Every summer, Julie Bragg teaches kids how to swim at her pool, but almost 19 years ago, she was the one struggling to keep her head above water.
A sheriff's deputy and chaplain came to her Macon home on July 3, 1999, with news that her two sons, Brax and Tate, died in a car accident on a Texas highway.
In the weeks that followed, her emotions came in waves.
At times, she could put on a smile, but there were many times she felt like she was drowning in a pool of sorrow.
"You just miss them so bad that you just do a good cry," she said.
Nearly six weeks after her boys died, a woman approached Julie's daughter saying she had been seeing visions of Brax and Tate and that the boys' spirits were telling her to find their mother.
Julie spoke with the woman on the phone and eventually agreed to meet with her in person.
"I was skeptical at first," said Julie, "until she said certain things that no one in our lives knew except us."
The medium never asked for money from Julie, but they continued to meet for almost two years.
Julie says each time she would get more confirmation that her boys and other family members who had passed away were still with her.
"You dream about somebody just telling you where they are," she said.
Julie says her talks with the medium helped her find peace, but also helped her explain some of the bizarre things that had been happening since the boys died.
Julie says the day the boys died, a white vase with two coral flowers appeared on her piano.
She says only a few close family members knew about the boys' deaths at the time and none of them knew where the vase came from.
She would later learn and write about how the vase came to be at her home, but it's a story even Julie finds difficult to explain and understand at times.
She says the medium couldn't always give answers to her questions, but many times she would instead give clues from the boys about things to come.
Julie says sometimes it took weeks or even years to understand what they meant, but those clues always turned out to be true.
For example, she says, her family had been frantically searching for a leather jacket that belonged to Brax.
"She said that a big K would bring it," said Julie.
This puzzled Julie for quite some time, but the jacket later turned up after several unusual circumstances -- it was brought to her from Athens by a friend named Kate.
Julie says there were countless experiences like this, which she eventually began referring to as gifts from her sons.
She says the medium turned out to be a crucial tool in her path to finding peace.
"Bragg Jam was another incredible tool," she said. "There's a legacy for our sons. They won't be forgotten."
Julie became obsessed with sharing all that she learned and experienced after the boys died, so every winter she would sit down and write.
It took her almost 15 years to put all those memories in writing.
"People probably wondered what I was writing all that time,” she said.
She says it wasn't just the writing that took so much time, though, but reading and reliving that first chapter.
"It was painful," she said. "Every time I went back and started all over."
Julie began her writing with the goal of preserving memories for her family.
When Mercer later asked to publish it, she knew her story, much like the medium and Bragg Jam were for her, could be what someone else needs to help them heal.
"That was really the purpose for me," she said. "Not to preach it, but to share the hope we learned. It really enriched our faith."
Julie's book titled "The Brothers of Bragg Jam: A Mother's Memoir" will be released on March 10, what would have been Brax's 47th birthday.
Julie says there will be a launch party held at Society Garden on Ingleside Avenue in Macon.
She will be there to sign copies of the book and there are bands scheduled to play all afternoon.
Julie also sat down to share more of her story with 13WMAZ's Del Ward.
You can watch it when Personal Profile airs in March.