Jerri Niebaum Clark is a mental health advocate, author, and mother who lost her beloved son, Calvin, to a severe mental illness (SMI). His life—and death—propelled her commitment to advocacy and support for other families attempting to navigate the poorly organized system.
Drawing from lived experience and training from Pauline Boss, PhD, Jerri teaches others how to navigate the emotional terrain of an "ambiguous loss," a concept developed by Dr. Boss. When someone is forever changed by a psychiatric illness and/or is missing, incarcerated, or deceased for reasons that will forever lack clarity (like suicide), the resulting grief is complex and often goes unrecognized. For families walking this path, Jerri's new book, Gone Before Gone: When Mental Illness Steals Someone You Love, offers direction and practical tools.
Gone Before Gone is now available in Kindle format, with additional e-book formats and hard cover editions coming soon. If reading on a digital platform, be sure to page through the content between the cover and the first chapter, where there is a letter from Jerri's son, Calvin, a poem, and an inspiring foreword by acclaimed author Pete Earley.
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.
Please join our grassroots movement by 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 SMI conditions that include psychosis.
Together we CAN change the system.
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Please begin by caring for yourself.
Summary of Gone Before Gone: What middle-class mom expects her honor-student son to one day block their guest bathroom to banish “demons?” Who foresees a beloved child’s eyes going piercingly vacant behind jail Plexiglas? How could a mom ever sleep knowing her offspring was shivering in a city park, his life wrecked by a tattered mind?
Jerri Clark grieved losing her son, Calvin, long before his life ended in a leap from a hotel roof when he was 23. Clark describes her son’s “death by degrees” during a young adulthood interrupted by a psychotic break at age 19. Watching him founder within a system poorly built to rescue him, she felt forced to abandon almost everything she previously believed made her a good mom. This book is her survival toolkit, a lifeline for families experiencing unresolvable losses caused by severe mental illness (SMI).
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.
Gone Before Gone went live on Amazon Kindle February 21, 2026. Other formats, including hardback, are coming soon!
For information about my online ambiguous loss course, contact me at work: jclark@tac.org.
To seek support navigating the treatment system, click on Helpline at TAC.org.
MOMI cannot offer crisis support. Call 911 or 988 for help.
MOMI cannot offer crisis support. Call 911 or 988 for help.
MOMI cannot offer crisis support. Call 911 or 988 for help.
MOMI cannot offer crisis support. Call 911 or 988 for help.
MOMI cannot offer crisis support. Call 911 or 988 for help.
MOMI cannot offer crisis support. Call 911 or 988 for help.
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