I sit down at Zoey’s grave, with M. sitting at Gus’s, and we clean. I wipe the dirt off Zoey’s gravestone. I scrub the grit out of the engraved letters of her name. It is Father’s Day, and this is how I talk to my children: in solvent and cotton swabs.
Read Moreno one wants to say anything about the missing babies
like we’re not thinking of them every day, especially this day
all mothers need to be acknowledged and celebrated
Read MoreAnd anyway, those of you reading here will know: it’s not the numbers that matter anymore. Now that it’s been you, you know it’s always someone, that there’s a person behind those numbers, and hey, why shouldn’t it be you? I feel like I was trained, somehow, to imagine that it would always be someone else, that there was no reason it would be me. I think in 2023 we call that toxic positivity.
Read MoreAnd this is the part that only another loss parent can ever understand: That no matter how much joy you find, no matter how much pain you channel into change, no matter how much love you find in their siblings or in the incredible friends they have brought to your life, it is never enough. It can never be enough.
She is not replaceable.
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.
: for one and all
: ttc | pregnancy | birth after loss
: not ttc | infertility after loss
: parenting after loss
: on the bookshelf
: how to stop lactation when there is no baby
: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
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