What We Leave Unfinished. . .
I've had this candle lit the last week of my best friend’s life, holding space for her as she was in the process of dying.
She died before the candle was finished.
The day she died I felt more than a little lost on what to do with myself, when I was not crying my eyes out. I kept looking at this candle and the last bit of unburned wick and wax.
When I last spent time with her, my friend and I talked a lot about life and death and what it means to live fully. She lived in such a way that she died without regrets, having done and said all that she felt was most important to her.
I've thought of that frequently since her passing.
It's impossible to live a life and to die without something(s) left undone, not unlike this candle. No matter how hard any of us try, there's always something left unfinished.
A book half read.
A movie unwatched.
A trip not taken.
A home unpurchased.
A pet left without their human.
A holiday decorations still left hanging.
Something left unsaid.
Paperwork half completed.
A letter unwritten.
Our to-do lists and plans can never be fully completed. We'll never finish it all.
However, we can live a life that ends with no regrets. One in which all the important tasks and plans and activities are fulfilled and honored. One in which we prioritize that which matters most and let go of the little things that can never be fully completed.
It's impossible to die without leaving something unfinished, but it is possible to leave with a life fully lived.
My I leave the world one day with a life as fully lived as my dear friend.
Please Say the Words -Babies Die.
Dead babies. Babies die.
When babies die, we have all sorts of words and phrases to avoid saying the words "baby died" or "dead baby."
Miscarriage.
Stillbirth.
Born still.
Loss.
Pregnancy loss.
The baby passed.
The baby was incompatible with life.
They lost their baby.
Unsuccessful pregnancy.
The baby didn't live.
Infant loss.
The baby didn't make it.
So many words to avoid the painful and uncomfortable reality that sometimes, and far more frequently than we are told, babies die.
It's as if, as a society, we believe that by never saying those two words together, "death + baby," then somehow babies magically won't die.
The truth is, however, that babies do die. By refusing to acknowledge and talk about this fact, thousands of grieving parents are handed even more pain to bear in silence and, I believe, the work that could be happening to prevent more babies from dying isn't happening - because no one wants to look at it.
As a mother to two dead babies, I'm asking you - please, don't be afraid to say these words. Please, don't be afraid to look at, research, and study the death of babies. Please, look at this and try to find a way to prevent other families from having to live my reality.
No one should have to live through the death of their baby. We shouldn't have to ever say "the baby died."
But we need to.
The Life that Disappears When a Baby Dies
I've been thinking lately about the fact that my first baby, Grace, should be 17 now. 17 years of missing her. When my oldest niece graduated high school in May 2019, I kept thinking, Grace would be doing that in just 2 years. 2 more years and my forever baby would have transitioned from childhood into adulthood.
Her entire childhood is gone.
It's more than missing her or feeling as if I missed out on her childhood.
Her childhood is gone. SHE is missing from it.
All the milestones and things she would have done. The baby and toddler and child and teenager she would have been. All the memories and ordinary moments and special occasions. All that she would have been never bloomed into existence.
All the friends she would have had, the people she would have dated, the siblings she might have had, the community that would have been hers - she is missing from all of their lives and they will never know. Something beautiful and bright is missing from so many lives and so very few of them even know what they might have had.
My forever baby should be stretching toward adulthood now, but that life is gone.
That, my friends, is enormity of losing a baby or child at any stage of their life. A life and love that so many people don't even know is missing from their life.
Grief is Not Equal to “Being Negative”
Grief is NOT equal to "being negative."
Let me say it again for those spiritual positivity folks in the back, grief is not the same as being negative.
I have spent a lot of time in spiritual circles and I love many aspects of them. I could be considered very woo-woo by many measures. And I've heard this crap about grief being negative or unspiritual or whatever far too often from spiritual teachers and leaders.
But this idea that grieving the loss of someone we deeply love is somehow negative or "low vibration" or makes someone "less spiritual" is utterly false. Not only that, it's just plain harmful to those learning to live without their child/partner/parent/sibling/loved one.
Grief is a natural and normal response to love. It is an expression of love. It is wild and haunting and beautiful and, yes, also uncomfortable and unnerving and scary at times to be with.
Experiencing and expressing grief doesn't mean we are less. Grief is an overflow of love with no where to land. Honoring our grief process in a society that refuses to look at our pain and our love takes immense courage and bravery.
Spirituality isn't meant to be about judgment. It's meant to be about love.
Therefore, there is no greater spiritual act than to honor one's grief, an expression of pure and unconditional love that not even the death of a physical body can stop.
If you identify as a spiritual person yet shame or judge others for their grief process, it may be time to re-evaluate your definition of spirituality and love.
Depth of Love Has No Basis In Time
There is this idea that when a baby dies during pregnancy or infancy, it somehow hurts less. So many families I know who have lost a baby struggle with this thoughtless and inaccurate assumption - and the lack of support that comes with it.
But depth of love has no basis in time.
If you find yourself thinking there is a connection between time and love, ask yourself this:
At what stage of development would you have been willing to have your child die?
Loss is highly contextual and differs from one person to the next - there is no wrong way to grieve and no limits about how much love in present regardless of the age that a baby or child dies. ALL loss deserves validation and acknowledgement.
Compassion often comes from taking a second to take yourself out of your own discomfort and into another's situation for a moment. Life is often hard and messy and brutally painful, let's not make it harder on each other with baseless assumptions or judgements on what is acceptable to grieve.
If someone is hurting, they deserve compassion and support - even if you don't understand.
The Cruelty of False Hope After Your Baby Dies
When your baby dies, people love to reassure you that "of course, you'll have another baby (that lives)" or "now you know you can get pregnant. Next time will work" or "just keep the faith, rainbows always come after the storm" or "never give up! XYZ person had X number of miscarriages and they just had a healthy baby!"
Hope.
Everyone wants to give you hope and optimism.
The reality is, however, that they can't guarantee that you will ever have a living baby to hold and nurture. And even if they could, that doesn't take away the profound loss and grief for *this* baby who died.
No one is guaranteed a living baby. To push that kind of certain hope on grieving parents is not only false hope, it's harmful.
Hope is a beautiful and powerful thing, but false hope in the midst of devastating loss and uncertainty is cruel and hurtful.
Instead of offering false hope, acknowledge the uncertainty and pain of our loss. Instead, offer the only certainty you can control after the loss of our baby - your willingness to met us where we are and be with us as we navigate the jungle of grief. If you want us to have something that is certain and guaranteed, give us YOU.
That is a hope we can hold onto.
Remember Them
Someone recently asked me if there was any one thing, one most important thing, I would ask of people around the death and grief of my daughters’ deaths.
