the unrecognised life.

They shed tears for the woman describing the miscarriages which devastated her. They stand, applauding as she breaks the taboo of silence around her situation. "She is so brave," they say, talking about this. "No one used to speak of this. Nature can be so cruel".

And it is right that she speaks and right that she is heard.

***

They shed tears for the woman who laboured to bring a silent baby into the world.  They sympathise, imagining the pain without hope and the sound of silence at the final push. "So awful," they say. "I can't imagine. Lessons should be learned."

It used to be that a stillborn baby was not named, not spoken of, wrapped and taken without even time in mothering arms.

And it is right that we have changed this and the sound of silence is more readily acknowledged.

***

Hearts break for the child who left suddenly, inexplicably, horribly."I don't know how they carry on," they say. "I'm holding my child tighter tonight. I'd die if that happened to mine. How can life be so cruel?"

It is right we give our dead children a place now. It is right to see the space and honour it.

***

Then there are the heroes, the little fighters, the ones born too early or too sick, who battled on against the odds and through tenacity of spirit or luck, fought the fight and triumphed, made it home.

Their pictures, wire covered but surviving, festoon the walls of Facebook. "Such an inspiration," people say to still stunned parents. "I don't know how you did it."

It is right to have their photo on the graduation wall. Right that parents who survived the trauma can work out the pain and repackage it into a success story.

Medicine can be amazing when nature lets us down.

***

But what of me?

I did not miscarry.

He was not premature or known to be sick before his birth.

He was not stillborn.

There is no once occupied empty space inside our home.

There is NO WORD to describe us. There are no films for undiscovered damage and a baby carried to the morgue, not by midwife but by quiet faced SCBU nurse. There is no soft edged happy ending for my arms that screamed for him. He was born - and he lived (just) - and he was grabbed from me and all his days were outside of my control, more cared for by a nurse than by me, more chosen for by a doctor than by us. He died by my command and circumstance tore me from his soft and lifeless body far too soon.

Later, I had to register the birth of a boy already dead. We did the two certificates in one. How convenient.

Do you think the words "neonatal loss" do him justice? He was a person who died. He died in my arms, after 11 days of loving him, 11 days of SCBU terror, of decisions and fear and roller coaster highs and lows. But when they speak of heroes, they only speak of the ones who made it. When they speak of fighters, they don't remember the ones who fought and lost.

The lack of understanding falls in a gap between "at least you never knew him" and "thank goodness you had a little time together".

And I'm supposed to be grateful for both of those.

***

The truth is no one wants to know that a baby born safely in hospital might die anyway. No one wants to hear about dashing to SCBU and the medic-magic not working. No one wants to hear about the ones without a picture on the going home board.

I think the taboo of us - of mystifying early death inside the hospital but outside the womb - may never be broken.

And so the platitudes come and I, to be politic, suck it up and stay silent; I am the black widow at every birth story, the hovering witch shadowing every pregnancy. I am the spook and the death wish and the unspoken horror of the space between nature and medicine.

I am when everything fails. And no one wants to hear.

Do you feel you fit one of the loss pigeonholes? Or do you feel you fall between the gaps? Or is every situation so unique that in fact we are all in the gaps? Do we only see the pigeonholes that other people seem to sit in?

spring

As we ready ourselves for hibernation and winter sets in here in the Northern Hemisphere, those in the Southern half of the world have already left winter behind and are in full bloom. One such writer and babylost mama is Jo-Anne Joseph. Many of you who frequent the forums know Jo-Anne, a dedicated Glow presence and support for so many. Jo-Anne, who writes at My Little Light Zia, is a mother of 2 children, one living, one gone much too soon. Zia was born still in July 2013. Jo-Anne writes, "Everyday I miss Zia, everyday I wonder what she would be like on that day. Zia is deeply loved and I live my life in honour of her. Each day I am alive is another day her story lives, she lives." We are so pleased to have Jo-Anne as a guest writer today.

