Courageous Mama Who Has Lost So Much

Courageous Mama who has lost so much –

I see your pain.

Though you may present the world with a smiling face and statements of “I’m fine,” I still see the broken and battered heart you carry. The heart broken by the devastating loss of your precious child.

I see how you cry.

I see the hours you spend in the shower, where your tears mix with falling water. I see you under the blankets, curled in the fetal position as sobs shudder through your body. I see you stagger out of the office or the grocery store or your family’s home, barely closing the car door behind you before the tears course down your face.

I see how much you ache.

That unbearable ache of your empty arms that long to hold your beautiful child. The hollow bitterness of seeing so many other women getting pregnant and having babies. The blinding pain of seeing family after family, innocent and intact while yours is forever missing it’s most precious members.

I see the envy and the jealously that lingers.

I see the waves of jealously and bitter anger that flood through you with every new pregnancy announcement and every perfect new “rainbow” baby presented. I see the guilt you feel for not feeling happy for family members or other loss families who get what you may never have – a beautiful living child to raise and nurture.

I see your doubts and fears and inconsolable sorrow.

The uncertainty of knowing if you will ever have another child, one who lives and gets to stay here with you on this Earth. The inconsolable grief of knowing there will never be a living child for you to hold and teach and parent. The fears of feeling empty and broken and incomplete forever. The doubt that you can find hope or healing without a child to raise.

I see your everyday longings.

The longing to hear your baby cry at night. How silent tears stream down your face when you realize there is no baby crying, it was only a dream and your baby is forever silent. The utter quiet of your home without the laughter and noisy play of your child. The first day of school pictures you don’t get to take and the birthday candles you don’t get to see your little one blow out.

I see all of this. I know all of this.

But I also want you to know that I see how you love.

You, beautiful courageous mama, are the fiercest of mothers. You love beyond time and space, beyond death, and beyond the weight of your grief and tears.

You, Mama, love and remember and honor even when the world tells you to be silent, to move on, and to forget. You refuse to listen to the world. You might stagger and stumble at times under the burden of loss and grief, but you always stand up. Your love always outlives your grief.

Keep on, courageous mama. You have something the world and death can never take away.

You are a mother. You love with a mother’s unbreakable love.

And I see you.

She Should be 17

The thing I dislike most about grief?

I can be having the best day, and then out of the blue, something will strike me in just the right way and I’m a sobbing mess. A random thought that drifts across my mind and everything stops.

She should be 17.

It blows my mind that in a few weeks, my tiny sweet baby Grace should be turning 17. The unpredictable teenage years. Mood swings and independence and glimpses of both the little girl she was and the woman she’s becoming.

That’s what’s supposed to be happening in my world right now.

But she will never be 17 and I will never know who she might have been.

These last few years, when she would have been 12 and 14 and 16, have hit me the hardest. I like babies and kids – and I also like to hand them back to their parents. Teenagers? I’ll take all of those home with me. I would have worked my ass off to be a good mom to my girls when they were babies and kids, but I would have hit my stride as a mom when they were teenagers.

There is a hole in my life left by my Grace and Lily that, try as I might, I cannot fill with work and books and busyness. I live and I laugh and I love this life, but I will always carry that empty space where they should have grown.

Grace should be 17 and I should be her mom. I should be her mom who makes her do her homework and pick up her clothes and drives her all over creation. I should know who my daughter is instead of wondering who she might have become. I should be watching her become.

Grief never fails to sucker punch me and knock me to my knees. I have learned that, tomorrow or in an hour or two, I will get back up. I will stop crying. I will get back to living and breathing and embracing this life.

But sometimes, even though I hate it still, I can’t stand under the weight of grief for the child I lose every day. Sometimes grief levels me.

Like when I realize she should be 17 and I should know her now.

But she’s not and I don’t.

I wish she was 17. I wish I knew her now.

What Loss Has Taught Me About Life

It has been 17 years since my daughter, Grace was born still and 11 years since her sister, Lily joined her.

Life has ever been the same.

I am not the same.

I think it’s safe to say that this kind of loss changes all of us in irrevocable ways. Life is different after loss. How I see life is forever altered. Sometimes, those seventeen years of grieving my daughter(s) feel like an eternity. Other days, it feels like just yesterday I was saying good-bye.

