MOMI offers education, advocacy, and compassionate community. We empower caregivers to understand ambiguous loss, care for themselves, and engage in meaningful systems-change to improve outcomes for loved ones with severe mental illness (SMI).
Jerri Clark is a national mental health advocate, author, and mother who lost her beloved son, Calvin, to a treatable condition after years of ineffective care and systemic failures in the mental health system. His life—and death—propelled her commitment to support families facing similar challenges and to fight for meaningful reform in the U.S. mental health system.
Drawing from her lived experience with ambiguous loss, Jerri now teaches others how to navigate the emotional terrain of loving someone with severe mental illness. Her upcoming book, Gone Before Gone, offers guidance, tools, and hope for families walking this same path.
Jerri serves as Resource and Advocacy Manager at Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC). She has been featured in the Seattle Times, on PBS NewsHour, on the popular podcast Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches, and on networks in the Pacific Northwest and nationally.
Together we CAN change the system.
Please join me in following key issues, outreaching to lawmakers and policy leaders, and spreading accurate information about what needs to change to improve the lives of people with severe mental illness (SMI) and those who love them. My opinion article in the Seattle Times outlines how change will require national willpower, attention to human rights, and linking dollars to whole-person outcomes:
My motherhood was shattered long before my son's suicide. His death was a final gut-punch after four years of navigating the challenges of poor mental health services, ineffective hospitalizations, and the struggles of homelessness often linked to severe mental illness. Watching his "living death" was every bit as hard as losing him to his final desperate act. He was "gone," but also not gone. This experience reflects what is known as "ambiguous loss," and learning to cope with this unique form of grief was my survivalist act of self-care as a mother whose entire world had been rearranged.
Stay in touch for news of my upcoming book, Gone before Gone, to be released in spring 2026.
For information about my ambiguous loss seminars and webinars, contact me at work: jclark@tac.org.
To seek support navigating the treatment system, click on Helpline at TAC.org.
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MOMI will send occasional emails with new blog posts and information about advocacy actions related to mental health and support for those affected by mental illness, including resources for mothers who may feel mentally unstable or are dealing with severe mental illness. Remember, your mom cares about these issues.
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