The first day of Spring brought with it an immense amount of sunshine,
A gentle breeze,
But there are still some trees, brown and empty
They stand, the sun burning into every branch
They stand after enduring the harshness of the winter
Their leaves have withered away,
They seem dreadfully alone
The spring brought with it the inflow of birds,
flying back from a long winter away
they chirp happily every morning and inhabit the other trees
building nests, making homes,
Those trees began bearing leaves again,
But there are still trees brown and completely empty,
Awaiting the rain to grant them life again
The winter cold has abandoned me
Taking coldness to another place in the world
I am in the spring with the grass which has started to green around me
The spring with winter trees still brown and dry,
With a yearning for rain which may never come
And when it does
the brownness will end,
It may flower again,
But just not now,
Not today,
Today those brown and dry trees are a reflection of me.

What season are you in? How do the seasons affect your grief?

the binding thread

I stumbled into this place heartsick and with a broken spirit.  I had never felt more alone than I did in the aftermath of my son’s death.  It was the warmth of Glow in the Woods that thawed the ice in my heart and illuminated the many other faces in the dark.  This is the last piece I will be making as a contributor to this sacred space.  Thank you to everyone for allowing me to walk with you.  It is a sad path to travel but I am grateful for the beautiful souls with whom I have found myself walking alongside.  I wish you all peace as you journey on.

.

.

.

He’s not here. 

He hasn’t been for one thousand six hundred and eighty-seven days. 

He’s not here and yet somehow he is everywhere: intertwined in the fabric of life’s tapestry.  He’s a changing colored thread weaving itself through the scenery of my past, present, and future.  He is completely dynamic despite his condition of being most sincerely and decisively not alive. 

His newest sister was born and I saw him in her sleeping face.  He was threaded throughout the white fuzz on her head, rose on her fat cheeks, and sea-blue in her eyes.  From a distance they looked so much alike.  Less so now as over these last weeks she has changed, grown, and become more herself and less a reflection of him. 

My oldest asks me why her brother’s heart was broken.  Why did he die?  How does one explain to a three year old the complexity of life and death and the ambiguity of what comes after?  He is the black that fills the void between question and answer.  

In his grandparents’ garden –the one they have given his name and cultivated in his memory- the color of his thread turns from gold in the fall to the pale cornflower blue of hydrangeas in the spring.  In summer it is the ruby red of tiny wild strawberries stolen from their beds by little fingers.

He is the pearlescence of an obscured and faded scar that yawns its way across my abdomen.  The shadows of my face and the outline of subtle longing that lingers around my eyes are threaded with his grey.  He colors the tiny flash of pink from my tongue where his name invariably rests, waiting to steal away from parted lips at first chance.  George.

And he is the firework of fiery reds angry at the unjustness of his death and muted blues of acceptance and regret.  I wait to discover what color he will be when peace and self-forgiveness are found.  Green and brown, I hope: the color of the giant ancient trees with deep and stretching roots.

His thread, an ever-evolving color of love, has become that which binds my life together.  Nearly five years of his death and he is as vibrant and suffused into my entirety as either of his living sisters.   His color has made my tapestry fuller, sadder, more enduring and most undeniably more beautiful. 

He’s not here. 

Oh, but he is.

Tell me where you see your child(ren).  Despite their obvious absence tell me about their presence in your life.  How do you keep them present in ways that are meaningful to you?    

what she stands for

I was there. Right there. Within an inch. No, on the spot.

Precisely, undeniably, absolutely my dart was in the center of the target. That red center, that renders all the surrounding rings meaningless, as if they are merely decorative, their presence adding mere circumstantial detail to the act of throwing a dart. You miss it by a ring, or you miss it by an inch, you have missed it. And I did not. I had set a target for myself with regards to my family. Not consciously, but very, very cautiously. I wanted my second, and last, baby, before my son would be four. I wanted to complete my family while I was still in graduate school. And for the first time in my ten-year-war with my luck over my reproductive wishes, I hurled the dart on the spot, and got pregnant effortlessly at the beginning of the fall of my second year. I would have her right at the start of a year-long fellowship that would allow me to stay home with her. I would have her at the end of two years of staying apart from my husband. And most importantly, I would have her and complete my longed-for family of four. I was done. I could move on. I could make plans. I could focus on the career I had forsaken for ten years. I could focus on raising my children, and be the ‘whole’ mother to them I had longed to be. I was done making babies or trying to make them. I was there. I had hit the bull’s eye.

So accurately, that I was blinded by the beauty of it.

I stepped in. Hesitant, unconvinced, nervous. I could not believe I was one of them. Oh, finally.

