It is a box really, if you ask me. Nailed on four sides, it could be a coffin, except I cannot lie dead in one. Too real. And not true. Instead, I live, dead, stuck in a box, breathing sixteen millimeters of stale, dark air. Some days it feels like a trap, a tricky contraption, carefully designed to stifle me, slowly, painfully, and yes, alive. Other days, it stands empty like a junction, a stop sign, where I paused, before my life took a very wrong turn.
Read MoreWe are so many different things. We are happiness, sadness, madness, brokenness. All these things make us, complete us. I wouldn't want to erase any happy memories of my life with my husband or my living son. Why would I want to erase the only memories I have of my daughter?
Read MoreNo one here wants a rousing speech. Or maybe you do. I don’t know. We do not speak a common language, or share common customs. We hold different politics, different faiths, different aesthetics. We are connected, but only nominally. In reality, 'babylost' covers an extraordinary diversity of experience. There are so many ways for babies to die. It still shocks me.
Read MoreRattled, I listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson as others might listen to a preacher. Science in the face of the fear that comes with being human is the only thing that calms me. And not just science for its own sake, but the joy in science. The marvel at all we don't know. That we feed on flora and fauna, and then die to feed flora and fauna. That we are, actually, made of stardust, and so is everything, right down to every grain of sand on Hirtle's Beach.
Read MoreI didn’t win the parenthood game in the conventional sense. Yes, it feels like the confetti is falling in great abundance on everyone else, while the hurt in my life grows deeper and deeper. It stings, burns, and rattles me on a daily basis. With child loss, there’s no stopping that confetti, no delaying it, no pretending it’s not coming.
Read MoreRelationships live in the spaces between people, are held in place by those people, each one on their own end. When one person drops their end, the other one is left trying to find ways to hold the entirety of the lopsided connection on their own.
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
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