mute

Today we welcome a guest writer who is familiar to most of us in this community. If there is such a thing as an champion commenter and support person, Australian writer Sally from Tuesday's Hope would win the gold. She is often the first other babylost mama women meet when they begin blogging, and she offers equal support to people years out from their loss. Sally's first child, Hope Angel, was stillborn in August of 2008 after 41 weeks of pregnancy. In the almost three years since Hope's death, Sally has gone on to birth Angus, her twenty-one month old son, and is about to give birth to her third child. We are so honored to have Sally share her words and insight here at Glow in the Woods. -Angie

What to say, what to say? What on earth to say? What, in fact, is left to say?

Each time I’ve gone to put fingers to laptop, I’ve drawn blank. Mute. The loss of my baby, the safe arrival of my next one 15 months later and the pending arrival of number three has left me in a stunned silence. I feel I’m simply all out of words.

photo by garrettc.

When life chewed me up and spat me out one chilly August day three years ago, on the other side of the equator, where August equals cold, the first place I found myself in the land of dead babies was here, at Glow. A dear friend sent me a link about how to dry up your milk and I read the post, then every single other post on the site, given Glow was still relatively new then.

I didn’t have a space of my own to write. For the time being, all I wanted to do was listen, and observe. So that’s what I did. And this was the first place I found solace, the first place I felt less alone.

A few weeks later, finally realising there was no way out of this heinous club, I found the courage to comment. Then start a blog of my own. And the words spilled forth, each and every day for months on end. They would keep me up at night, whirring around in my head like a washing machine on spin cycle, and the only way I felt better about things the next day was if I got them out, coherently or otherwise, on to my blog. And the love and support I got back in those early days via comments, literally saved me. They kept me going.

Through the first six months of my grief, and the next nine months of my next pregnancy, I was a slave to the laptop. But since that pregnancy ended happily in November 2009, then raising my son and now growing the baby I carry within on this very day, I’ve struggled to know what to say or how to say it.

So it may come as a surprise to some that I’m a journalist by trade. I studied journalism at university and got a job in the field where I worked for the next 10 years or so before trying my hand at the baby making game. Initially, that was pretty unsuccessful, which is why I ended up here. Stillbirth, you bitch.

During my journalism training, my shorthand told me I was perfect for the profession because I was a “compulsive communicator”. I loved to talk, write, meet people, learn things and expand myself. I was a people person, through and through and making connections was what I did best.

But throughout my career, I never felt fully satisfied with anything I was doing. Or writing about. My journalism job ended due to the limited opportunity and abysmal financial reward and I moved in to the world of corporate communications, writing crap for big companies I cared little about. It sapped me of my drive and left me feeling empty about the career I had built and hoped to fall back on once baby making and child rearing was complete. I wanted to be able to write but about something I was passionate about, and make money at the same time. A pipedream, perhaps, but that’s ultimately what I was striving for. I just hadn’t quite figured out how to make it happen.

Enter the stillbirth of my first child at 40 weeks and five days after a perfectly boring pregnancy and bam, I finally had something I was passionate about and wanted to write about. And write I did.

My Hope was born on August 19, 2008 and I hadn’t yet turned the calendar over to September when I realised I’d spewed out, like hot lava, nearly 40,000 words of her story.

My house was buzzing with family, flowers kept arriving on my door step, but I sat on my couch, laptop at the ready and just poured it all out. People would bring me food and drinks and I just kept on typing.

I also began connecting. Commenting more. Reading more. Writing on my own blog more. Participating in this community more. And my inbox was full because of it. I made friends. Real life friends I’d never met, but we shared a common pain, and we bonded none the less.

The words, both written, spoken and read were what kept me afloat. I also purchased every single babyloss/stillbirth book I could get my hands on to sooth my soul with the more tangible style of words and filled journal after journal with the darker thoughts not really suitable for blog or email fodder. I threw myself in to the language of babyloss wholeheartedly. I was living and breathing it. Your words in, my words out, like a calming yoga breath. And that’s the main way I survived. I honestly don’t know how the women of generations before ours did it.