In my seventeen years post-loss, the grief and the joys, the love and the heartache, the messiness and the healing have all taught me a few things about life after loss:

Don’t Risk Waiting for “Someday When…”

If loss has taught me anything it is to not to wait in life, because the “someday when…” we too often wait for might never come. Something those of us who have lost so much already know.

We never know where life will lead or what will happen at any given moment.

We can choose to live, really live – fully, wholeheartedly, and completely. This life as we know it can end at any moment, without warning or preparation.

So, live.

Say I love you. Be honest. Dive into your dreams. Go all the places you want to go. Do the things you dream of doing. Give your whole heart. Go on adventures. Learn whatever you can. Give all you are to relationships. Leave behind what doesn’t serve you or the things that hurt you. Be bold.

“Someday when…” might never come. The life you plan might end in the sudden stilling of a heartbeat. Don’t risk waiting for a “someday when…” that might never be.

We’re All Doing the Best We Can

Sometimes this thing called life is hard.

And sometimes we screw up, all of us do. Sometimes we aren’t there for people when we could be. Sometimes we aren’t as compassionate as we could be. Sometimes we lash out in our grief or our fear or our anger when we don’t really mean to.

Sometimes we fall apart. Sometimes we judge (ourselves and others). Sometimes we do things in the moment that we later regret.

Sometimes we hurt others.
Sometimes we hurt ourselves.
Sometimes we hurt each other.

We are human and we make mistakes. It’s okay.

I truly believe that most of us are simply doing the best we can in any moment with the information and/or the skills that we have. There is always more going on underneath the surface of life than any of us know.

People get upset or angry for things we do or don’t do when they have no idea weight of the grief we are simply trying to function under. Some goes for them, often they act or don’t act due to circumstances or situations we know nothing about. We’re all doing the best we can with what we have, whether anyone else can see that or not.

So, maybe we could all give ourselves and each other a bit of grace and acknowledge our mutual humanity. We’re all in this together, one moment at a time. One mistake at a time. Then perhaps, next time, our best will become better.

There Truly Are No Rules or Timelines

When it comes to loss and grief, there are many similarities. That’s why these amazing loss communities are so powerful and soul-healing – we can connect in the similarities of our experiences and find others who get it on a deep level, in ways that non-loss parents can’t.

Yet, there are also differences. No two journeys are the same – not even if the exact circumstances of the loss were identical.

Some are able to find light in the darkness within months and fight their way back to living in those early years after loss. Others find themselves continuing to stumble and crash in the darkness of grief for many years after loss. Many find themselves cycling in and out of painful grief over the years, sometimes buried under the weight of it and other times feeling the light on their faces.

Some of us bury our grief only to have it seeping out into our lives decades after the actual death of our babies. Others throw themselves into the messy, heart-breaking wilds of grief right from the start and find that years later the pain has faded to a quiet bittersweetness.

Any and all of these are equally valid and right. No journey of life after loss is wrong – they are all uniquely individual. My loss is not your loss, yours is not mine.

Grief, joy, sadness, laughter, tears, gratitude, and love – all of this is life. All of this is life after loss. No matter where anyone is in their experience after loss, they are living.

No Community Loves Harder Than This One

There is no community I desperately wish I wasn’t a part of more than this one – this community of parents living without their children, partners without their love, people living without those they love the most. Yet, at the same time, there is no better community to be part of.

I went a decade after my losses before I found this community of people living after loss – and in particular, parents grieving their children.

Finding others who understood the terrible ache and grief of losing their child was like breathing new life into my soul.

It’s family. It’s comfort. It’s love. It’s support.

Like any family, there are disagreements and grumpiness and arguing at times. Yet, I have never been a part of a community so willing to show up, to support, to give, and to nurture than this one.

Not everyone in this community agrees all the time – because again, we are all on our own journey of life after loss – yet there is love and support here unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

If you let us, we will wrap you in love for a lifetime. That is this community.

Life on Planet Earth is Temporary, Love is Not

At some point each of us will leave this thing called life on Earth. Some far, far too soon. Some after many decades of life and living.

I have often heard it said that the only thing we can really count on is that we live and we die.

But I disagree.

We can count on love. Love does not die.

When we lose those that we love, our love lives on. Our love keeps them alive long past their physical bodies are laid down. When we leave this planet called Earth and lay our own bodies down, the love that others have for us will keep us alive. Life is an infinite circle of love. Love is life.