I had wondered often how high the fence surrounding the playground was, willing even to swing my feet over it, only to feel once what it was to belong. A poor little girl, who had been standing outside the playground gates, longing in her eyes, for years. We all know her, passing by a neighborhood playground, many of us have seen her. A girl in rags, with a dark, unclean little face, bright eyes, dirty hands, hair in lumps, holding on to the wires in the fence. Eyeing the kids playing in the playground, and the candies in their hands they wanted and got, with pain and hope in her eyes.

And yet, on that autumn day, the door opened to me. Somehow, I got to come into the park, and with trepidation and disbelief, I felt like maybe I was indeed one of them. Someone handed me a candy, but I was told that I, unlike the other fortunate kids, would have to pay a huge price for it. I was willing to do anything to have a taste of the candy, to have a taste of belonging. I went through fire with the candy held firmly in my hand. I reached the other end of fire, and the candy was snatched from me.

I was thrown outside the park again, and the world didn't even look back at me, lying there in the ground, crumpled like a piece of discarded paper, my clothes still warm from the fire, my face covered in ash and soot, hot tears rolling down my streaked cheeks, my heart heaving from the fall. I missed the smell of the candy, and would happily cross a few thousand fires again to hold it again within my two fingers.

But I cannot. I was never one of them. I never belonged. It was a charade, I was only a clown, meant to entertain, meant to be made fun of. To be handed a coveted prize, only to be made aware what it is like to never, ever, be able to have it.

But I was there. I belonged. Only I came so close that I was burned by the fire.

I saw a butterfly. I believed it was there, fluttering away within the crevices of my belly, around me in the expanse of my dreams. I believed it came from me, and I believed it came for me. I let this thought, this faith, flutter in me too, that it brought beauty and freedom to my life, and that all would be well now. After years of warring with an adamant and invisible destiny, that seemed to be harboring some ancient and strangely esoteric grudge against me, I felt free from its clutch, free from the diabolic predictability of nothing ever working out. In a conscious, tactile moment of certainty, it felt wonderful to finally cease to be cynical, cease to feel trapped by unseen forces.

Finally carrying the girl I had always wanted, I began to believe in what had increasingly become an unattainable fairytale for me – that I could be a very ordinary woman now, with a little family of my own, able to live with my husband under the same roof. I did not care that this meant I would be severed from my work environment again, all I cared about was that my girl was here, we would be together, all would be well. I trudged on with the pregnancy, alone with a preschooler in the Chicago winter, looking ahead at summer, when my family would be complete, and the light at the end of the tunnel would lead the rest of our way.

I believed in my life. I soared high in faith. So high, so high, it unraveled me, bit by bit, on the crash down.

A feeling of having achieved the target of completing my family. A feeling of belonging with the more fortunate, who got what they wanted, especially in matters as natural as motherhood. A restoration of faith in my own life, the faith that everything will now be alright. My little girl, apart from being a beautiful, bright-eyed, intense, fragile little person, was all of this to me. She stood for the fulfillment of achieving my target. She stood for the patience of waiting for my turn to belong. She was my symbol for the faith that things can turn around in one moment.

She was here. My strength, patience, faith were here. For a few moments of music and magic, my fairytale had come alive. Only to turn into a darker tale of blank horror.

I cannot remember what it was like to not hit the target, to feel like I don’t belong, or to not have the faith in my life. And I cannot forget how, even as I was carving out her place in my life, in our family, I could see the coming together of my whole life, my deepest emotions and values, in her.

No, losing her is not the meaning. Having her is.

What do(es) your lost child(ren) symbolize in your life? How has having, and losing them, altered the meaning (or lack thereof) you ascribe to life?

dead metaphor

We are honored today to present a guest post by Romina. She is a sometimes teacher, all times mother, living with the loss of her third son. Ellis Tilde Asuro was born still on November 21, 2013.

I gave birth to death.

That is not a metaphor.

I gave birth to death

and I don’t know how to wean him.

They hint at it. It’s time to let him go.

They don’t speak his name.

I’ve been told he’s getting too old for this.

If I don’t do it now, this may go on forever.

I pushed death out of me and he stopped being mine.

I pushed death out of me and I stopped being his.

In the nine months since, I could have made a living child.

And in the nine months since, I could have learned to let him go.

But in a whole lifetime, I could not create enough life to

bring him near. I could not transform him into the living.

Has anyone told you it's time to move on? How do you respond?