I was surprised at how easily my answer came – there are so many things I could say, but this quickly arose as the most important:
Please remember them.
Remember their names.
Remember that they lived.
Remember that I am their mother.
Remember that they were, and are, loved. Always.
Remember them.
For me, aside from the absence of them, my greatest pain is the fear that they will be forgotten. Lost in the passing of time and space. That because there is so little physical proof of their life here, even the memory of them will disappear for everyone but me.
So, please, remember them.
Not just when the grief is or was fresh and new. Remember them after years and decades have past and they are still gone.
Remember that they lived.
Remember that I carried them. I will always carry them with me.
Remember that I am their mother – then, now, always. Even when I’m 90 and preparing to leave this earth, they will still be mine and I will be theirs.
Remember that they were and are and will forever be loved.
Remember them.
For always.
Receiving Support After the Death of Your Baby
I keep trying to write about receiving support after the death of our precious babies – how to ask for it, how to accept it, and the difficulties of both.
Instead, I find myself crying and the words get jumbled up in my head.
If I had any Achilles Heel in my journey through grief over the past 14 years, receiving support would be it.
Allowing ourselves to receive support from people who love us – and even strangers – is the very thing that pulls us through the darkest and most painful times of our life. It is a gift that makes life bearable through the unbearable. Unfortunately, it’s also often one the most difficult things to give ourselves.
Not having support makes grief infinitely more difficult. I should know, I denied myself any kind of support for years after the deaths of my fiancé and daughter.
After my fiancé died, I never really spoke of him to anyone. I never told anyone about my pregnancy because I couldn’t tell my fiancé and he was the one I desperately wanted to tell. As a result, when our daughter died, no one knew that either. I build a wall around myself that kept everyone out. It damaged relationships, prevented new ones from forming, and kept me lost and broken for far too long.
Now, most people don’t deny themselves support quite as dramatically as I did. But too many of us do in many subtle and socially accepted ways. We do it:
When asked how we are, we say “I’m fine.”
When desperately in need of a hug, someone to talk with, someone to lean on, we don’t ask for fear of being a burden or being concerned others are “tired of hearing about it.”
When needing time away to grieve and mourn around the holidays, we force ourselves to put on a brave face and attend family gatherings and holiday celebrations.
When friends or family say or do things that hurt us, we keep silent and hold the pain inside in efforts to “keep the peace” and “not rock the boat.”
We bend to societal rules of what is acceptable and appropriate for grieving and displaying emotion.
We deny ourselves the love and support we need and deserve.
We hurt ourselves with our inability or unwillingness to ask for or receive the support that would help make this most unendurable loss a little easier to endure.
Asking for support isn’t always easy. Allowing ourselves to receive it isn’t something we’re often taught how to do – and many of us don’t have great examples of how to do it.
Asking for and receiving support takes courage, vulnerability, trust, and a belief that we deserve to be supported. It takes being willing to risk being told no or not getting the support we want. It often takes persistence and asking more than once, clarifying what we need, and asking ourselves what it is that we truly want and need from others.
Sometimes people we want to support us aren’t able to give us the support that we want or need from them – for a multitude of reasons. At times the people we expect to always be there for us aren’t there. Asking for support means that they could say no or not respond in a way that we would like.
These things hurt.
Yet, sometimes, those who love us desperately want to help but don’t know how. If we would only tell them, they would be there for us in a heartbeat and hold steady beside us through the earth-shattering waves of grief.
At times the people that show up to support us when we allow them to are the people we would least expect. Beautiful beings who had formerly been on the periphery of our lives show up and give us a lifeline to hold onto when we need it most.
Sometimes when we ask for support, we get exactly what we need – or more. We might even get what we didn’t know we needed.
These are the things that enable us to pick up the broken, shattered pieces of the life we expected and slowly rebuild a life that is forever altered, yet beautiful and full of love.
It took me six years to even begin to allow myself to be supported around the loss of my fiancé and daughter. In the nearly 8 years since, I have fought hard to learn to give myself the gift of being supported.
I’ve had to learn to ask myself what it was I wanted and needed and to believe that I am worth being taken care of. Then I had to find the courage to ask others for that. I’ve had to learn to walk away from those who tried to tell me how to do this thing called grieving “correctly” so that I could do it the way that was right for me. I’ve had to learn to accept the “no” from people who couldn’t give me what I asked for. I had to be brave enough to keep asking people until I found someone who could stand with me in the way I needed.
I’ve had to learn to be vulnerable – and discover that true strength and connection come from those vulnerable moments. I’ve had to learn who had earned the right to be trusted with my vulnerability.
I’ve had to learn to speak up when my needs weren’t being met and to be very clear with people about what I needed from them. I had to be willing to accept it and walk away if they couldn’t or wouldn’t give me that. When people told me or showed me that they couldn’t support me in a way that worked for me, I had to learn to let that be ok and seek other who could.
I had to learn to be honest with myself and others. I had to learn to be honest about how I was, who I am, and what I was feeling – and trust other people to be able to take care of their own reaction or response to that. I had to learn to stop burying my needs out of a misguided need to try to protect others from possibly discomfort or awkwardness.
I had to accept that there are people who will never understand my grief or pain and who would never be able to walk this journey with me. And I had to trust that there are so many others who would stand beside me, step-by-step, and never give up on me.
In order to find those who could walk with me, I had to keep showing up, exactly as I was – real, raw, honest, and willing to accept their support.
Because the thing that makes this journey of grief and loss bearable and endurable is connection – connection with ourselves and with others.
I continue to have to learn these things on deeper levels every day. My journey is far from over – I will walk this journey of life after loss until the day I lay down this earthsuit of bones and blood and skin.
While I probably would have survived and struggled my way through life regardless, without learning how to let people love and support me I know I wouldn’t be living as I am now – fully engaged and connected. I would exist but I wouldn’t truly be living.
Allowing myself to be supported and loved pulled me from the darkness back into the light. It is what has made this lifelong journey of grief and longing for those I have lost not just endurable, but also full of joy and beauty and sweetness.
We all deserve to give ourselves the gift of receiving support.
We all deserve to have this life after loss be not simply endurable, but also full of kindness, love, connection, and beauty.
I have forgotten so much about my babies who died
There are so many things about my daughters’ lives, my sweet babies who both died before birth, that I simply don’t remember.
It pains me to admit that.
So many loss moms talk about due dates and “angelversaries” and the day they found out they were pregnant and dates of ultrasounds and so many other moments of life and pregnancy and birth. When I hear them talk sometimes, I feel guilty. A little ashamed because I don’t remember all of those dates.
