I sat with it on my lap, my hands resting on the cover, my eyes closed. My throat closed up and I felt tears sting my eyes, all from touching it. This journal has become a visceral talisman of all those emotions that are too big for me to hold inside of myself. So they live here. Safely tucked away, but still with me.
Read MoreThese questions remain, hanging: Where would he have sat at Thanksgiving? What costume would he have worn for his first Halloween? (a ghost, he was going to be a ghost, just as his sister was her first Halloween). Who would he have become?
Read MoreHi! Last time I saw you, you were pregnant, and you must have had the baby! Congratulations! I signaled back with a grimace and gesture at the phone to indicate that I was on an important call and couldn’t talk right now. After our run-in, Jill was still walking around in her version of reality in which my daughter was alive. Our wordless interlude had given me a glimpse into an alternate universe — the one I wished I lived in, in which I had a phone full of photos of my soon-to-be toddler. The one in which people’s faces light up when they run into me on the street.
Read MoreHe lived, and by doing so he changed us, and in death, he changed us even more. On the outside we may look the same, but our journey with him started a chapter I had never imagined possible. It is not over yet. I do not want to finish it. By not collecting the urn, I do not have to.
Read MoreIt’s hard to inspire, or to stuff down the hard feelings, when my sense of security has a crack in its foundation. Nothing feels safe or guaranteed anymore. Chaos rears its ugly head at families and homes every day, and I know mine is fair game even though we’ve been struck by lightning already. My ears are always searching for the acknowledgement of chaos (e.g., “hopefully” instead of “definitely”) when I listen to plans and assumptions for the future.
Read MoreTwo years after my son’s death, and the birth of my living daughter, I have emerged from two places: my own heart’s cloister, grieving like a monk; and society’s own caverns of exile. Instead of being pushed into the corner, a wounded animal that none knew how to tend, I am treated like a human again. Now I am considered a real life mother, with a real life child.
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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