Jerri Clark: Ambiguous Loss and When Mental Illness Steals Someone You Love

Tony Mantor: Why Not Me ?

Tony Mantor

Positivity, Autism Awareness, Autism, Health & Fitness, Mental Health, Special Needs, Autism Acceptance, Entertainment, Alternative Health, Celebrities, Never Give Up

5.0 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2026

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Send us Fan Mail We sit with author Jerri Clark as he explains how severe mental illness can create a “gone but not gone” grief that families carry in silence. We talk about ambiguous loss, why closure often never comes, and how to keep living with love and meaning even when the outcome is out of our control. • Jerri’s story of losing his son through psychosis, system failures, and suicide • What ambiguous loss means and why the ambiguity is unfixable • The guilt fami...

Transcript

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0:00.0	What if everything you thought you knew about autism and mental health wasn't the full story?
0:04.8	Today's conversation might change the way you see it. This is why not me, embracing autism and mental
0:11.1	health worldwide. Real conversations about autism, mental health, and the stories that shape our
0:16.9	lives. I'm Tony Mantor. This is where understanding begins. If this kind of conversation
0:22.2	matters to you, follow the show so you don't miss what comes next. Joining me today is Jerry Clark,
0:28.5	author of Gone Before Gone, When Mental Illness Steels Someone You Love. Thanks for joining us today.
0:34.4	Yeah, thank you for having me. Oh, it's my pleasure. I understand you have written a book.
0:40.0	Can you give us a little information on it? I have just authored a book called Gone Before Gone,
0:47.7	when mental illness steals someone you love. And this book is an homage to my son Calvin, who died when he was 23 years old
0:58.3	after a four years struggle through the mental illness treatment system that was never built
1:05.4	to rescue him. So I really lost my son three ways. I lost him when he was 19 to his first psychotic break and an illness that took him from us fast and wickedly furious.
1:21.6	It was from the get-go a wicked hard illness. So I lost him first to the illness. And then I lost him to the system
1:29.9	that was not structured in a way that was going to rescue him from this really challenging illness.
1:37.2	And then I lost him to suicide when he was 23 after that four-year struggle. So the title of my book, Gone Before Gone,
1:47.3	exposes those layers of loss that I lost him and then I lost him and then I lost him. He was
1:55.1	gone before he was gone. I talk to families all the time who are in that middle space where their loved ones with severe
2:03.9	mental illness are still alive, but they are forever changed by their psychiatric conditions.
2:11.5	Right. Those families are in a space of grieving the loss of the loved one that they knew
2:17.4	and the person that they believed
2:19.7	would be in their family forever in a certain way who is no longer that person. So they are grieving
2:26.7	losses where someone is gone but not gone and might come back as the person they once were
2:33.5	and they might not. So that liminal space of
	...

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