I know (really, I do!) that people MEAN well.
I understand the temptation to share cute little sayings like these in response to a bereaved parent’s Facebook post.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/27/why-didnt-i-think-of-that/
It’s oh, so hard to know what to do when you are watching a heart break.
You want to reach out and make it better, make the pain go away, make a difference. But it seems like nothing you can do will matter much in the face of such a huge loss.
While it’s true that you cannot “fix” the brokenness in a bereaved parent’s life, there are some very important and practical ways you can support them in their grief.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/04/20/five-practical-ways-to-support-grieving-parent/
I have many friends who have chosen to get up when they could have stayed down, who have chosen love when they could have become heartless and who still smile even when life isn’t easy.
I love you. 
Moms and Dads, this one’s for you.
For not giving up or giving in.
For refusing to become bitter and jaded and instead choosing to be love and light.
It would be easier, in a way, if it happened all at once.
If the vivid memories of his voice, his laugh, his body language, his sense of humor just disappeared-POOF!-now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t. Then I could make a single adjustment.
But that’s not how it is. Instead, the living proof of his existence recedes like a wave from the shoreline, only there’s no returning surge to remind me of the force that was Dominic.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2016/04/18/slow-fade/
Child loss is not a single event.
Of course the moment when the last breath leaves a body is noted and duly recorded because the law requires such. I can pull out Dominic’s death certificate (what an ugly thing to have to say about my child!) and it reads: Time of Death: 1:10 a.m. April 12, 2014.
But I didn’t know about it until 4: 15 that morning when the deputy rang the bell.
So for me, his death came then.
Read the rest here: Child Loss is Not a Single Event
In response to something I posted in a bereaved parents’ group a friend used the term “tangible absence” to describe what I was feeling.
She is so right.
When I imagine something I’ve never actually experienced-even when I might say “I miss such and such” it’s not the same as when I’ve had something and it’s been taken away.
I can only miss the imaginary in an ephemeral, insubstantial way. I miss what I once possessed in a tangible way.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/06/tangible-absence/
I don’t want to remember my son.
I want to make memories with him.
I want him to watch me grow old, to watch him get married and have children and to hear his voice mingled with his siblings at my table.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/04/02/i-dont-want-to-remember-my-son/
Many of you are waking up each day and facing a world you don’t recognize.
I’ve been doing this for over half a decade.
Almost seven years ago my family’s world was shaken in much the same way everyone’s world is being shaken today.
It was precisely as disruptive, unthinkable, even more tragic and there was not one thing we could do to change it except live through it.
I know thousands of bereaved parents and surviving siblings who have learned to live in the time they are given.
If you want to know how to face this crisis with courage, ask them.
Whether surrounded by friends or strangers, I sift through the words threatening to fly out of my mouth very carefully.
Like most of us, there’s a script in my head that doesn’t always bear sharing.
But unlike many, part of my script involves a child that lives in Heaven.
And I’m constantly weighing whether or not I should mention him even though the conversation leads my heart to a memory I very much want to speak aloud. It often makes others uncomfortable, awkward and upset when I do. So sometimes I just don’t.
I hate that I edit myself like that.
Read the rest here: Only Natural
There are so many ways to describe grief.
So many ways individual hearts walk this path.
For many of us there’s a sense of being locked in time, stuck in space, unable to leave the moment one received the news or the few days before and after.
It’s maddening that the earth still turns, the sun still rises and people go on with life when in so many ways our world is frozen in place.
Elizabeth Gilbert describes deep grief as a “coordinate on the map of time” and a “forest of sorrow”.
I like that.
Child loss is a place no parent wants to go. I found myself in territory so unfamiliar there was no way to get my bearings.
Left alone, I faltered, would have stayed lost, was doomed to walk in circles trying to find my way out.
I desperately needed a guide.
Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Thankfully some parents, further along in this awful journey, created safe spaces for broken hearts to gather and to share.
I am oh, so grateful to them for that!
Not everyone who finds the way to hope and light chooses to come back for those still wandering in the forest of sorrow.
But some do.
They retrace painful steps carrying a torch and say, “Come with me. I can show you the way to hope.”