I remember a few. My oldest daughter’s due date – the day I consider her would-have-been birthday. The day I discovered I was pregnant with her. My younger daughter’s due date – mostly because it was also my dad’s birthday. I know the week in which my younger daughter died.
But honestly? That’s pretty much it.
It pains me, that small handful of dates on the calendar. I feel guilty because there aren’t more, like somehow I loved them less because I don’t remember every precious moment.
So much was swept away in the avalanche of grief and the passage of time.
I try to make myself think logically and to reason with myself for why I don’t remember all the specific dates of events during my pregnancies. I remind myself that during pretty much all of my first pregnancy I was dumbfounded and dazed with grief for the death of my fiancé, my daughter’s father, and was barely making it through. I know how grief can erase memory and make everything fuzzy and out of focus. When my second daughter died, I had severe complications and nearly died myself. I was in the hospital for days. Medication and painkillers (not to mention blood loss) have a way of blurring memories.
Logic, however, doesn’t erase the guilt. It doesn’t take away the grief for lost memories and moments – precious moments of which I would have had so few to begin with given their too brief lives.
I was only gifted a few brief months and weeks and days with each of my precious babies. And I can’t remember half of that time with them. Instead, the waves of grief stole away those memories and left me with so few to hold onto.
I grieve for those lost memories.
And I comfort myself with the knowledge that I might not be able to give dates and specifics for events, nothing and no one has ever been able to erase the memories of how I felt while I was pregnant.
The joy of feeling them grow inside of me. The way they kicked and moved under my hands. Being astounded by the intensity of the love I felt with the realization that I was a mother, their mother. The hope they brought to me, the light they brought to the darkness.
My children brought incredible love, brilliant hope, sweet joy, and so much beauty.
So while I grieve for the lost memories and missing moments, if all I get are those treasured moments of love and hope and joy and beauty?
Well, that is enough.
Because though our time was so very brief, I am theirs and they are mine.
Grief can’t erase that.
In Our Darkest Times, We Never Know What Will Save Us
I always thought that if I worked hard enough and had a solid plan in life, everything would work out. Life was something to be managed and arranged. I believe that if I wanted something badly enough, I could make it happen.
Life didn’t work out that way.
I couldn’t save my fiancé and my daughter.
I couldn’t manage life or plan enough or work hard enough to prevent their deaths.
Life didn’t go as planned.
And I sure as hell couldn’t manage the grief.
Life happened and grief took over.
Nothing has ever made me feel so out of control and lost as grief. I couldn’t save them and I wasn’t sure I wanted to save myself.
I did all the traditional things to deal with the pain, the loss, the desolating grief – counseling, reading books on grief, burying myself in work, writing.
I believe those things helped. But they weren’t what saved me.
Harry Potter saved me.
It’s almost embarrassing to admit, especially as a counselor who does believe in the value of grief counseling.
It is, however, the truth.
Whenever I wanted to give up, to give in to the horrible longing to be with my family, I would escape into the world of Harry Potter.
In that world, I could breathe. In that world, even if only for brief moments, I could forget the pain.
When I thought about joining my family, I could take that pain and lose myself in Harry Potter.
I read those books and watched those movies countless times in the early years of grief. I lost myself over and over again. They were my lifeline.
Until, slowly, I started to find myself again.
In the stories, the characters, that mythical world where love and devotion lived beyond death, I found my belief in the beauty of living again.
In the most unlikely of places. In a place no book or counselor or logical thought would have ever suggested.
Life rarely goes as planned. Yet I still believe in the beauty of it, even in the darkest of times.
Harry Potter taught me that.
We never know what will save us.
My Phantom Child
I don’t know what she looks like, but I see her everywhere.
I see her darting in and out among the kids off to school. I see her in the nighttime, tucked away in bed.
I see her beside me in the car – some days quiet, too annoyed to talk with Mom. Other days chattering away about all the teenage girl things.
I see her shoes tangled up with mine, her wet towel on the bathroom floor, her favorite cereal by the fridge, the piles of clothes in her room.
Everywhere I look, she is there.
My baby.
My girl.
My should be teenager.
My phantom child that no one can see but me.
She walks with me, every day, this child of mine who never took a breath in this life with me.
She lives instead in phantom time – the space where life and death combine in flashes and glimpses telling a story of what could have been.
I and only I see her life unfold in the mists of phantom time.
She is bright. She is beautiful. She is alive.
Living. Breathing. Laughing. Crying. Existing. In the phantom time.
I am the mother you do not see but I walk with my child every day.
My phantom child.
As real to me as the children you hold. As loved as anyone could ever be.
She is mine and I am hers, walking together until I join her again, in the phantom time.
My Babies Died - and Today I Am Okay
I’ve been pretty quiet lately.
I keep sitting down to write and coming up blank on what to write about – and to be honest, feeling a little guilty.
Why guilty?
Because, overall, things are going well. I feel pretty good most days. Happy. Purposeful. Challenged by new experiences. Grateful for my life.
I spend a fair amount of time with mothers in their first few years of grief and loss. When life and grief feel just plain hard and all-consuming and painful.
I remember those days – when just breathing felt like it took superhuman effort.
And sometimes I feel guilty because I’m not there anymore. I worry that I’ll start to lose the ability to connect with those people I most want to support in those dark hours of grief.
I feel guilty because I’m okay. In all reality I’m thriving.
Is life perfect? No.
Do I still deal with grief and aching could-have-beens on a frequent basis? Absolutely.
Do I still miss my children with every thump of my heartbeat? Unequivocally yes.
But the grief and the longing and the could-have-beens don’t flatten me the way they once did.
They slap into me, wash over me, flood through me and I fight to catch my breath. I feel them – feel all the messiness and pain and pummeling grief – and then my breath floods back. Some sadness might linger, tears might flow for a while, but I remain standing.
These arrows of grief have become normal, expected in their unexpectedness. Instead of throwing life into chaos, these waves of grief are simply part of my life now. They are as familiar and normal as brushing my teeth in the morning.
If in those early years, or even just a couple of years ago, you’d told me that I would be in this space where life is sweet with a side of bitter rather than bitter with occasional glimpses of sweetness, I would never have believed you. The grief was too big, too all-consuming. I would have said, “Life will never be okay again, not really.”
Yet here I am. Where life is generally good and I am happy. Ups and downs come and go and I remain standing and walking and laughing and living.
So, I’m struggling to write. Struggling to find ways to connect even though I’m in such a different place now.
Will I always be in this space of life being pretty good and things are okay? Maybe not. Chances are there will be more times in life when this grief will be messier and bigger and more overwhelming again.
But right now I’m okay.