Love isn’t exactly something that we can touch or hold or identify on a tangible level, but as parents and as human, we know love. It lives in our souls.

Love is the greatest aspect of our humanity and it will live forever. And those we’ve loved and lost will live forever as love.

Silent Doorbells

For me, the holiday season starts with Halloween. It begins when the costumes and candy and pumpkins begin to fill the shelves and stores.

Along with it, comes that dull aching and longing for the missing pieces of my life that will never be. My daughters.

No pumpkins carved and lit on the doorstep.
Empty chairs at the holiday tables.
Missing handmade ornaments made by tiny hands.
No letters to Santa.
Gratitudes left unspoken because their little voices will never speak.
No cookies or treats will be stirred or decorated by sticky fingers.

And dozens of doorbells will ring one less time on Halloween because my girls aren’t here to push the bell.

Two costumes will remain on the store shelves.

Two plastic pumpkins or brightly color bags will sit empty without candy collected with excited “trick or treats” giggles.

Two caramel covered apples will stay standing on the tray.

Two half-scared, half-excited screams will be missing from the crowd of kids in the haunted house.

There will always be an empty space where they were meant to be.

I will never know their favorite candy treats.

I will never hear them say as I used to, “Here, Mom, I don’t like this one. You can have it cuz you do,” as they dig through their bags of candy.

I will never know if they would eat themselves sick on sugar or if they would be like me and eat just a few, leaving the rest to lay forgotten in a drawer until next Halloween.

I will never know if they would have been ghosts or princesses or superheros or kittens or witches or zombies or what else their little imaginations might have created.

Though I fill this pumpkin-orange and candy-filled holiday with friends and fun and life, every time the doorbell rings and little ones call out, “Trick or treat,” I always think of the silent doorbells and empty steps that would have been filled by my girls.

Halloween will always have two empty spaces where they were supposed to be, two rings of the doorbell that will never chime.

What I Wish People Had Said After My Baby Died

You are a mother, now and always.

You did not cause this. You are an amazing mother who did the very best she could. This is not your fault.

You are not alone.

You are allowed to grieve. As much, as long, and however you need to – you are allowed to grieve.

There is no right or wrong way to do this thing called grieving or this thing called mothering after loss. Do what works for you.

Your baby/babies are valued and worthy of remembrance. Their lives mattered, however short or long they were here.

You are not alone.

You don’t have to do this alone. There are others who have been where you are and they can help support you, even when others can’t.

People won’t always know what to say or do, and that means they may say or do things that hurt. It’s not personal and it’s not about you. It sucks and it hurts, but you aren’t doing anything wrong.

There is no timeline for this. Grief is something that becomes part of you, though, one day at least, not all of you. It will ebb and flow over time, but likely you will carry it and your love for your babies for always.

You are not alone.

We are here. Other mothers like you, missing our children. We are here.

You are not alone.

Don’t Tell Me Times Heals All Wounds

My daughter, Grace, was stillborn.

One day she was growing and healthy and beautifully alive inside my womb, then without warning she was simply gone.

Her heart beat until it didn’t.

I always wonder what I was doing the moment that her heart stopped and the sweet spirit that was hers left her body – and mine. Was I in the grocery store? Was I sitting in class? Was I sleeping or working or reading? Was I thinking of her dad and missing him?

Shouldn’t I have known the moment that her life faded away and her heart stopped? Shouldn’t my heart have stopped in that precise moment too?

I didn’t know. And my heart didn’t stop.

But I broke when I heard those words, “I’m sorry. We can’t find a heartbeat. She is gone.”

I broke with those words.

People like to say that grief is healed by time. The assumption is that somehow the passing of time will put all that death and loss and trauma breaks back together again.

It would be nice if time was some kind of magical potion to heal the wounds of grief and loss. I would love to have time be the savior that fixes the devastation and destruction of the death of my daughter.

But time is not magic and it isn’t a savior. Time is simply time.

Healing from the death of a child takes more than time. It is a fight for life – a fight to live and breathe and exist without the precious being whose heart once beat beneath your heart.

In the 14 years since my daughter’s heart stopped beating, I have fought to live. I have fought hard to pick up those broken pieces of myself and create a life full of meaning and joy and beauty and love. I fought a bloody battle with depression and suicide. I waged war with the dark abyss of grief and clawed my way back to the light.

Every good and beautiful thing in my life now exists because I fought like hell and never gave up.