But now, three years on and just weeks (days?) away from the birth of my third child, my second pregnancy post loss, and I feel I’ve run out. My milk quickly dried up after my daughter died and my words have dried up now.

I’m sad. I miss her. I want her back. I still get angry. I still sometimes play the why me game, when I know I shouldn’t. I get jealous, but not as much. I feel tired. I hate that this is my life, but I do make the best of the life I have now. I still can’t believe this happened to me and I think part of me will always be in shock. But that’s really it. Round and round. Rinse and repeat. What really is there left to say?

Is it simply healing? Time? The birth of a subsequent live child, reinstating my role as an active parent? The due date of another, just 10 days after the third birthday of the big sister he or she will never meet? A combination of all of those things, or something else?

Even when talking about her to those in my real life, I struggle to get her name out. I get so choked up just thinking about her, thinking about what we went through that I worry if I let those tears out again, I might simply never stop crying. I have been referring to her birthday this week as “Friday” and not as “Hope’s birthday”, which is the more accurate description of what the day actually is. On “Friday” I don’t know what I’m doing. On “Friday” I think we’ll visit the cemetery. On “Friday” I’m not sure I’ll feel like catching up with you. It is no wonder people don’t know what to say or how to act around me anymore, when I struggle to get those simple words out myself, even to my nearest and dearest who know how much I still hurt from the inside out and who wouldn’t care if I cried an ocean of tears at their feet.

I update my own blog when I can, but I feel it is mostly out of obligation now, to let my readers know where I’m at. But the words don’t flow as freely now, and none of the thoughts seem as organic and pure as they once did.

I still read and comment every day but that’s about it. I’ve posted just six times this year. Yet I still have that desire to write and write about what I’m most passionate about. And that still is my daughter. But really, what else is there to say? She died and at least for now, my words might just have died with her.

Do you sometimes feel mute when it comes to talking or writing about the death of your baby? Did you reach a point where you felt there was simply nothing left to say? If you have a blog, how often do you post and how long do you think you’ll be able to keep it up for? Do you find it easier to talk than write, or vice versa?

Comments

[KK]

Sally, firstly I want to say how pleased I am to find this guest post from you. The introduction couldn't be more apt. You were, indeed, the first babylost Mama I came across after losing Joseph 8 months ago (today) and have been such an incredible support, through blogging and email.

And yes, "I still can’t believe this happened to me and I think part of me will always be in shock. But that’s really it. Round and round. Rinse and repeat. What really is there left to say?" I imagine still feeling this, 3 years out, 10 years out, 30 years out. I don't think the shock will ever really go. Maybe that's a self preservation mechanism.

I am more mute now than when I was in the early months. His loss is palpable, but I feel more silently, only in my heart, head and body. The need to 'talk' has gone.

I started a blog not that long ago and find it hard to write. Part of it is having all those thoughts and feelings swimming around my head, I almost drown in them. But to get them out on 'paper', or verbally just seems so difficult. It's also a time management thing. The days are flat out and by day's end I'm exhausted from the grief, from mothering our three other boys and then reading so many other babyloss blogs. And then there's the insecure side of me, afraid to put it out there for fear people will think I'm some self indulgent try hard blogger who writes such boring shit, that they don't know why I even bother.

Having said all that, I think I find it easier to write than talk. Talking means bringing it all to the surface, face to face and that would bring me undone. The tears would start and never stop. To write, I can choose my moments and cry and no one would ever know.

