You can’t imagine what will come after your life is seized by the reality that your child is dead. You don’t know the pain will get worse. You don’t know how dark the nights will be between the hours of 1am and 4am, when your rational self will be taken over by an imposter who imagines all the ways that you and everyone you love is going to die.
Read MoreOver the past two months, as I have sat with the thought of my little girl turning five years old, I realized that she is just that—my little girl. She is not symbolic, not abstract, not a purpose or a motivation. She was not a perfect piece of our life’s puzzle, which fit perfectly to make us whole. She was a little girl, a beautiful infant, who did not get to write her own magical story.
Read MoreI know they are just words. I know we have to share them. But it feels like we should get something more. Maybe it’s not the fault of the word. Maybe the words just simply don’t stretch as far as we are gone. Maybe there are no words to truly describe the pain of it all. Sometimes, in my angriest times, I wish there was something sacred, something more, something I could selfishly claim and reserve for those of us who have walked this path and nobody else. It just doesn't seem fair, to share.
Read MoreI want to tell my yoga teacher to shut up about what’s natural, and to stop talking about medical interventions as if they’re all bad. But I forgive her over and over again, each week, because she’s the one who first told me to honor Joseph’s place in my life.
Read MoreThe same spring, irritatingly new every year. Life is back on earth. My baby is not back. She was born in spring, three years ago. Life continues. Despite death. Death continues. Despite life.
Read MoreI am glad I was born. I am glad I made my parents happy. I am glad I met the love of my life and got to spend my life with him. I feel immensely blessed for giving birth to two beautiful children. I feel immeasurably fortunate to be able to raise one of them. And even on my birthday, and maybe more that day, I am dead for having lost the other one.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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: parenting after loss
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: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
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