I’m realizing it’s okay to be okay. It doesn’t mean I love my children any less. It doesn’t mean I don’t remember and have empathy for those who are still in the thick of the painful and all-consuming grief.
Maybe those in that painful and all-consuming grief won’t believe it’s possible that someday they too might reach this place of “life is ok-ness” or even “life is good and beautiful again-ness.”
That’s okay.
Because it might also be that hearing that someone else has made it to okay, to where life is good and beautiful again will give some of those in that dark pit of grief a rare and precious thing – hope.
Hope that grief and pain and bitterness don’t have to be all there is forever. Hope that there can be beauty and joy and sweetness even after such a life-altering and devastating loss as that of our beloved children.
Today I am okay. Today I am thriving.
I am a mother without her children to hold.
And I am okay again. At least for today.
Today I’ll let that be enough.
What 500 Miles in My Hiking Shoes Taught Me
The other day, after resorting to duct tape to prevent the plastic heel of my hiking shoes (which had worn through the cloth covering) from scraping up my heels, I realized that, perhaps, it was time for new shoes.
This realization brought on both a tinge of sadness and an odd burst of excitement. Rough calculations estimate that I’ve put in about 500 miles in these shoes exploring the trails of Western North Carolina (and a few of the trails of Vermont and Massachusetts) in the last 6 months.
That’s a lot of miles. Especially when you consider that when I first started, I was only doing about 20-30 minutes at a time. These shoes have carried me a long way – both literally and metaphorically.
Logging all these miles has taught me a few things about life, business, and myself.
#1: Remember to fucking breathe
Seriously. This cannot be overrated. Whether it’s puffing my way up a mountain trail or dealing with the anxiety and uncertainty of running a business – breathing is important.
Not breathing, I feel worn out, exhausted, and weak really fast. Breathing, I charge up the mountain with determination and power (physically and mentally) and experience more creativity, ideas, and solutions to challenges.
The brain and body function a whole lot better with oxygen. Seriously.
#2: Embrace the unexpected
No one, absolutely no one, was more surprised than me when I suddenly took up running this fall. I had always been the person who said, rather proudly, “I don’t run.”
Then, randomly, one day while out hiking I thought, “I wonder…” and broke into a light jog. (It took me weeks to stop mentally asking myself “what the hell are you doing“!!)
I started doing intervals of running and walking on a regular basis and have, quite unexpectedly, found myself falling in love with running. I still can’t go very far or very fast, but I go! (and, yes, though it’s apparently a big no-no, I still run in my hiking shoes. I’ll get around to getting running shoes eventually…)
Nowadays, whenever I come across something in life or business that I find myself saying “I can’t or I don’t,” there’s always a little voice in my head that goes “well, you thought that about running too, didn’t you?”
Hiking turned running has taught me to questions my assumptions about what I can or can’t do. And that sometimes the things we love come completely by surprise.
#3: Resting gets you further
Ugh. This one has tripped me up and challenged me the most.
I’m not so very good at this whole resting concept….and along the same lines as remembering to breathe, pausing to rest when tired, overwhelmed, or hurting carries me much further in the long run. (damn.)
I am able to hike and explore much further and longer when I stop occasionally to breathe, chug some water, or just take in the environment around me.
This translates equally well into “real” life as well – when I get enough sleep, take time out for creativity, take a break when tired or not feeling well – paradoxically, I always get more done and come up with more ideas or possibilities then when I try to push my way through.
Running helped teach me this too. I hurt my foot in late October. Initially I tried to keep pushing through and continue running. My runs got more difficult and my knee started giving me problems as well. I finally gave in and stopped running for a few weeks to let things recover and heal. When I started back running again, I found I could complete my runs with much more ease and without pain in either my foot or my knee. Now I’m running longer and further than I was before I had to stop and rest.
Go figure.
#4: Be Curious
One of the things I love about exploring new hiking trails is that I never know quite how long it is or where it goes or what I’ll see along the way.
Because I get curious about what’s around the next curve or over the next hill, I tend to go further and hike longer than I might on trails I’m familiar with. That’s essentially how I went from hiking only about 30 minutes at a time to being able to go for a number of hours at the time….being curious helped me build my endurance and strength.
Same goes in life. If instead of just doing the same old familiar, I can be curious about something new – then I come up with more ideas, new possibilities, and new ways of doing things. I build more faith in myself to handle things because I’m willing to be curious and try something new.
#5: I am capable of more than I think
If you had told me a year ago that I would be running 3 days a week, hiking for 5-6 days per week, and kicking my own ass with strength training several days a week – I’d have found you highly suspicious.
Me? Running. Ha, you’re crazy, dude.
I like hiking and working out sometimes, yes, but I’m not the active, athletic type. I’m the bookworm, the nerd, the lazy one.
That’s what I would have insisted.
Except, I would have been wrong. I am the bookworm and the nerd and I can certainly be lazy (just take a look at my counter full of dirty dishes and cat-hair, dust-covered floors!).
I’m also very active. I run. I hike. I strength train. (I might even learn how to ride a bike this year!! )
I proved to myself that I’m more capable physically than I ever thought I could be. If I can do it with running and activity – what else can I do that think I’m not capable of?
I’m going to miss my hiking shoes and all the miles we logged together.
And I can’t wait to see what my next pair and the next 500 miles can teach me.
The Myth of Moving On: Living While Grieving
Recently, I posted on Facebook that I missed my daughter as her would-have-been birthday approaches. A simple statement of “I can’t believe it’s been so many years and I miss her.”
The following day, I got a note from someone who had seen my post and who was “concerned that I seemed to be consumed by my loss” and thought I “would really benefit from accepting her death and moving on.”
Huh.
Initially, I thought I’d just remove this person as a friend and let it go. But it kept nagging at me. Because this ill-conceived belief that in order to “move on” and live a fulfilling life, we need to forget and never talk about our loved ones again is an opinion pushed on many of those who grieve. Not only is it misguided, it’s hurtful to those finding their way through grief.
What this person failed to notice, apparently, is that I live a rich, vibrant, fulfilling, and beautiful life. I am happy and ambitious and fiery and successful.
And, yes, I still miss my daughters. Every day.
I still look for them in all the children I see. I wonder who they might have been. Holidays have an emptiness no one could fill but them.
Sometimes I still cry for the longing to hold them. There is an ache inside, mostly just beyond my conscious awareness, that likely will never completely ease.
I light a candle on their would-have-been birthdays and eat a cupcake to remember them.
Yes, it has been what feels like far too many years. I don’t grieve as I once did and I also don’t expect this missing, this longing, this ache for them to ever fully leave. As long as I love them, I will miss them. That will be for always.