Thankyou for this post. Again, thinking of you this week, especially Friday (and Thursday), and the coming final weeks of your pregnancy and eager arrival of your cherished third bubba. Missing Hope Angel with you on her third birthday. xo

[Martha]

I know exactly how Sally feels. In some ways, I feel like I don't have a right to write about being happy. I feel like my blog still needs to be able the boys and that if I don't write about them, I'm so how dishonoring them. It's hard because I have a gorgeous, perfect little girl and I still miss my boys. My boys would have have been 3 on August 8th. Three years old. More often than not, I think, what the hell happened that I DON'T have 3 year old twins. I think that before Zoey, I didn't really know what I was missing, only that I was missing something. Now, when she smiles and giggles and laughs, sometimes, I think, "God, that's what I missed with Joshua or Owen." I thought that having her would make all the pain go away. It didn't. It only makes the joy that much more....

[Holly]

Yes, I would say there are times when I do feel mute both IRL and on my blog. I don't post like I used to. I only go into depth about things when prompted like if I'm participating in a meme or hop. I feel like everything has been said so where do I go from here? I keep writing because it is the best way for me to get my emotions out and in a way I want to document where I am on this journey so that I can look back later.

[Angela]

How wonderful to see a guest post from you, Sally. Your comments and words have been so helpful to me during this difficult time. Like you I find solace in writing, and while it has yet to dry up, I don't talk about Charlotte as much on my blog. I write about life, my subsequent pregnancy, a dash of Charlotte, it's much more random now. Like you said, what else is there to say? I've always found it easier to write than talk and that is especially true since she died. It's too hard to speak the words I really want to say, but writing comes easily.

Thank you for writing this. Thinking of you as "Friday" approaches, and as you prepare to meet your third baby.

[Christy]

I definitely relate to this though it came quicker for me...I still read a lot and this community is still a place I can hold Oliver....but for me I didn't need to write about him so much anymore. I ended up needing to make a conscious break from the blog where I wrote about him and my new blog...I guess it was that I was starting to be happy; to want to write about the joy in my life; things that were fun or frivolous or silly...and I felt like I couldn't do that there - that I would be dishonouring Oliver or worse that someone would click over to that blog looking for comfort and understanding, and instead find a ridiculous post about sewing or how my living children chased a rabbit or some such nonsense.

For me a new space was the right thing - I can incorporate Oliver into who I am now, but who I am in the joyful parts of life as well as the sad parts. He's the quiet undertone to all of my life; the bass line - a beautiful bass line - but I don't need to write ABOUT him. I need to write and know that he's part of that, if that makes sense.

Anyway....I hope you find your voice again in this new phase. I am confident that you will...I guess I'd just say that just because you aren't writing ABOUT her doesn't mean that you are losing some part of her again - you are simply incorporating her more deeply into who you are now. And that's completely okay. You will honour her by doing that - at least that's how I feel.

Best wishes to you Sally!

[loribeth]

Hey, fellow journalist by training here,& would you believe I just wrote a long post about my job. I have found writing about Katie, about my life since then, to be so therapeutic. I do often find it easier to write than to speak about what happened to me and about my feelings. I often feel "silenced: by society on these matters, but online, in my blog, I am free to write what I want.

Although I've been on various pregnancy loss & infertility e-mail lists and message boards over the years, I did not start my blog until more than 8 years after Katie's stillbirth. Amazingly enough, I am still finding things to write about. I've gone through dry spells in keeping paper journals over the years, and they've more or less been supplanted by online writing these days. But I can't imagine NOT writing about myself & my feelings in some way.

[Missy]

I have a post titled that, and continue to experience the mute. I suppose it's because my path has changed and I no longer feel connected to everyone who is moving forward. I haven't written about it, though I am trying to find a way to spit it out without sounding like a total bitch. It's tough though and I have definitely loved all of your words of comfort and support. I marked Friday as a special day for my friend Sally and her baby girl Hope and know that both you and she will be thought of with love on this side of the world.

