it’s not productive to think about
but sometimes it’s important to go over it all again,
like a perverted reassurance
that she died and it’s not my fault or her fault or their fault
We were in shock, and we had no obvious religious or cultural traditions to follow in this situation. What was offered to us was either a religion we didn’t believe in, or nothing at all. We didn’t have the energy or creativity in that moment to invent our own tradition, so it was nothing. No one around us stepped in, maybe because our entire community lacks a clear set of rituals or guidelines for how to respond to serious illness or death.
What if we didn’t celebrate her birthday this year?
This is the treacherous, traitorous thought that runs through my head this early January, as the rain falls ceaselessly and the gleam and glitter of Christmas fade into the background.
In this year’s kitchen table, we’re focusing on how to balance participating in holiday festivities and taking moments for personal reflection, balancing the busy-ness with our own need to sit with our feelings and grief.
Pull up a chair. Let us fill your mug, and you can warm your feet by the fire, while we talk holidays around the Glow In The Woods kitchen table.
my body knows
it quivers into december,
as warm wreaths brighten up lampposts
set against skies rich with winter coming
“Dear Felix,” I start my journal entries now, channeling my son through his two sweet syllables. I feed and water our relationship with words, not wanting to miss what blooms in darkness. I beckon him close, close, closer still.
I have a recurring daydream. The details and logistics vary but the core fantasy is the same: time travel exists. Sometimes it’s a new scientific discovery like a time machine that people can opt to use within set parameters. Sometimes it’s a secret ability that only I access for some mysterious reason like in Back to the Future. Always my goal is to prevent my daughter’s death.
Kitchen table posts are ones where each of the regular writers at Glow in the Woods answers a series of questions on a particular topic. The topic of grief and partners pops up a lot in our brainstorming for these posts but feels underrepresented to us in babyloss-focused spaces. In this post, we reflect on our own experiences grieving with or alongside partners and in relationships.
a backpack is full of hope and adventure
and discovery of who that precious child will become
in this strange formidable world that all children are called to conquer
I used to worry about the days somewhere far in the future when I might not think of her every hour, or even every day. I used to think that when those days arrived it would mean I had failed her, had forgotten her, had left her trapped in some kind of terrible limbo, neglected, lost for real. It’s not like that, though, and I wish I could’ve known that all those years ago. Someone probably told me. I know I didn’t believe them.
In whispered winds, a sorrow's breath,
A cherished soul embraced by death.
A heartbeat stilled, a lullaby unsung,
In the icy grip of July's cruel tongue.
I choke on the combination of tears and diesel and smoke. Kara notices and asks me if I am okay. I gesture at the grass beside us, at the empty strip of green between the McDonald's and the TA, and she understands. There is nothing where I am gesturing. Like me, she sees what is not there. I am gesturing at the space where our other daughter should be playing, having already finished what would very likely not be her first Happy Meal.
I sit down at Zoey’s grave, with M. sitting at Gus’s, and we clean. I wipe the dirt off Zoey’s gravestone. I scrub the grit out of the engraved letters of her name. It is Father’s Day, and this is how I talk to my children: in solvent and cotton swabs.
no one wants to say anything about the missing babies
like we’re not thinking of them every day, especially this day
all mothers need to be acknowledged and celebrated
And anyway, those of you reading here will know: it’s not the numbers that matter anymore. Now that it’s been you, you know it’s always someone, that there’s a person behind those numbers, and hey, why shouldn’t it be you? I feel like I was trained, somehow, to imagine that it would always be someone else, that there was no reason it would be me. I think in 2023 we call that toxic positivity.
And this is the part that only another loss parent can ever understand: That no matter how much joy you find, no matter how much pain you channel into change, no matter how much love you find in their siblings or in the incredible friends they have brought to your life, it is never enough. It can never be enough.
She is not replaceable.
They showed us a lot of containers, a dozen maybe, or maybe two dozen, but only two were sized for you. I remember that the others were made of wood and metal and stone and ceramic. Nothing specific. They all flashed by too fast to leave a mark, anything clear at least. Just underexposed, shapeless ghosts against the burned-in background of the display wall. They showed us all of the containers even though they knew we only needed to see the small ones.
I tend to chafe at anything I perceive as an attempt to silence my grief or force me to perform happiness. But here among other babylost parents, I am tiptoeing out of the dark barroom to ask, what if I don’t spend the rest of my life crying with the curtains drawn? Is that a betrayal of my daughter? Or the opposite?
I used to think I was a good parent to a grieving child. We talked about sadness and anger, we played it out, we drew and sang and stomped when we needed to. And then - we stopped. I still say her name. I tell stories that start, “When I was pregnant with Anja….” But it’s not the same as it was when they were little and full of wonder about everything, including death.
and it is like this every year
when the axis of earth dares change its mind,
and when the memories of past winters
turn to crystals in the air
This week’s post is a Glow In The Woods kitchen table. Today, we’re sitting together to talk about holidays, how they feel, how we survive them, what we want others to know about them. Pull up a chair. We’ll pour you something to warm your insides and welcome you into the huddle, where all your thoughts - the good, the bad and the ugly - are welcome.
As a teenager, I hated algebra.
I could never wrap my head around the equations,
And the worst part was when I had to
Solve for x.
I recognize that heartbreak and could not wish it on anyone, and yet somehow, I find myself thinking, at least you can hear him talk whenever you want. I talk to my daughter all the time, but what I can’t do is hear her voice…