It does not, however, mean I am consumed by grief, broken by this loss, or somehow pathological in my grief because I continue to miss them.
My life is rich and full and beautiful. It is filled with the brilliance of my love for them and the shadows of their loss. Moving on does not equal forgetting.
I am living while grieving. There is nothing healthier or more beautiful than that.
That is what moving on actually looks like.
How to Support Someone Who is Grieving
Let’s be honest. Loving someone who is grieving isn’t always easy.
It’s hard to see people we love be in pain and not be able to do anything about it. We want them to feel better, to smile, to laugh, and to be okay again. Feeling better sooner rather than later would be even better.
As humans, we are problems solvers. We want to fix things, to find ways to get past problems or challenges faster and easier. We like things to be neat and orderly and fit nicely into boxes and categories.
Grief is none of those things. It’s not fixable. We can’t rush it or make to move through faster. It is anything but neat and orderly or easily categorized.
Grief is messy. Grief is painful. Grief is confusing. Grief is complex. Grief is not going to go away overnight.
I get it. I’ve been on both sides of the situation – the griever and the one sitting with the grieving.
We can feel helpless and overwhelmed and lost on either side.
So, if we can’t fix things for those we love when they are grieving or make them feel better or make the grief go away faster, how we do help?
Be Present
Be there with them in it. Instead of pulling away or trying to gloss over the pain and the heartbreak, lean into it with them.
Ask them how they are doing.
Sit with them in silence.
Give them a hug or just sit beside them.
Bring them food or take care of household chores so they have one less thing to try to figure out in the heaviness and disorientation of grief.
Send them cards, texts, emails to let them know you are thinking of them.
Remember them on holidays or the anniversaries of birthdays or death days – then let them know you remember too.
Speak their loved ones names.
Share memories.
Tell them you miss their loved one too – or that you wish you could have known them.
However you decide to share your presence, Be Proactive.
Don’t wait for them to reach out to you.
Grief is overwhelming and too often those living with it feel burdensome or hesitant to ask for support.
Instead of waiting for them to ask for support, reach out to them and offer ways to help.
Can I get your groceries for you this week?
Do you want some company? We can do whatever you need.
How about I take care of your lawn this week so you don’t have to worry about it.
I know _______’s birthday is coming up, do you want to do anything to honor it?
Would you like to go for a walk together? We can talk or not talk, whatever you need.
Send books you have found or see that could offer comfort.
Send them notes to let you know you’re thinking of them.
If something reminds you of the one they’ve lost, send them a message telling them about it.
Do something. Reaching out, even if imperfectly, is almost always infinitely better than not. Grief can feel so very lonely and isolating. Sometimes people think they are helping by giving space or not reaching out – but that usually just increases that sense of isolation.
Also, reach out and continue to reach out even if they don’t respond or respond with no for a while. Your act of reaching out still helps. Don’t give up too soon.
Remember, support is different than fixing.
Your support helps. It comforts. It helps us know we aren’t alone. It brings a little light into the darkness.
It doesn’t fix our grief. Nothing can. Nothing save our loved one returning to us from the grave will ever fix this.
Be patient with us. This thing called grief will last far longer than either of us want. In fact, we will have grief and miss our loved one until the day we join them in whatever comes next.
This pain and this longing and this emptiness that we are feeling is a natural part of losing someone we loved so very much. The greater the love, the greater the grief.
This pain doesn’t need to be fixed – nor can it be. It does need to be acknowledged, recognized, and allowed. Chances are, you will tire of this grief long before it eases or lightens for us. So will we.
It cannot be fixed and it cannot be rushed. It must simply be felt and lived through.
Your support does make the load a little easier to bear.
At some point, it’s highly likely our grief will make you very uncomfortable. Perhaps it will bring up your fears around loss or remind you of old grief of your own. Or perhaps it will seem so foreign and unfamiliar to you that it will scare you.
Either way, please, lean into that discomfort and leave the platitudes and cliques left unsaid.
Telling us that “time heals all wounds” or “he/she is in a better place now” or “it just wasn’t meant to be” or “everything happens for a reason” or any of the thousand other well-worn platitudes does not help.
Whether any of these sayings are true or not does not matter in the least (let’s face it, truth varies widely across belief systems and people). Besides, true or not true, in the face of grief they simply aren’t helpful or useful.
They are an attempt to fix our grief and to ease your discomfort.
And if you’d said such things before, don’t worry – we’ve all said them a time or two in our lives. Even those of us most familiar with grief.
We’re human and we make mistakes. It’s more important to forgive ourselves and make a point to find other ways to handle our discomfort in the future. It never hurts for us to take a good look at why loss makes us feel so uncomfortable or afraid – if fact, if we all did, our world might be a more peaceful and loving place.
In the end, it comes down to this:
If in doubt, simply acknowledge or ask.
If you aren’t sure if what you are offering for support is helpful or not – ask.
If you aren’t sure what they might need or want from you – ask.
If you don’t know what to say – acknowledge that and just say that.
If you are afraid, as many are, that bring up their loved one will hurt them more, ask them if they want you to talk about them or say their name. (FYI, 99% of the time, they’ll say yes.)
Connection and compassion require far less than we tend to think they do.
Be present.
Be proactive and reach out.
Offer support instead of fixing.
Embrace your own discomfort.
Simply acknowledge or ask.
But most of all, love. In the end, all any of us really want is to feel seen, heard, and loved.
So, love.
It’s as simple as that.
Surviving the Holidays After the Death of Someone You Love
Let’s be real.
The holidays can be a bitch after the death of someone we love.
It’s been 13 years since my little family died and I still wrestle with finding peace during the holiday season. Even now, it’s a tangled mess of emotions – longing, joy, sorrow, gratitude, grief, and loneliness.
The bombardment of shiny, happy families in commercials. Cheesy holiday movies vomiting out endless everything-works-out happy endings. People talking about making memories and wrapping gifts for their kids and plans to visit family.
Sometimes, I can find a bit of holiday cheer – twinkle lights, hot cocoa, and gratitude for all that I do have.
Other times, it’s all I can do not to sob my way through the months of November and December with the constant reminders of the family I lost.
Still, I have learned a few tricks to make the season less dark and gloom and a little more peaceful and light. Perhaps, if you’re struggling with grief and loss this season, some of what I learned will make the holidays even a little bit more bearable.
1. Be selfish
Yeah, I know, it’s supposed to be the season of giving and selflessness.
Blah blah blah. Fuck it.
When it comes to surviving the holidays after profound loss, all the “rules” to proper etiquette can be dumped in the trash. (Although, I have to admit, I’m not one to bother much with rules of etiquette regardless!)
Truly, you deserve to be well tended and loved. Especially now.