[Jeanette]

Sally, I don't know what else to add, you said it all so well.
My blog is a muddle of my whole life. I like to think I've integrated Florence into my blog as we have our life, but I'm not sure if it seems that way to others, probably not.
yes, i'm mute sometimes. I'm just so sick of myself,sick of this life without her, what's left to say, and really who wants to hear it anymore?
Honestly, I only really feel safe adding anything about Florence to my blog these days because I know women like you are there reading and caring, because I'm no longer sure anyone in my rl does...ok some do, but they don't understand, and they've run out of patience with me and my grief...i know I have, but what can I do?

[Tess]

So good to hear your voice on this big notice board here Sally. So much to relate to too.

On the whole I think much the same way as Holly when she said that blogging/writing is the best way for me to get my emotions out and more so a way of documenting where I am now, for future reference. Also being prompted by Glow posts or Angie was a great way of seeking out side of the box, because I feel like I'm rehashing the same sentiments and sounding like a stuck record.

My blog is for my head space and not just for my daughter, it just happens that tragedy struck and needed to write somewhere - I guess it'll morph into something quite different from what is started as. I also keep paper journals for my babies which I do keep updated for them - I guess I don't need to shout out about everything now adays and things have calmed somewhat.

I also think I blog less due to the fact that I have more contact with other BLMs in my real life; either via emails, or in person and can articulate myself better now, one on one with them rather than convaying it to the masses on my blog. I prefer the exchange of views, ideas, perceptions and do love to fully explore these.

Thank you so much for opening up this discussion Sally - everything still crossed!

[Sally]

Thanks everyone. So nice to see the comments here on my guest post. I am so touched, just as I was to be asked to write for Glow in the first place. This to me, has always been Babyloss Mecca.
I think the fact I made my blog open to family and friends initially (though not intentionally, as I only told a small few, but the news of the blog unfortunately spread like wildfire) has also made it hard to keep writing. I feel I have to censor myself a bit as I know so many in my real life are reading. Some I don't mind, some I wish would respect my privacy and stay the hell away. But the blog is public and that's the risk I took. I also don't really want to go private and for some reason, I don't like the idea of a new blog. I have always been worried about slipping too much in to "mummy blogging" territory if I do that. Not that I have a problem with it, but it is just not for me. While joy and happiness is obviously a huge part of my life now, I feel when it comes to my writing, I mostly want to tap in to that pain, and my writing is one of the only places I can do that. The only mummy blogs I read are the ones with a dark or snide undertone or the ones who have a history of loss. I just can't connect with the ones that are all sunshine and unicorns.
And I think being someone who has been paid to write her whole working life, I have never really felt "good enough" or that anything I have written has been anything to be proud of, which I know is a silly thing to say. I am forever comparing myself to others and feeling as if my writing just doesn't stack up. I'm constantly moved and amazed by the quality of writing I see on so many blogs, most of which is written by people who haven't had the training or background I have. But I am working on letting a lot of that go. I know it is not what matters. When I feel inspired and when I finally do get to write, it is for my daughter and for me as well - just like Tess said.
Thank you all again, and nice to see a couple of my Aussie babyloss mama friends commenting here today!
xo

[TracyOC]

Sally,

So glad to hear your voice hear on Glow. Will this be a regular thing?

I've never been a very prolific blogger. My silence mostly comes from the one-living-twin/one-dead-twin awkwardness. My inner critic asks me what kind of ingrate complains about only getting one live baby out of the deal. At the same time, because my dead daughter has a living, breathing, identical twin, I feel like I will never run out of things to say on the topic of babyloss.

As for your silence, you're such a strong and supportive presence in this community that you don't seem mute or at a loss to me at all. What could be a better legacy for Hope than the way you've reached out to so many others who've lost a baby.

[Jill (Fireflyforever)]

Wow. I have just put up a post over on my blog about this exact topic. I pressed publish and clicked here and ... started reading the same sort of things I had just been saying, said so well. There seemed to be a lot of us who lost babies in the latter half of 08 and it does seem to be common to all of us to blog much less frequently, to wonder what is left to be said but to find it very hard to come to some sort of definitive end. I guess our writing reflects our grief - never ending but sometimes hard to tap into now. I will be holding you and Hope close in my thoughts on Friday and, thinking about you, in the days afterwards of course.

