

Jerri Niebaum Clark is a mental health advocate, author, and mother who lost her beloved son Calvin three ways: to a psychotic illness, to the incoherent system, and to suicide. His life—and death—propelled her to advocate for change while supporting other families.
Gone Before Gone: When Mental Illness Steals Someone You Love provides guidance for navigating the emotional terrain of "ambiguous loss," a concept developed by Pauline Boss, Phd. When someone is forever changed by a psychiatric illness and/or is missing, incarcerated, or gone for reasons that lack clarity (like suicide), the resulting grief is complex. Jerri Clark's book offers direction and practical tools. You’ll feel as though a kind mom is holding your hand and helping you breathe as you bravely take one step at a time toward healing yourself.
Author Mindy Greiling, a Minnesota advocate and former legislator, said this: "In Gone Before Gone, Jerri Clark shares her heart-breaking story, salted with exercises to help readers learn to live, as she did, with both grief and eventually peace or even joy. As the mom of a son with severe mental illness, I’ve often wondered how my life would have turned out if our son had died from one of his many suicide attempts. Jerri’s book helps me see how living with the ambiguous loss of him due to the ravages of his illness is my important grief work even though he is still here."
Jerri shared her story on PBS NewsHour in January 2019, two months before Calvin's death. Steve Goldbloom, producer of "Brief But Spectacular," offers this review of Gone Before Gone: " Jerri Clark writes with a clarity that only lived experience can produce. She tells the story of loving a son through psychosis, and through systems ill-equipped to help him. Her story stands in for countless parents, siblings, and families who have endured the gut-wrenching intersection of mental illness and institutions that too often respond with confusion or punishment instead of care. But this book is more than a retelling of grief. It is a steady, practical guide for surviving it."
Early pages in Gone Before Gone incorporate a letter from Calvin, a poem, and an inspiring Foreword by acclaimed author Pete Earley. Be sure to locate those elements in your e-book if the platform automatically skips to Chapter 1!
Jerri works as Resource and Advocacy Manager at the non-profit Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC). The postings on this site are her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of TAC.
Gone Before Gone encourages you to ask yourself, "What is the thing I'm not doing because grief has gotten in the way?" For Jerri, the thing she wasn't doing was writing a book about her son and her experience of losing her sense of self as his mom. The first words she wrote (on the sixth anniversary of Calvin's death) took her back to moment when she first recognized that her son was experiencing psychosis. From the book:
"The night I first lost Calvin began with confusion and ended in terror, as it dawned on me that I was being plunged toward a despair that most parents could not imagine surviving. Trying to talk to him was like trying to get ahold of something slippery and hot. His sentences were intensely emotional and full of weighty words. I knew there had to be sense within those sentences because he was so dang smart. I clung to the words as they tumbled out of him, trying to connect them one to another so I might understand. He was very upset, and my mother’s heart ached for him...."
Gone Before Gone went live on Amazon February 21, 2026.
For information about Jerri's online ambiguous loss course, contact her at work: jclark@tac.org.
To seek support navigating the treatment system, click on Helpline at TAC.org.
MOMI sends occasional emails with new blogs and updates about Jerri Clark's self-help book and advocacy projects.
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