It may not always be easy to do, but take time for yourself. Give yourself the love and space and pampering you need to face the stuff you can’t avoid – memories, empty chairs, demanding family, etc.
Maybe you steal 15 minutes in the bathroom reading a book. Maybe you treat yourself to a massage. Maybe you take yourself out the the movies. Maybe you order take-out so you have one less thing to do every day.
Or maybe loving yourself looks like crying. Maybe it’s telling a trusted friend just how hard the holidays are this year. Maybe it’s saying no to some or all of the festive holiday gatherings.
Maybe it’s all or none of the above. Your needs are unique.
But take time for you. Be selfish. Ask yourself, what do I need right now in this moment – and then give yourself permission to give it yourself.
2. Find ways to remember and honor
One of the hardest parts about the holidays after a significant loss can be how people seem to forget the one we love and miss so deeply.
We’re struggling to make it through the day with painful reminders of chairs that won’t be filled, memories that won’t be made, and traditions that won’t be fulfilled. Yet it can sometimes seem like everyone else had forgotten or doesn’t care.
The truth is there are many reasons why people may not bring up our deceased loved one. Perhaps they feel like doing so would cause us more pain. Perhaps it makes them uncomfortable to remember. Perhaps they simply don’t understand the importance of acknowledging your loved one this season. Or perhaps they really have simply forgotten as unfathomable as that feels to you.
So, take charge. Bring a candle to light in memory of your precious loved one at the table. Ask that a place be set for them even though their body won’t fill it. Request a moment of silence to remember them. Ask others to share memories with you.
Whatever it is that would help you to bringing your loved one into your holiday, do that. What others think or respond to your actions and requests is their business, not yours. You do what you need to do and let them handle their own feelings about it. They’ll manage, I promise. Just like you are.
3. Give yourself permission to feel whatever you feel
Grief is powerful. It’s also a bit of a sneaky bastard.
It can sneak up and knock us to our knees when least expected. You are feeling ok, maybe even good, and then out of seeming nowhere – boom! Tears and grief and that terrible burning emptiness around your heart.
Allow it. Let it roll through you without resistance – it’s the only way it will move through.
Breathe.
Feel.
Breathe some more.
Cry if you need to. Wail and scream if you need to. Give in to fits of slightly hysterical laughter of you need to.
And smile when you can. Laugh when you are able. Feel ok or even good when that is your truth.
Chances are you’ll feel it all before the holidays are done for this year. Give those feeling space to be and they will move like waves, crashing and then ebbing away.
4. Banish the “shoulds”
This goes back to the idea of allowing selfishness again.
There can be a lot of demands and expectations that come with the holidays – sometimes from others and sometimes from ourselves.
Here’s something I’ve learned that has helped immensely. If a demand or expectation comes with an underlying “should,” run like hell. Shoulds are misery making.
“I should go to XYZ because. . .”
“I should give XYZ because. . .”
“I should be XYZ. . .”
“I should feel XYZ. . .”
Or, from others
“You should be . . .”
“You have to do XYZ . . .” (Have to is just another masked should)
“You should feel . . .”
No. No is a perfectly acceptable sentence to say this holiday season.
Truly, there are very, very few things that you absolutely HAVE to do when it comes to the holidays. Most are simply more of those social or family rules of etiquette – and life will not end of those are broken.
Yes, people might raise a fuss or not understand when you say no or you express feelings they don’t like. That’s their business. You can kindly and politely say no and do what you need to do for you.
5. Focus on the love
Love for yourself.
Love for the one you are missing.
Love for the people around you.
Sometimes love isn’t all twinkle lights and shiny packages.
Sometimes love is saying no. Sometimes love is tears and leaving an empty chair. Sometimes love is setting boundaries. Sometimes love is letting other know the truth of how you really feel rather than protecting them.
If ever in doubt about how to handle something this holiday season, ask yourself this:
What feels like love?
What would love do here?
Let that be enough.
Now, this is far from an exhaustive list on how to navigate and survive the holidays without those we love so deeply. There are a million ways to do it because everyone’s way is a little different.
Take what works and leave the rest. In the end, it’s about trusting and loving yourself.
Do what you need to do for you.
And know you are not alone. We’re here.
Grief Lives In My Bones
Since the death of my fiancé and my daughters, grief has become part of who I am. Grief is as much a part of me as my red curly hair, blue eyes, and freckled skin. It lingers in the sound of my voice and the tears that fall from my eyes.
People typically don’t like to hear me say that. Our culture wants to look at grief as something that comes briefly and then vanishes back into nothingness. Those who haven’t experienced it’s depth and power want to make it something insignificant and small, a temporary blip on the path of life soon to be forgotten.
That is not what grief is.
Grief is a fire that has forged me into who I am and whose embers still smolder in my bones. It’s flames tore through my life and erased in smoke the person I was and the wife and mother I might have become.
Grief made me someone new. I am born of the heat and formed from the ashes. I will never be the same. In surrendering to the fire of grief, I was burned down to the very essence of myself.
Breath.
Bone.
Heart.
Humanness.
Grief is powerful and destructive. That is it’s very nature.
It will burn and shatter and consume the person that we were before the ones we loved so very much were taken from our arms.
Grief is part of me. It lives in my very bones.
But grief is not all of me.
For all of it’s power and destruction, grief cannot touch the essence of me. It cannot take my breath. My bone. My heart. My humanity.
It can never take my humanity, for humanity is love.
Love is the rain and tears that fall to bank down the fire.
Love is the air that cools the heat and clears the smoke.
Love is the earth, scorched and blackened, but never beaten by the flames.
Love is the life that sprouts and grows after the fire has blazed across the landscape.
Love is what overcomes the fire of grief.
Love for the one who was lost.
Love for the ones who remain breathing, living, standing.
Love for myself, the me forged in the heat of the flames and reborn of the ashes.
Yes, grief is part of who I am. It lives in the very bones of me.
So does love. Love is my very essence. Love is as much a part of me as the red curls on my head, the blue of my eyes, and the freckles on my skin. Love is the joy and the laughter and the lightness that bubble within me. Love is the ocean and river currents that sooth the embers burning in my bones.
I am grief and I am love in equal measure.
I was born of the ashes.
I bloom among the embers.
Loving My Body After Stillbirth and Miscarriage
Loving my body isn’t an easy thing for me.
Not. At. All.
See, I have two daughters. They both died before birth. And, although I don’t really talk about it much because I’m not 100% sure, I’m pretty sure I had another very early miscarriage between my two daughters.
My body has never successfully brought a living child from my womb to my arms. She has failed all of my children and, it feels, me.