[Danielle]

I feel like I ran out of words a long time ago. About grief, about infertility, about life in the context of all of this. My great-grandmother, a woman I was privileged to have in my life until I was in graduate school, used to tell my mother that it was easy to catch up with adults because nothing much really changes in an adult's life- children, on the other hand, grew and changed every day. I am an adult with no living children. There's only so much to say about that. Nothing about my grief is new. Nothing about my life seems newsworthy in the context of what should have been. So I am, as you know, awfully quiet these days.

Thinking of you through this bittersweetest of Augusts.

[Merry]

One of my first blog posts about Freddie said that I knew one day the posts about him would run out. I blogged my heart out. Another piece of me is still holding back masses of what I have to say; i have to make him last the rest of my life; I think I can only do that if I hold back the bits that are yet too painful to really examine.

I still haven't put his photos in order, tried to make the memories fit together, finished him memorial blog. Or buried him, in fact.

The words about him are waiting, the words about grief are all over, i think.

You've been amazing for me this year - and I am as pleased as pleased to see your news today :)

[Monique]

I know what you mean, Sally. I quit therapy because I was tired of saying the same thing: "I want him back", "I miss him", "I'm so sad" - on and on it went and until I was boring myself. I mean, what more is there to say? I don't know if those refrains will ever change. Not likely.

I've been thinking of you all week. And remembering Hope, always. Much love, my friend. xo

[Josh]

Beautiful post Sally. I read this in bed late last night and woke up still thinking about. I loved your first line: "What to say, what to say? What on earth to say? What, in fact, is left to say?" Knowing it has been a few years for you gives this opening so much more punch. I definitely feel like this most days and I can't imagine how you must feel so much farther down the road. What IS there to say? And yet, you capture this feeling so well.

I'll be thinking of you tomorrow, on Friday.

Lots of love and gentleness to you as you prepare for number three.

Josh

[J.]

Hi Sally, so lovely to see you on here. Thinking of you today on Hope's birthday.

I know we've discussed this before, but when I lost C. eight years ago now, there were no blogs and not much at all of an online babyloss support community. It just didn't exist. I don't know if having that option to create and write a blog so soon after our loss would have made a difference in my case. I just couldn't write anything. And I was fairly prolific beforehand--I was paid to write reports, papers, articles, educational materials, you name it. After I wrote her eulogy, I just shut down for almost two years. I didn't document, memorialize, reflect upon anything related to her. I had no desire to even attempt it. Then circumstances changed, a thaw began, and I started to experiment with writing. I wrote my second daughter's birth story and in order to provide context, I had to expound upon the long road we'd taken to get to that point.

That was six years ago. Our family has continued to grow and change. I did set up a blog just about C., as a means to write about what happened, her life and her death, and the impact on our lives, but more importantly, as a place I can go when I need to write about what life is like without her, all these years on. Holidays. Christmases. What her siblings say about her. This really is a journey with no end, and so on the days when I feel like "Wow, there really is nothing else to say...I can't rehash this any longer..." something will happen that reminds me that living our lives without her as we close in on our first decade and move into our second, is all uncharted territory and new ground.

And as for writing versus speaking, I find that it is much more comfortable for me at this point. In the early days, months, and years of our loss I felt like all I did was talk. Now that so much time has passed, there's all these little moments in my daily life that I don't even bother to bring up in conversation, but I do reflect upon in writing. My husband and I seem to have an unspoken agreement to stick to silence as a means of mitigating pain. And friends and family often expect that you won't feel compelled to talk about your deceased child after many years have transpired. So, writing is my refuge now. Funny how in the beginning, I couldn't write, but now eight years on, it's the talking that's disappeared.

