Some days I prefer the ocean floor. The quiet and the dark and the endless space soothing, instead of terrifying. Looking at the infinite abyss in all directions, there is a peace in knowing that I am very much alone down there, knowing that my actions and inactions can’t hurt anybody else. Better to be chained to the ocean floor, drowning in all that Karma’s accusing me of, than to break the surface and tempt fate.
Read MoreNow Wigglette will get a chance to play the role of the daughter I always wanted to raise. At first it was a comfort to know that some of that aching gap will be filled. Then came the pain from realizing that being my girl will no longer be something that is only yours. Once I get to witness her developing into a little girl, I fear that my sense of you will become even more obscure, and that I will be forced to leave some more of you behind. There will not be much left, I worry, beyond the knowledge that you were an infant and that I would have cared for you and that I still miss you deeply.
Read MoreThis strange-but-true, yes-but-no existence is accurate for me, but it goes against what most people know to be true in their own lives. Even the term “bereaved mother” hits me as a contradiction, an oxymoron. It sounds wrong, yet I know firsthand how devastatingly real it is.
Read MoreBig news: we are on Facebook now! Find us there, if you like. And raise your hand for the old-fashioned mailbag, too, for our very own book club full of love and warmth on this rough road. I love the idea of the people of this Glow community being first to hold this book. Some of you are in it. We hold each other, after all, in this world-crashingly illuminated mess.
Read MoreEach title carefully lined up over the years— wife, career-oriented woman, home owner, expectant mother—is stripped from me, and I am left in the aftermath, as naked and afraid as a child, with nothing to show for it but my own bewildered mind, and the question that repeats itself relentlessly in my head: Who am I?
Read MoreDespite all my pleas and prayers, death invades my imagination so sharply that it becomes more potent than my reality. At any time of day, while I am driving, cooking, reading, working, just merely trying to put one foot in front of the other, death dangles the other shoe in front of me, daring me to avoid dropping it too.
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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