That is something that can really screw up one’s relationship with their body. I have found for myself, and for hundreds of other loss moms like me, our body’s failure to bring our babies safely to birth and life outside the womb feels like a betrayal and a failure. There is often a sense that there is something wrong with us or with our bodies that caused our babies to die.
I’ve felt like my body was punishing me.
Others have told me they felt like their womb was a war-zone or a death trap for their children.
This seems especially true if we don’t have any living babies – when we have no evidence at all that our bodies can successfully grow and birth a child into life outside the womb.
The world likes to tell us that a woman’s body is made to nurture and birth children and that we can trust it because it naturally knows how to do pregnancy and birth. That’s a wonderful idea, but what happens when it can’t or simply doesn’t for unknown reasons? What happens when our children repeatedly die within the womb that is supposed to nurture and protect them?
How does one love and trust their body after that?
It’s been 13 years since my first daughter died and more than 6 since my second daughter died as well. I still struggle with feeling like my body has failed me and betrayed me.
For the last couple years, however, I’ve been working on learning to love and trust my body again. It hasn’t been easy. My coach doesn’t like it when I talk about my body failing me or betraying me. She tries hard to understand, but that’s difficult for her. She has two beautiful, living, breathing and healthy sons, so her experience of her body and her body’s abilities is very different than mine. Her body has done what it was supposed to do – nurtured and birthed her children into life on Earth.
Still, my coach has been a huge support in helping me learn to be more loving and trusting with my body. To be accepting and kind to my body rather than resentful and angry. To take care of my body and nurture her rather than punish and abuse her. To listen to my body rather than ignore and reject her wisdom.
I wish I could say, “Here! I’ve figured it out! Here’s how you make peace with your body again and learn to love her.”
I can’t. I’m getting closer to figuring that out for myself, but I’m not quite there yet.
My default response is still to distrust her. I still struggle to feel completely sure of her ability to house me safely, to be healthy and strong even with my care of her. I have chosen to not try to have any more children because I don’t trust her ability to keep them safe.
I have, however, come a long, long way in the nearly 3 years I’ve been working on creating a better relationship with my body. I am significantly kinder, more compassionate, more nurturing, and more trusting of her than I was 3 years ago.
I listen to her more – she shares a lot of helpful information with me when I take the time to listen.
I nurture her more – feed her healthier foods, give her activity and movement, talk more kindly to her (usually), and am better about making sure she gets what she needs.
I accept her more – I’m not completely happy with her size or shape, but I am more accepting of her as she is. I lovingly refer to my stomach as my Buddha belly (because it makes me laugh and who can be angry with Buddha?) and appreciate the muscles that she so easily builds for me.
Forgiving her is a process. It is a process that has, and continues, to take time and attention. Not unlike forgiving loved ones who have deeply hurt us. Not entirely unlike grieving my children. It comes and goes in waves – some days I feel love and warmth toward my body, other days not so much.
Loving her and forgiving her is a choice I have to make every day. Every moment. Some days and moments I fail that this. Others I do it well. I like to think I’m getting better at it with that time and attention. I have hopes that one day, I’ll simply be able to love and trust this body of mine, easily and unconditionally.
I wish I could say that I’m the only one who struggles with this, because it isn’t a fun or easy thing to live with. Yet I know that I am not and that this is far, far more common than any of us want to imagine. Body love and acceptance after miscarriage and stillbirth is a challenge not often spoken of, even in the world of pregnancy and infant loss.
Talking about it often leads to others, usually folks with little to no experience of pregnancy loss, trying to make me feel better or to reason with me that my body still deserves trust and love and nurturing. It’s well intentioned, but unhelpful.
Believe me, I want to have a loving, trusting, supportive relationship with my body. I am working hard on creating that.
In the meantime, I wish others would just acknowledge that pain I feel of not having that. I only want you to acknowledge the grief and anger I feel toward her for not keeping my babies safe and protected. You don’t have to agree with me.
Let me be where I am and love me through that.
Love me until I can learn to love my body again.
Nurture me until I can learn to nurture my body again.
Accept me where I am until, someday, I’ll be able to say – and fully believe:
“My body did the best she could and I love her for that.”
Broken Yet Still Beating
When my fiancé died, I thought I knew grief. His death was devastating and agonizing. Every part of me yearned for him and every part of my being throbbed with the painful knowledge that he would never again hold me or make me laugh or smile at me from across the room.
He was my best friend, my love, my one to grow old with and then he was gone.
I grieved and I grieved hard. But I didn’t yet know what it was to be utterly broken.
That came the day our beautiful daughter died. She was my hope, my light, my gift – the part of him that still lived and grew within me.
His death left me bruised and battered and scarred. Her death, mere months after his, broke me to pieces.
Much of my memory of those days, weeks, and months after her death are hazy. It all sort of blurs together in a fog of grief and pain and numb shock. I know that I lived, that I functioned and worked and studied and interacted with life, but the specifics escape me.
I do remember the morning after her death. I woke up and every cell and atom in my body and being ached. Tears were streaming down my face and, for a moment, I didn’t understand why.
My body remembered before my mind caught up again. They were gone. Both of them – my loves, my heart, my family.
I remember watching my chest rise and fall and thinking, “How am I still breathing?”
I could feel my heart beating in my chest and I felt confused, “How could my heart still beat without them?”
How could I be so broken, yet my heart still beat?
For years, I woke up and listened to my heart beat, puzzled by its ability to continue to beat while broken and battered and bruised. I simply couldn’t fathom how it could still function when I felt so broken and numb.
But beat it did and continues to do.
Our hearts can beat while broken, our lungs continue to breathe even when it feels like all the air in our world has been sucked out, and we wake up to face another day because that is the human spirit.
We are resilient beings.
I believe we are resilient because we love. Not the hearts and flowers, commercialized Valentine’s like of love – real, enduring love that weaves through life itself and can never be destroyed or broken. This love is what enables us to have human love – to experience and express love as significant others, as parents, as children, as siblings, and as friends.
When we love fully and fiercely, even when the ones we love the most die, that love never ceases. It is what enables our broken, battered hearts to continue to beat in the midst the devastating grief and unbearable loss.
We are resilient beings.
No matter what life circumstances befall us, we always rise again. The human spirit is about hope. Not the false, get-everything-you-want, never-feel-pain kind of hope, but real true hope that brings light into the darkness when we are lost. The hope that love cannot be destroyed and we will rise again.
Life can send us into pits of darkness and choke us with overwhelming grief and pain. It can level the world as we know it, leaving us broken and barren and desolated. But as long as our hearts continue to beat and our lungs still breathe and we wake up to face another day, there is hope.
Hope of finding beauty in the broken pieces.
