I didn’t know last year that there was an International Bereaved Mother’s Day celebrated the Sunday BEFORE the U.S. Mother’s Day.
I hope that my bereaved mother friends took advantage of that day to think about and honor their missing child(ren).
But we still have to make it through tomorrow. And that can be very challenging.
I wrote this last year: Mother’s Day as a Bereaved Mother
So, more than twenty years on a farm and I can NOT back a trailer. Nope. Can’t do it.
One day I spent hours trying to teach myself how to do it. Never was able to do anything other than manage to jackknife the trailer, go unhook it and start over.
When I go somewhere with a trailer I do one of two things: (1) I find a space where I can drive in and be able to just make a loop or (2) I find the nearest person who CAN back a trailer, hand them my keys and ask them to do it.
I feel NO shame.
But that’s not the case with other things I can’t do. So many times I try to avoid admitting that I am unable to meet certain people’s expectations or do certain things that I either used to be able to do or feel I SHOULD be able to do.
I think the reason I don’t mind outing myself on trailers is because that confession usually gets a laugh or a knowing look from the person who helps me or an admission from someone standing near at the feed store that they also have trouble backing up a trailer.
But when I say, “I just don’t think I’m up to teaching VBS” or “I’d love to come to that event but I’ve reached my social quota this week” or “I’m still struggling with driving by that spot or eating at that restaurant” it’s often met with (at best) a quizzical look or (at worst) a comment about how I should be “better” by now.
And then I DO feel shamed. I feel like I don’t measure up, like I’m not as valuable as the next person or that I have failed some cosmic test.
You know what though? That’s a reflection on other people’s lack of compassion and experience or their personal insecurity NOT a reflection of my worth.
It is really just fine for me to admit my limitations because EVERYONE has limitations.
I can’t lift a 250 lb barbell. But I can whip up dinner for fifty people. I can’t read Chinese but I can read Dr. Seuss with an accent and hit all the rhymes on cue. I can’t run a marathon but I can work all day without complaining (most of the time).
I’m human (surprise!). So are you.
I have some limitations as a result of burying a child. You may have limitations because of age or disease or something else I don’t know about or can’t see.
That’s OK.
Let’s make a pact: I’ll take you as you are and you can take me as I am. I’ll help you when you need help and you can help me when I need help.
We will extend grace and receive grace as needed to make life work.
Isn’t that really the essence of human community?
Some days I go gangbusters-rip through my “To Do” list from top to bottom before lunchtime.
And some days I can barely get up out of the chair in the morning for a second cup of coffee.
It depends.
Most times I have no idea what throws me into a tailspin.
Oh, I’m prepared for the “circle the date on the calendar days” like Mother’s Day (coming up!), Dominic’s birthday, his heaven day and the holidays. But there are random, not-special-occasion-days that plunge my head under a grief wave that I did not see coming.
Maybe it’s the smell of cut grass through an open window or the sound of a motorcycle thrumming at the end of our lane or the sight of trees full of leaves (again-another season he isn’t here). I really don’t know.
The drowning feeling may last five minutes or five hours. All I can do is go with it and hope the wave spits me out sooner rather than later.
And they DO pass.
My heart is always tender, always aware of missing Dominic. But it is better able to join in laughter and celebration than it was even six months ago.
I no longer feel as if I am drowning every moment of every day with only a gasp of air now and then.
Instead I feel like I’m swimming-tired and often out of-sight of shore-but managing most of the time to keep my head above water.
Grief waves come. They will always come. I have to endure the choking, sputtering, frightening, drowning feeling when they do.
But they are not the only thing I feel now.
And for that, I am very grateful.
I write because it’s important to me and because I want to share freely what I feel God is teaching me in this Valley of the Shadow of Death.
I don’t have affiliate links on my blog, don’t sell books, posters or merchandise and have no plans to do so.
But I am jealous of the content I produce. Not jealous because I think it is of high value but jealous because the words are wrung from ny heart each evening to be posted the next morning. Jealous because they reflect MY experience, expose MY heart and contain details of MY journey.
In all the time I’ve been sharing, I have never had a post stolen, to my knowledge. Until the other day when I found another blogger had re-blogged my post, “International Bereaved Mother’s Day” and given credit (appropriately) to where she had found it-on a Facebook page.
I followed the link and yep, there it was-MY post, copied and pasted changed-only to exclude Dominic’s name and replace it with “child”. Even the graphic I chose was used.
I contacted the page and they have agreed to correct the post and add the link to the blog. I appreciate that.
But in responding to my concerns, the page administrator indicated that it had been found and reposted from another page ( I don’t know which one). And that upsets me.
I know social media is risky business and that I can’t stop anyone from doing whatever they want to once I hit “publish”. But I would ask that in this community of bereaved parents we show one another the respect anyone deserves and honor our individual contributions, whatever they may be.
Taking the words of another and passing them off as your own is plagiarism. It is wrong and it is hurtful.
I will keep writing and risking but now I’m on guard and I hate that.
If you are a regular reader/poster/sharer I ask that you help me watch for this in the future.
I want people to share.
That’s the purpose of writing-that one more heart my be encouraged or strengthened for another day in this Valley. So share away!
But please do it honestly 🙂 ❤
Don’t judge me but in an effort to add a bit of color to my entryway and make peace with the fact that goats eat EVERYTHING-I’ve created pots of colorful silk arrangements. And if I do say so myself, they look pretty authentic as long as you don’t examine them too closely.
This morning I woke to find my carefully arranged fake flowers strewn across my front yard. Strong winds during the night had lifted them out of the pots and carried them everywhere-betraying their true nature.
No pretending now.
As I stooped down to gather the remnants and reposition them I thought about how much of my own life is spent trying to look better than I really am. How often am I arranging “fake flowers” in an effort to fool the eye of the beholder?
