I also need to tell you, as it’s ok to have these horrible moments and to struggle, it’s also ok to slowly start to pick up the pieces. Slowly put the pieces back one by one. Build a new version of you. One that will have this loving memory of your child. Yet, know what it means to weather the worst storm.
Read MoreThis here is a record. A record in time. December 2, 2019. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-one days after I stepped away from that blinking cursor and a soon-to-be past life, one hand on my belly, willing her to move. I cue up the interview recording again. A moment where we are both laughing raucously at something only a bereaved mother a certain distance out can laugh at. And then we are serious again. We say his name. We say her name. We’re creating a record, carrying it forward, together.
Read MoreAfter Patrick’s death, my world collapsed. I went from seeing his care team every day, to not at all. They looked after The Living Babies, and I had now been transferred to the Dead Baby Department. As wonderful as these new people were, I felt like an appointment in a calendar. I had lost the day-to-day banter of the ward. A person was now required to contact me on a certain day to ask pre-prepared questions about my feelings. They had never met my child, yet the ones that had, were now lost to me. My life was now static. I’d lost my people. My house was empty. My baby was dead.
Read MoreThey held hands and promised to meet again to stare at nothing—to share their experiences, stories and memories. In time, their circle grew. Other women joined them, and they built a fire on colder days. None of them had asked to be in this tribe, but they were.
Read MoreI know you’re out there, ready to pull the covers way over your head this holiday season, hoping to wake up only after “the most wonderful time of the year” has passed. I see the way you quietly choke back your pain in everyday settings, and I know the pin-prickly feeling on the backs of your eyes as you finally submit to the hot, stinging tears. There’s the awareness that there will never be another holiday with your child, that in some way this otherhood will always exist, even if time or circumstances eventually bring you a little closer to a recognizable way of life.
Read MoreI struggle. I find myself mirroring the jovial spirits of my peers, returning their utterances of “Happy Holidays.” As I say this, I wander inside myself, an unwiilling participant of this merry time of year. Instead, I turn inwards—the Ghost of Christmas Past, trapped far back in time.
Read MoreBereaved 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.
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