I understand why those doctors, sisters, friends, thought I needed therapy. I was filling out those questionnaires at every postpartum appointment.. “How many times in the last two weeks have you felt down, depressed or hopeless…Little interest or pleasure in doing things…” According to these forms, something was wrong with me. It was quantifiably pathological how sad I was, how I sat for days on end crying and staring at the wall.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreI 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.
Read MoreThere is a nihilism implicit here, I know. I see it too, lurking behind my snarky objections and passive-aggressive stance towards the constant self-improvement and self-branding in workplaces these days. What is the point of setting goals? What is the point of organization and preparation; collecting glass bottles and like-new fuzzy pajamas with feet if the baby - well, you know the story by now. What is the point of anything at all? As soon as you have set out your plans in neat, bulleted lists, a pandemic hits, the laws change, a storm floods your city, the power is knocked out for three days.
Read MoreParenting your dead child is like painting by numbers but there are no numbers to paint by. All the rules and directions have been lost. How does one know what color comes next? What is the image we are trying to complete when the baby we grew, died? We are left guessing. What would their favorite color be? Is purple supposed to fill in this space? What about green?
Read MoreHe sits with me in my stiflng pain, silently, faithfully, patiently. He makes himself comfortable on her changing pad beside the crib – the one he knew better than to even consider laying a toe on while she was alive, but immediately staked a claim to the very first day we were back in our home after her death – and settles in for as long as I need to mourn.
Bereaved 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.
: for one and all
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: not ttc | infertility after loss
: parenting after loss
: on the bookshelf
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: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
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