[Catherine W]

Beautiful post Sally. It is lovely to read your words here and I couldn't agree more with the introduction that has been posted here. You are such an amazing support to this community and your words are always so thoughtful and compassionate. I feel very lucky to have 'met' you.

I found that the early months left me dumbstruck, for very similar reasons to those mentioned above by TracyOC. I didn't start a blog until nearly a year after my daughter died although I was lurking and commenting for quite some time before that. I still write there, although not as frequently as I used to. But there is still all that love, that love that was meant to be my daughter's rattling around inside of me and I have nowhere else to take it. I no longer speak about my daughter very much at all and I think that is why I keep my blog, to have that outlet, even if it is often the 'rinse and repeat' that you have described.

Thinking of you and all three of your beautiful children today, Hope's birthday. Much love xo

[Lani]

You were my first real friend when Silas died and we made such a strong connection over continents and interwebs. I feel blessed to have you in my life, though I wish it was never b/c we lost our sweet little first borns. I've always been envious at how connected you are to everyone- commenting and reading and sharing yourself. I am not so great at all that. But I guess we each take our own path.

I barely write on my blog these days, now that i'm pregnant. When Silas died, I wrote on Chris' blog for a bit til he kicked me off to start my own. I was writing fairly regularly in those 2 1/2 years after Silas died and trying to get pregnant. But now that I am, I feel mute as well. I feel guilty for not writing.

Anyway, glad I found you here- I don't frequent the blogs quite as often as I wish. But that is how it goes.

love you- and congrats on Juliet Lily!!! xo

[anonymous]

Mine's not being mute so much as being gagged. I can't let people spot me on here, because "You should be over that by now." or "Deal with it later, right now there's work to be done." or "You have an unhealthy obsession with your dead children. That makes you an unfit parent."

Yes, the abusive thing (I can't call him a man) that made the children I loved, the one reason I stayed and put up with it for so long, thinking that I couldn't leave because at least no matter what he does to me he's trying to keep things together for the living child, he's using my grief over the children that died to try and take my living child away from me.

So still, I sneak on, I read, I try and comment. But then most of the time I wonder if I should. The last child, the one that died in my womb as he strangled me - he's had no time. He's had no memorial, nothing, other than quietly burying his urn in the ground, and even that disguised as gardening for something else. Nobody says his name, nobody remembers that I was even pregnant, I think, because I was so fat to begin with that I wasn't "showing" even though I was well along.

It's approaching a year, and I haven't even opened his little box, the one I had to fight so hard to go get. He, the thing, kept forgetting to go by the hospital to get it till I begged him (and yes, I paid for that begging later) to at least swing by the hospital and I would try to get someone to meet us with it. All that, and I've been afraid to open it, because I know that I don't have the time or energy to devote to that son I should have been taking for first haircuts and watching for teeth to start coming in and getting immunizations for. I know he's got time to wait for a while, but I fear that it will turn into many years of waiting.

In the meantime, my living son's firsts also get overshadowed by all the crap going on. He's angry - something I didn't see in him before - and he's scared. His first real haircut? I wasn't there. I was in the hospital recovering from the birth of his dead sister. His first day at school? I was having to deal with giving the principal copies of divorce papers so they could have something to refer to. I didn't get to walk him to his classroom, he was swept up in the line headed down the hall. His first loose tooth? Lost somewhere in a corncob, I literally sat digging through the trash trying to find it till I had to give up because I knew it was just gone. So my living boy, the little memory things that I should have had, they're not there for him either. In some ways, that's a comfort, that maybe if the scrapbook or box is missing the child will get to stick around, that whatever powers might be there are telling me "Ok, this year you get to keep him because we're keeping the keepsake you should have had, the lock of hair, the tooth, the fingerpainting that got ruined. We'll take those, you keep the kid."

Huh. Guess when I get the guts to write something, the mute button turns off.