Hope of remembering that we are loved.
Hope of knowing that we have endless love to give and share.
Hope of light igniting in the darkness.
Hope of crawling out of the pit of grief to watch the sun rise again.
When we love and lose, when those we love the most die and leave us behind to live without them, life is never the same. We are never the same. Perhaps we are broken. Bruised. Battered. Worn down. Desolated.
Grief and loss isn’t pretty. Healing truly is a fight for life.
But there is always hope to be found in the beating of our hearts.
As long as our hearts still beat, our lungs breathe, and we wake to face the day, we can pick up the broken pieces and create a life that is different, yet still beautiful.
We may still have times where we fall into the pits of darkness and grief, but we always rise. We always find the light and the love again.
Because we are human and we are powerfully resilient – even when we are broken.
I woke up this morning feeling lost and broken in the darkness of grief. Then I listened to my heart beat and I watched my chest rise and fall with every breath and I remembered.
There is always love.
There is always hope.
I am human.
I am resilient.
I am broken yet still beating.
How to Love Someone Who is Grieving Their Child
When someone you love has experienced the loss of a child, it’s hard on everyone. They are engulfed in a sea of unbearable pain and grief and sorrow while you may be struggling to stand beside them, wondering what to say, what to do, and what they need. You love them dearly, but you don’t really know what they are going through and you don’t know what to do.
Maybe you’re grieving too.
Maybe you’re suffering as you witness their suffering.
Maybe you feel helpless.
Maybe you find yourself saying all the wrong things because you don’t know what else to say.
Maybe you want to love them through this, but no one taught you how to do that.
It’s ok.
Most of us don’t really know how to navigate this thing called grief. They don’t teach Grief 101 in high school (although, perhaps they should!).
In an ideal world, your heartbroken loved one would be able to say, “Here, this is what I need. This is how you can help me.” Unfortunately, that’s generally not how it works. They have been crushed by a devastating loss and, chances are, they’re giving everything they have to simply get out of bed in the morning. Trying to articulate what they need and what kind of support they want probably feels next to impossible.
Fortunately, loving a grieving friend or family member isn’t as complicated as it can seem. Generally, it’s simply about being a compassionate and kind human.
Show Up
First and foremost, show up. Be here.
Show up at their door. Run errands for them. Do their laundry. Make them meals and sit with them to ensure they eat (many times in early grief people lose their appetite and don’t eat regularly). Lay on the bed and hold them while they cry.
Continue to show up for months or years – this is a lifetime loss and they will need you for a lifetime. Text them. Call them. Send cards. Remember birthdays and anniversaries of their child’s life. Help them plan birthday parties and holiday remembrances and show up for death anniversaries. Mark them on your calendar so you don’t forget – because they won’t. And they won’t forget those who show up for them.
You will likely say or do the wrong thing at some point. It happens. But if you are willing to keep showing up and work through the discomfort, that’s what will matter. That’s how you’ll help.
Be Patient
Grief is not short lived. Nor is it linear or simple or logical.
Grieving a child takes a lifetime. We love our children for a lifetime and we will grieve them for a lifetime. Society likes to tell us that after a certain period of time, grief should be completed and we should be ready to find “closure” and “move on.”
To be quite honest, if you buy into that way of thinking, you will struggle to be able to support your loved one as long as they will need you to.
Your friend or family member will grieve far longer than you will want to hear about it or be around for it. This is where they will need you to be patient and understanding.
Those who grieve their child(ren) will eventually find a way to live with that grief and that aching hole in their life, but they will never stop missing their child or longing to hold them. Birthdays and holidays and anniversary dates may be painful and challenging for the rest of their life.
When you find yourself tiring of their grief or wanting them to “get over it already,” remember – they are far, far more exhausted and sick of grieving than you can even imagine. This is when they need you most to keep showing up.
Listen
While you might be struggling to know what to say, it’s likely your loved one really just wants someone who will listen.
Really, truly listen.
To their fears. To their grief. To their doubts and guilt and regrets and questioning. To the part of them that feels like they’ve failed their children. To their anger and their rage at the injustice of their children’s lives being cut short. To the urges of grief that make them feel crazy and abnormal.
Let those you love simply talk with you and be heard without judgment or false optimism. Don’t try to fix it or to help them feel something different – just listen.
Listen and when you want to object to something they are saying, or inject your own thoughts, stay silent and listen even more.
Listen and then simply tell them that you love them and you are here.
Forgive
Here’s the honest truth: For a while, your friend or family member isn’t going to be a terribly great friend or family member.
They probably won’t always show up for holiday celebrations or birthdays or fun outings. They’ll probably forget your birthday and anniversary and other special occasions. They may not feel up to attending baby showers and children’s birthdays or being around babies and kids at all (this particular thing might last for years).
In that first year after their child died especially, they will probably forget things you told them or make plans and either forget about them or cancel at the last minute because they just couldn’t get out of bed that day.
When you complain about every day matters like being tired or your child acting up or the annoying co-worker you can’t stand, they may not engage in the conversation the way they used to or may tell you that you’re overreacting. It’s not that they don’t care about your difficulties, it’s simply that what they’ve experienced is so overwhelmingly huge everything else feels small and meaningless in comparison.
So, when they can’t be the friend or family member you remember or want them to be, forgive them. They’re still learning how to navigate life after the entire landscape has changed – not unlike being dropped in a foreign land with no map and no way to communicate.
Get to Know Them
However long you may have known your loved one or how well you might have known them, be prepared to get to know them all over again.
The loss of a child changes us in irrevocable ways.
Your friend or family member isn’t the person they once were and they will never fully be that person again. Grief has forged them into someone new.
Don’t be surprised if they don’t respond to things the way they once would have or if they suddenly aren’t interested in things they used to love or if the beliefs about the world they used to hold so dear are ones they cannot abide by anymore.
No, they won’t be the person you remember and loved so very much. Grief will change and morph them into someone new – and even that will change and morph again over time.
But don’t give up on them too quickly. They may not be the person you knew, but you might really love the person they have and are becoming.
Take time to get to know the new post-loss them.
Remember
Finally, if you do nothing else, remember with them.
Help them remember their child through the years and comfort them with the knowledge that their child has not and will not be forgotten.
Share memories with them. Say their child’s name. Remember their child’s birthday. Honor them on the holidays and for Mother’s and Father’s day. Donate in their child’s name. Read articles like this one and discuss it with your friend or family member.
Give your loved one the gift of remembering their child. It’s the greatest gift you can give.
And above all else, love them. Love them so deeply and openly and clearly they can’t help but feel it radiating from you.
They need you and they need that love.
Love them fiercely.