Turning pain into purpose
Mother of slain son forms support group for mothers whose children have died
After her son was fatally shot in 2023, many people asked LaSha Gipson, “How are you doing?”
Few of them actually wanted to sit down and hear about it, Gipson said.
Trying to be strong for her family, she kept her feelings bottled up.
She went to a therapist, but felt like she was being prodded to move through the stages of grief before she was ready.
As she was feeling her way through her own grief, she kept hearing other stories: other homicides, other instances where mothers she knew had lost a child.
Gipson decided to create a group where grieving mothers could talk with the people who knew exactly what they were going through.
The weekly group is open to any mother who has lost a child.
“Let’s become a sisterhood and share our stories and share our children and just get it out, because if you don’t, it can kill you,” she said. “This is something different to have to go through … I call it turning a mother’s pain into a purpose.”
Gipson’s son, Tommy Stargell Jr., died on March 8, 2023, in a shooting at the Sail’s Inn bar in Uniontown.
He was shot while trying to aid his friend Daryl Truley, when another man, Darroll Gregg, had drawn his gun. Truley, who shot and killed Gregg, was found to have acted in justifiable self-defense. Authorities were not able to determine who fired the shot that killed Stargell.
The vision of her son laying on the floor of the bar has stayed fresh in her mind, Gipson said.
What she remembers the most about him are the good times — the laughter, the jokes.
“He had the most amazing smile,” she said.
Talking to other mothers has been better for Gipson than therapy, she said.
She gets to be around other people who know grieving isn’t linear. One mother in the group whose child died 14 years ago said “it still feels like the same day,” Gipson said.
“We’re all going through the same thing,” she said. “I think that we can all learn from each other. I’ll never think that we’ll be healed, but we’re learning to cope.”
Every Monday, the mothers meet up to talk about their children and tell stories. They’ll read from their journals to share the feelings that welled up in them over the past week.
For the times in between meetings, they also have an active Facebook chat.
“We cry, we laugh, we comfort each other,” Gipson said. “That’s pretty much what we do.”
The group began meeting in January. Eight women have joined the group so far, and Gipson is hoping to add more.
Her advice to mothers who have recently lost a child is to take their time. They should cry as much as they can. If they need to take a day where they stay in bed, they should take that day to heal.
After her son’s death, Gipson tried to hold back her feelings from her family, because “I didn’t want them to look at me like, ‘Is she losing it?'”
It wasn’t until she began to think about the pain the rest of her family must be feeling that she began to open up.
“That was my problem for the first year,” she said. “I just kept it all bottled up and choked up inside… take as much time as you need. Cry, scream, say their names. Say their names daily.”
As much as she wants to share sometimes when she gets home, she doesn’t. By agreement, the discussions in the group stay within the group.
But turning the other mothers’ stories over in her head at night, the stories resonate because she can remember days when she felt the same way — or sometimes still does.
“It’s healing for me, because I can share my story with them,” she said. “I can share my story and I can share how I feel. And they know.”
It’s something she knows her son would love.
“Sometimes — it may sound crazy — I can hear him: ‘Keep pushing. Keep doing what you’re doing,'” she said.
The group meets from 5 to 7 p.m. every Monday at the Curry-Dyson Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3514, 323 E. Main St., Uniontown. For more information, contact Gipson at (724) 320-7386.