the contributors
The voices here will arrive and depart, and like a beach to tides a new sandscape will form in the elders’ place. We need this place like food and air and then one day we open our eyes and whisper I think I can walk now, on my own and with a nod to the others, we step from one side to the other, across a foggy sort of before-and-after boundary we hadn’t been sure we’d ever find.
From I am completely lost
to a deep breath and a rubbing of eyes and a blinking in some strange new sun and
I am not completely lost.
: : :
Following are the voices of Glow in the Woods, both current contributors and what we call the Glow emeritus -- founding writers whose words still live here, but who no longer contribute on a regular basis. They'll come back from time to time to sit with us, and tell us how things look from further down the path.
We honour them all, and we're so blessed with their company.
current contributors
gal of growing inside
The day after my daughter died, eight weeks and two days after she was born with a body that was too fragile for this life, I wrote to her:
I am forever changed because of you, my Sweet Tikva.
Changed in a way I can't really explain.
Changed in an irreversible way.
Changed in a way I needed to be changed.
I am a stronger, wiser, more humble, more patient, more grateful and more loving soul because of you, my Tikva.
More than a year later, I still imagine what she would look like if she had lived, how it would feel to carry her against me in a sling. Now I see Tikva in the birds flying gracefully, playing within the gliding arms of the wind. Lucky spirit.
chris of elm city dad
My son Silas died the day he was born. There are two halves to my life, now. The words I write here are an attempt to reconcile who I was with who I have become, and to keep my missing son close.
There are so few ways to hold him. This place is one of them.
jen of there's a new monarchy in town
We had no idea she would leave us.
Six weeks old, sweet cherub cheeks just starting to smile in spite of a heart that simply couldn't cope. Now I'm left, forced into the dark, reeling with shock, empty arms hanging at my sides.
I ache for my lost purpose while I force one foot in front of the other. Trying my best to find a way back to new and utterly different light.
julia of i won't fear love
Very much a creature of water, I am still drawn to the flame. Campfire, the symbol of many a good thing about growing up in the Old Country. Candle, the symbol of many a thing to many a people. To me, always, and more since we buried our second child, our first son, A, to me-- a fragile, finite, ephemeral, but necessary focus point in the dark. When there is nothing else to do, I find myself lighting a candle.
kate of sweet | salty
Knots in my hair and bags under my eyes, caustic soap, institutional green. Ben grunts in his cot, almost ready to come home, and the lost baby heart-trinket given to me by an NICU nurse as she took Liam away hangs on a string around my neck, warmed by my skin.
tash of awful but functioning
Just your average sports-watchin’, foul-mouthed, cynical mom who after five years of a miscarriage, infertility, infertility treatment, and a healthy toddler, decided to try one more time for one more baby. Be careful what you wish for. We are left with a gaping hole in our lives following a harrowing six days of our baby’s so-called life. This is me coping, grieving, trying to mother a live, inquisitive three-and-a-half year old, as well as the memory of my dead daughter. I wax profane on the limits of science, bad odds, my inbred cynicism, and my overwhelming sadness.
glow emeritus
bon of crib chronicles
This is the third spring of buds on the birch trees we planted in our backyard my first Mother's Day...nine days after Finn was born, eight days after he died.
When I see birches bend to left and right/across the lines of straighter darker trees/I like to think some boy's been swinging them. - Robert Frost
Of course, it will not be him.
niobe of dead baby jokes
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
janis of ferdinand's gifts
World crashed when he died. Picking up pieces and trying to fit together a puzzle without having any idea what the completed picture should look like.