A Parent’s Unthinkable Grief

Jenn Jass, 44, has faced every parent’s cruelest nightmare: the loss of her children. She was devastated when she gave birth to stillborn twin boys. Then, in 2006, Jenn was working as a manager at McDonald’s when she got the shocking call that her baby daughter had died of SIDS. “If I would’ve known that was the last day I was gonna have with her, I wouldn’t have went to work…But nobody ever knows,” she said. “It’s the worst thing a parent can go through…So I had my tubes cut, tied and burned ’cause I didn’t wanna bury any more babies.”

Stricken with grief, she parted with her boyfriend and decided to start an independent life for the first time. She impulsively drove to Des Moines, but without a plan for housing, the only place she could go was the homeless shelter. She had no idea the danger it posed for women. Her new phone was stolen while she slept, and she was constantly racked with fear for her safety. She was terrified of falling asleep, so she took a man’s suggestion and started taking meth to stay awake and alert.

Jenn felt her luck had begun to turn once she met DJ. He would come to the shelter for hot showers and with each visit their relationship grew. He moved her to his camp in the woods and helped her adapt to life in a tent. He showed her how to use the river to wash clothes, cook over a bonfire and protect herself. “I chose that life to be with him. It seemed like I had everything else in life, but I didn’t have love and I wanted that…”

Their time in the woods was balanced with love for each other and the hardships of survival. The winter months, in particular, were taxing. “If we didn’t have Joppa there to help us with the heat, the food, the clothing, the blankets, we would’ve never made it. We would’ve been literally sleeping outside by the fire pit which is not safe at all,” Jenn stressed.

The time out in the camp grew harder when Jenn discovered that DJ had cancer. “I was preparing myself from the day he told me he had cancer…to lose him that way—not the way he was taken out.” Jenn and DJ even discussed quitting drugs and seeking counseling. They decided they wanted to make the most of the time they had left by embracing hope and planning for the future. But one day, Jenn awoke from the tent to discover that DJ had been murdered and hung from a tree with a noose. “I had to cut him down outta that

tree. And that was the hardest thing ever because when I cut him down, he fell on top of me. I wasn’t strong enough to hold his body weight up…”

“And it’s one thing to lose the love of your life…I felt like I couldn’t breathe without him. What I want for myself more than anything in the world is just to be a part of the world again. I want to feel loved. I want to be happy. I want to be able to go out and work an everyday job like I used to.”

Watch the rest of Jenn’s story on YouTube and see how she’s doing now.