I cried the oceans of tears. I raged against the dark and the broken and the utter senselessness of the death of babies. I crawled out of bed and opened the blinds to the sun when depression grabbed at my feet to drag me into the numbing gray.

I chanted her name, Grace, over and over again like a lifeline when the waves of unbearable grief swallowed me whole. I wrote and wrote and wrote all the words I needed to say but couldn’t bring myself to speak. I battled against the guilt and the unanswerable questions that loss leaves behind. I sat in the ruins of the life I expected to have and searched until my hands were bloodied and bruised for meaning and purpose to make life worthwhile again.

I fought like hell to be a mother she would have been proud of. I fought with fierce determination to be a woman she could have aspired to be.

I fought like a warrior to live and become that woman and mother I am today.

I am not the only one.

Every mother and every father I know who has survived death of their child is a warrior. They have fought the bloody battle against brokenness and grief and loss. They have fought like hell for life and beauty and joy and love. The battle of grief is a fight for love.

Times doesn’t heal all wounds.

To belittle the courage and bravery of grieving mothers and fathers by distilling it down to the mere passing of time is insulting.

We fought like warriors to turn those wounds into battle scars – battle scars worn as symbols of a fierce and persistent love for our children and determination to honor life even beyond death.

Don’t tell me time heals all wounds. Time merely passes. Life is fought for and cherished.

We fight for life as we fought for and continue to cherish our children – no matter how much time has passed.

Because love is timeless. And it is always worth fighting for.

Dear Birth Professionals

Birth Professionals, I do believe you mean well. I believe that it devastates you to have to say the words, "I'm sorry there is no heartbeat." I believe that these circumstances must be some of the most challenging of your profession.

But, please, please stop telling those having a miscarriage that "it will be like a heavy period."

For a rare few, that might actually be the case. For the majority of us, however, that is or was not our experience.

We suffered through terrifying heavy bleeding that lasted for hours or days or weeks. We saw and felt large clumps of bloody tissue - some of which was our baby, our dearly loved baby. We curled in the fetal position on our bathroom floor or bathtub/shower and sobbed with grief, with horrible physical pain, with utter devastation.

We wondered if this was normal because it was NOTHING like a heavy period as we'd been told. We desperately searched Google for answers or comfort or reassurance - and mostly simply became more confused and terrified.

After, often weeks or months after, when our bodies have finally healed, we are left with less trust in you. Not necessarily because you didn't care or want to help us, but because you didn't tell us the truth. Perhaps unintentionally you minimized or dismissed our painful experience because "miscarriage is really common" and "it'll just be like a heavy period."

Miscarriage is common. Ridiculously common and maybe that gets routine for you. However, those who are sitting in front of you learning their baby died are not a statistic. They are not routine. They are people, heartbroken people who just lost their beloved baby.

I know these conversations are hard. Grief and death are wildly uncomfortable topics to sit with. But please do better. Tell us the truth. Tell us what might happen physically. Help us find support emotionally. Talk to us about flushing or not flushing. Check up on us to make sure our questions are getting answered - we may not know what to ask in the fog and shock right after learning our baby died.

And please, never never dismiss the pain of a miscarriage as "like a heavy period." It's not a period, it's the body of our baby, however small.

Pregnancy Loss Myth Buster

Those who experience miscarriage/stillbirth also have an postpartum experience.

Not having a living baby doesn't magically erase the physical experience of pregnancy and post-pregnancy. They still have to deal with the physical symptoms - the bleeding, the cramping, the soreness. They still have to wear the mesh panties and ice packs or deal with c-section recovery. Breast milk still comes in after stillbirth except there's no baby to be nourished by it. Their body still undergoes the same changes and transformations as those with living babies. They still experience the same hormonal fluctuations and drops and surges that occur in "successful" pregnancies.

They are still at risk for the same postpartum mood disorders as those who have babies born alive. Grief and a clinical postpartum mood disorder can and do exist at the same time.

The number of loss mothers who don't receive ANY post-birth care (because miscarriage and stillbirths are still births) or postpartum mood disorder evaluation following their miscarriage or stillbirth is utterly terrifying.

OBGYNs, midwives, birth doulas, therapists, medical professionals of all kinds - we need to recognize these realities and provide the same level of care to mothers experiencing miscarriage/stillbirth as we do to mothers with living babies. We need to do better and have these conversations.