He is the child I hold in my heart. He gives me strength and courage everyday through this journey of grief. Because of him I am stronger, wiser and love more. I know a mothers love that not many understand. It is this love I cherish because it is all I have. It is his […]
Stillbirth is such an isolating and lonely experience. While you are grieving for a soul that you have felt, loved, carried, people around you are grieving for the loss of the idea of that soul.
Saying goodbye to my daughter Sara marked the beginning of discovering how to parent uniquely.
SHINE It’s been too long, This path I’ve had to follow And how I cried when you died, Much too soon… My child. How was I expected to be On this motherly journey – Without your tiny hand, Tucked safely in mine? It made me shudder… And yet, I believe that your soul […]
All 5 of our children are loved – equally – even though our triplets didn’t get to experience the world beyond my womb. They were our world and continue to inhabit a sacred space within our hearts and family.
If someone asks me if I have children or how many I have I make sure to include Marlon and Toby. It is not always easy as those moments can be very awkward and it can stop any conversation. I hate when I get the feeling that people want to quickly walk away from me […]
I love when our friends and family make sure that Marlon and Tobias are remembered. Our friends mention them often and I received cards and flowers for Mother’s day in the past years. Our families have their pictures up and send small presents for them like special candles for Christmas. It’s so important for us […]
After your child dies, it is common to think that you will never laugh or be happy again. I know when Emma died I KNEW I would never be able to be happy again. How could I be happy when my daughter was dead? But, now that it has been almost a year since she […]
When people ask me how many children I have I always talk about my daughter. As uncomfortable as it is to talk about a “dead baby” I feel that it is an injustice to her to not speak her name, or act as if she never existed. I will never forget my daughter, and will […]
Looking back on the early days after the loss of our daughter, those were the darkest days of my life. I never want to go back to those days again. But the support I was able to get from other mothers who had experienced the loss of their own babies really helped me. You hope […]
People will ask, how does one get over the loss of a baby. My answer is, you don’t. There is no excitement of the first steps, or first day of kindergarden. No celebration of school graduation or their wedding day. It is a lifetime of memories we do not get to make, but that serve […]
Support can be quiet, comfort can come from far away or close to home but the most important thing everyone did for us was letting us know we weren’t alone…
The one thing I wish people would understand is that there is nothing to say that will “make it better”, just being there helps. I think it’s important to realize that you don’t have to say something. Some of my closest friends said the most inconsiderate things, not because they wanted to hurt us but […]
Losing two children is the hardest thing my husband and I have experienced. Life everyday is filled with wonder of who my girls would have become. Having the support of other bereaved parents, helps keep our girls alive.
THE question. You know as a bereaved parent it goes like this … “do you have any children?” or “how many children do you have?”. I dread it. I know it’s a natural question for people to ask. It’s a conversation starter between strangers. I don’t blame people for asking. It’s just uncomfortable and it’s […]
I have felt every single second of my pain of losing Kenneth. That has been torture. This is hard. It’s been hard. I work on myself each and every day and try to find a reason to put one foot in front of the other to move forward. Some days it’s easy, some days it’s […]
My hope for myself and every other parent out there that has lost a child is that we let the guilt go. It wasn’t our fault. How could it be? We love our children too much to have done something harmful to them.
If someone was to ask me, how can I support a grieving family? I would be able to answer with one word. Patience. Have a lot of it. Don’t lose sight of it. Hang onto it. Use it.
I don’t think this feeling of going over the events of Kenneth’s last days of 2008 will ever go away. It is a killer on my heart and my mind. I guess necessary to remember. Kenneth’s life here with us was important. Never to be forgotten. My love for him still grows so it’s natural […]
It’s so hard to lose your child/children. It never gets easier. We learn to live differently without them and bring them with us in our hearts as life keeps moving forward.
Hearing the words ‘we cannot find her heartbeat’ rings in my ears over and over. At that moment our lives were changed forever. Our sweet baby girl, Mia, was due in 5 days and the realization that she would never come home with us was so unbelievable. We had so many hopes and dreams for […]
To me, acknowledgment was the most important thing. I hated when people never mentioned my daughter, worse acted as if I had never been pregnant. Or people would say ‘I didn’t want to upset you by talking about it’… unfortunately its more upsetting that they pretend my baby never existed.
The people that simply said ‘I am sorry’ – to me they were the ones that stayed in my life over the ones who continually tried to cheer me up.
I wish people would understand that the moment you get those two blue lines or that pink plus sign a whole world is created in our mind of our new life with our new child, their names, their clothes, their room, our future endeavors together – in a second we are filled with thoughts of […]
I miss my daughter Hannah every second of everyday. But some days are even harder than others. I will never stop loving and missing my beautiful daughter. She will always be a part of me until I am reunited with her in heaven. I will love and honour her for the rest of eternity.
One of the most wonderful things that our friends and family do is talk about our daughter Lily. They are not afraid to say her name or bring her up. It acknowledges that I am her mommy, that she did exist and that she made an impact in the short amount of time she shared […]
My child is always present in my heart and mind, but I don’t get to share her enough. I am grateful each time someone helps me to bring her cherished memory into the world. Then I know she is remembered, and the love for her is alive and strong. I am so proud to be […]
Designating October 15th as an awareness day opens an opportunity to talk about our children, who are very real to us but are sometimes forgotten by others. My daughter is not with us but I still want to talk about her and how much I miss her.
To this day it surprises me how many people are affected and share their own story of loss with other bereaved parents. Even in their own families one might not know about a stillbirth or miscarriage of a child that happened to an aunt and grandma. After our own losses people opened up and it […]
If you know someone who has lost a child, and you’re afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died–you’re not reminding them. They didn’t forget they died. What you’re reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and that is a great gift.