ever-present grief—Tommy left me something else.

A gift.

Many gifts, actually.

But today I want to talk about one in particular that took me a long time to recognize, and even longer to trust. But once I did, it changed the way I move through the world, the way I connect with others, and the way I understand love itself.

Tommy’s gift was simple.

Everybody needs a little love.

Not just the people we naturally love. Not just the people who are kind to us, who agree with us, who make our lives easier.

Everybody.

And I don’t mean that as a nice idea or a hopeful slogan. I mean it as a practice. A choice. A way of being that has the power to shift something real inside of us.

I learned this slowly. Not through a single moment, but through a series of experiences that I couldn’t ignore.

In the early days after Tommy passed, my heart felt shattered beyond repair. My body was raw. My mind couldn’t process what had happened. Traditional paths to healing didn’t seem to reach the depth of what I was experiencing.

So I started searching.

I read. I wrote. I explored ideas I never would have considered before. I was trying to answer one impossible question: where did my son go?

Along the way, something unexpected happened.

I started to feel connected. As if he were still here.

Not in a way I could prove. Not in a way I could explain. But in a way that felt undeniable. Moments of presence. Subtle signs. A sense that love didn’t just disappear when a body does.

I decided if any of that was even remotely true—if there was any chance that connection continued in some form—then I had a choice to make.

I could collapse into grief for the rest of my life. Or I could try to rise through it.

Not by denying the pain, but by allowing love to lead me forward.

That decision became the beginning of something new.

At first, it showed up in small ways.

One day, in a moment of tension when one of my doctors was literally yelling at me, I felt myself shutting down, bracing, and preparing to defend. But instead of reacting, I pulled a move straight from Joe Dispenza.

I changed my thoughts.

Specifically, I started thinking about Tommy.

Then I thought about my younger son.

I focused on the feeling of love I have for them—the purest, most expansive love I know—and I let that feeling fill my chest.

Then, quietly, without saying a word, I imagined sending that love outward and straight to my doctor’s heart.

Within a minute, something shifted.

Not dramatically. But enough. The energy in the room softened. My body relaxed. And all of a sudden, the doctor changed his tone and we began having a thoughtful and productive conversation.

It was so easy, it felt like magic.

That moment stayed with me so much that I wrote an article about it called, “No Rx Needed.”

Then I tried it again.

And again.

I started sending love in places where words felt insufficient. When someone was hurting and I didn’t know what to say. When I felt overwhelmed or disconnected.

I sent love to my younger son on the nights when his grief at the loss of his brother ran deeper than either of us could name.

I sent love to my mother when she was in the hospital and we didn’t have answers.

I sent love to my dog as she took her final breaths in my arms.

Whether or not the person (or animal!) on the receiving end could feel my love, I did. And it was changing me.

It softened my grief. It steadied me in moments that would have once unraveled me. It created space where there was tension.

The practice didn’t erase my pain. But it gave me a way to move through it.

But then one day life presented me with a harder test… sending love when I didn’t feel loving. Sending love to someone I felt compelled to hate.

A friend hurt me. Did something so unkind I didn’t think I could even be in her presence.

I turned to one of my favorite energy healers for advice.

She said, “Send your friend love.”

I was baffled. “What?”

“Just try. It’s the ultimate prayer.”

“Seriously? Send love to someone I’m pretty sure I hate?”

“Exactly.”

The idea was so simple and counterintuitive, I could hardly make sense of it. But curiosity got the best of me. For nearly two weeks straight, I blew love into this former friend’s heart once a day.

It wasn’t long before she reached out—as if she could feel me energetically. By that point, I was in a better place to talk it out, make peace and move on. Which we did.

Which got me thinking:

What if more of us practiced sending love to someone we’d rather hate?

The possible impact reminds me of a song Tommy once wrote in the fourth grade.

It was after a school lockdown, and he was trying to process why anyone would call his school and threaten to shoot children. His song was called “Everybody Needs a Little Love.” The chorus explained that if we all had a little love, there’d be no more tears; we’d stop being afraid; and everything would be okay.

At ten years old, Tommy understood something I was only beginning to learn.

That love isn’t just for the easy moments and special relationships.

It’s also for the complicated times. The painful moments. The people who don’t make sense to us.

Sending love energetically to those we’d rather hate is one of the most powerful ways to heal our hearts, and open theirs.

It’s also one of the most efficient.

So I kept at it.

Because I wanted to be someone who moved through the world with an open heart and not a closed one.

Doing so made me feel lighter. It deepened my relationships. And my conversations softened as they became more authentic at the same time.

Tommy has shown me, through his life and in his absence, that play, connection, and love are not extras in this life.

They are the point.

And love, in particular, is not something we save for special occasions or ideal circumstances.

It’s something we practice.

Everybody still needs a little love. You. Me. Even the people we find hardest to understand or reach.

So today, as I honor Tommy a little extra, I want to offer you a simple idea.

Think of someone you love.

Someone whose presence or memory brings you warmth, meaning, gratitude.

Close your eyes for a moment and really feel that love.

Let it fill your chest. Let it expand.

And then… send it. Send it to someone else you love and see how it lifts you up too.

Now for the real gift.

Think of someone you’re struggling with. Someone who hurt you. Someone in your life you just don’t like. Could be your boss. A parent. Or even a public figure you disagree with or just can’t stand.

And do the same thing. Fill your chest with the purest love you know and send it to them until you feel that love pierce their heart and make contact. Then let go.

Who knows where it will go after that?

Because love doesn’t end.

It transforms.

It moves.

It waits for us to embrace it and pass it on.

And when we do—even for just a few seconds a day—it has the power to change not only our own hearts, but the world around us too.

“Everybody needs a little love,” Tommy Mark sang.

Given all that’s going on in the world, now feels like the perfect time for more of us to try sending some.