Four years ago, I got the phone call that every parent dreads.

Without warning, my healthy 25-year-old son Raphaël – a wildlife biologist and ecological activist – had collapsed and died. The trauma catapulted me into a place of almost hallucinatory madness: a territory so tormenting, debilitating, and bleak that I couldn’t imagine how I’d mentally survive it, let alone find joy in the life that remained.

Catastrophes are radicalizing and transformative. You no longer see your life in the same w...