It was only in that moment, ten years later, that I figured out why I did it. Why I circled the NICU like an animal, fending off every other lens. It was for Ben, for his ballast. So that someday, he might attach Liam’s humanity back to him, like Peter Pan’s shadow, despite all the rest.
Read MoreMy body would want to clench every tooth, grip, joint, sinew, as though its own hanging-on to itself might combat the inevitable force of impact. But it can't. The inertia that would crumple a car is a thousand times stronger than me. If I go limp, there's a chance I might knock around inside disaster with a fraction more fluidity. Gone limp, I might break a little less.
Read More'How Not To Say The Wrong Thing' was originally published in the LA Times in 2013. There is a way, it purports, to show up in the company of people in the middle of crisis, trauma, and loss. People say there is no right or wrong way to grieve and that's true. The aggrieved grieve as they must, a hundred different ways, as is their emotional autonomy. But there sure as hell is a wrong way to be around grieving people. I've seen it. I've witnessed it. Have you?
Read MoreWe are strangers to one another. You arrived to me through a website in a series of zeroes and ones. But we are space travellers connected forever by shared astrophysics. I was once pulled apart into a drifting cloud of atoms and molecules. Like oil in a dish, my specks magnetically drew to one another over what felt like millennia until there were enough atoms and molecules for an arm, a kidney, an ear, until I was myself again.
Read MoreEveryone grieves, and justifiably, for all kinds of reasons. The Buddhists sit accordingly. Our suffering unites us. Our longing for things to go the way we would like is the most human of all. We are the only animals to despair. Given that our extended community includes those who have experienced pregnancy loss—miscarriage being on a shared spectrum—how does it change our concept of community and healing to consider that a wider breadth of parenthood loss is the same kaleidoscope, given a twist?
Read More"This isn't just sad," I said. "These are the best stories. The ones that take someone's suffering and shape it, form it, use it. As writers, we take this character—you, me, Chanie, even baby Liam—who might be feeling lost, and scared, and brave, and determined all at once—and we give them love by paying attention. We will almost always find understanding. Even a bit of magic. Even if it's fifty years too late, it counts. It matters to try, and this is art."
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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