And who am I trying to impress anyway?
When the winds of life come blowing hard, all that “fake me” gets stripped away. I’m not strong enough to withstand the wind and keep pretending.
It hardly seemed like a gift at the time, but when Dominic left us, I realized that I had been utterly exposed-every false thing was stripped away and I was standing, defenseless and naked-emotions everywhere, my ability to “keep up appearances” absolutely GONE.
For a time I no longer tried to curate my life so it met with others’ approval.
But old habits die hard and I find myself slipping back into the rut of trying to be something I’m not. Pride clings to every pore and insists that if I don’t do the right thing, say the right thing and look the part, people will turn away.
Wouldn’t it just be better if I was real ALL the time?
Wouldn’t my relationships be stronger if they were built on honest sharing and authentic connections?
I have learned through the years that God does not want just our happy; He also really wants our sad. Everything is not fine, and God wants to hear about it. He is drawn to us when we’re mourning and blesses us in a special way. God is not up there minimizing our pain and comparing it to others who have it worse than we do. God wants all pain to be surrendered to Him, and He has the capacity to respond to it all with infinite compassion.
~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine, p. 35
So I’m taking back the gift of authenticity that was purchased at such high cost.
I’m re-embracing the honesty that being stripped of all pretense exposed.
I’m keeping my fake flowers but I’m ditching the fake me.
“A joy-filled heart is curative balm, but a broken spirit hurts all the way to the bone.” ~Proverbs 17:22 VOICE
Laughter is good for my heart. Not just my physical blood-pumping organ, but the emotional center of my being.
And in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, laughter can be a real life-saver.
It’s not betraying Dominic-although it kind of felt that way in the first few weeks-it’s honoring his sense of humor and celebrating his life.
Our family spent hours laughing around the table, in the living room and passing wry texts back and forth.
I firmly believe there will be laughter in Heaven. I think that part of joy is great big belly laughs that will shake me from head to toe.
In the meantime, I’m going to keep practicing down here.
I know that others want desperately me to be “better”. They want me to be happy and carefree and back to the Melanie they knew before child loss.
And not just for their sake, for mine too.
It’s hard to watch someone you care about in pain.
But my reality has been forever changed.
Read the rest here: Love Doesn’t End
International Bereaved Mother’s Day is observed the Sunday before Mother’s Day in the United States. This year it’s Sunday, [May 4, 2025].
I didn’t even know such a day existed until I was a mom that needed it.
For those of us who have children in heaven, setting aside a day to acknowledge that unique mother/child relationship is helpful.
Traditional Mother’s Day is meant to be a time of celebration. A day when children send cards or flowers or give gifts to honor their mom and let her know that years spent pouring into their lives are appreciated.
Lots of church pews and restaurant tables are filled with family as children come home to be with mom.
But Dominic can’t come home.
That makes Mother’s Day complicated for me.
It means that while I am thrilled to spend it with the children who can make it home, there is always a tinge of sadness to the celebration. And I hate that. Because they deserve a whole-hearted mama.
So I’m thankful this other day exists. Thankful for a day when I can think about and speak about and embrace the child that won’t be with me next weekend.
Because Dominic is STILL my son. He is still very much a part of my heart. And I need to be able to speak that aloud for others to hear.
Some mamas will be drawing or painting hearts on their hands and writing their missing child’s name inside as a beautiful outward testimony to an inward reality. Every day we carry our missing child in our hearts.
So if you know a bereaved mama, give her a hug Sunday.
Make time and give space for her to share.
And then listen, love and lift her up.
I bend down and bump my head against memories.
“Mama, look at THAT!”
“Have you ever seen one of those?”
“Is it true toads give you warts? He lives under that rock. Don’t move it-let him live there because he eats bugs!”
“Why is the tail blue? What happens when it breaks off?”
Young boys found toads and luna moths, blue-tailed skinks and lizards Older boys hid with air-soft guns to ambush the other team. Young men changed oil and car parts.
And one summer a laughing Dominic lifted me high in the backhoe bucket so I could paint the top trim of the house.
Synapses fire and lightning flashes through my brain in seconds. ONE corner of my house-all this.
Every room holds memories. Every footfall echoes past days. Every window frames some precious vignette in my mind’s eye.
Inescapable.
Most days I’ve learned to turn down the volume. But today it would not be denied.
And I think, “How would I have survived those precious, precious years if I had known what was coming?”
Thank God I didn’t.
Can I just say I’m not a fan of church signs?
I could list a dozen reasons but here I will simply list one: It is impossible to constrain good theology to the few words that will fit on most church signs.
The temptation to be funny, cute or trite generally overcomes any desire to be biblically accurate.
Case in point-just down the road from me is this sign:
THERE ARE NO PROBLEMS, ONLY OPPORTUNITIES FOR GOD TO WORK.
I could write for days on why I hate (yes, HATE!) this sign. But I’ll restrain myself.
Here are the top three reasons I want to close my eyes when I pass it:
This week alone I have dealt with at least ten “problems” that required practical solutions in addition to prayers that God would help work them out.
Did He make some things fall in place that otherwise might not? Probably. And for that I am very thankful.
But did He shower solutions from the sky like raindrops? No. I had to face the problems, look for solutions and ask for help from others.
When Christ instituted the church it was not for us to sit inside four walls and dole out pithy platitudes to passersby. It was for us to be His hands and feet in the world.
Truth is that God DOES work. But most often He works through US.
All around us are people hungry for the Good News of Jesus Christ.
If we are going to put out a sign, could it just say, “We welcome the broken, the wounded, the hurting, the ones with no hope”?
Isn’t THAT what Jesus came to do?
thelifeididntchoose 