I have so much more empathy for older folks since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.
I’ve always tried to be a patient listener when hearing that same story over and over and over but have to admit that sometimes I’d drift off or internally mock an elder because I was tired of hearing it.
Not anymore.
Because I understand now that it’s in the telling that one both commemorates and honors people as well as the past.
Read the rest here: I Need To Tell The Story (Even If You’ve Heard It Before)
Oh, we mamas are experts at waiting.
We wait for nine months to hold that little person growing inside us. We wait for them to learn to crawl, walk, talk and read. And then we wait to pick them up at school, for piano and dance lessons to be over and ball practice to end.
As long as our children are with us, we are always waiting for something.
We never expect to be waiting to join them in heaven.
But some of us are.
Read the rest here: Waiting With Hope
I’m no geologist, but from what I understand, earthquakes are nearly always “about to happen”. Fault lines guarantee it. Pressure is building underneath the surface of the earth and when it reaches a level that can no longer be contained, it spews.
Can I just let you in on a secret?
Bereaved parents are full of fault lines.
Read the rest here: Fault Lines: Bereaved Parents and Social Anxiety
A fellow bereaved mom commented on my recent holiday post with this question: How do you make joy, when your heart has no joy?
It was a good and honest query. One that stopped me in my tracks.
Read the rest here: Flickers Of Light, Guiding My Heart Home
I’m pretty sure most everyone older than five has suffered a bump, bruise or sprain that left them tender for more than a few minutes.
And if you have, then you know the slightest brush up against that sore spot can elicit quite the reaction.
There’s an emotional correlate to physical bruising. And when someone hits that nerve it hurts. Really, really hurts!
It’s impossible to know where all those places are on another person’s body, much less their heart. So we often cause accidental pain to one another.
Read the rest here: It’s Kind of Tender Just There
We all know how it is-you move, you lose an address or phone number, you lose touch.
But sometimes friendships end more abruptly-not because lives drifted apart but because one person became so uncomfortable she chose to walk the other way.
That’s what happens so often the other side of child loss. Friends disappear because loss makes them profoundly uncomfortable.
Read the rest here: HELP WANTED: Why Grievers Need Faithful Friends
Some of us only felt tiny hands and feet pressing against the inside of our body.
Some of us saw first steps or first grade.
Some of us watched our child drive away to college certain it was the beginning of an adventure, not the beginning of the end.
Read the rest here: I’d Still Choose You
When someone invites you in and serves up her deepest pain along with the coffee it might feel like a trap or a burden or a bother.
But it’s actually an act of great respect and trust.
Read the rest here: A Sacred Privilege
It happens in all kinds of ways.
For one reason or another, the tiny life budding in a belly never gets to see the light of day. Never takes a first breath. Never cries. Never opens his or her eyes to the mama waiting to meet her precious one.
So many mamas have experienced the excitement of watching the pregnancy test show positive only to endure days, weeks or months later, the sadness of saying good-bye to a little one they never got to meet.
Statistics tell us that one in four women will become part of this group during their lifetime.
But what statistics can never tell you about anything is why so, so many of the women who survive pregnancy and infant loss don’t talk about it.
Many think they can’t talk about it or shouldn’t talk about it because often the experience is so very personal.
It may be the pregnancy was never announced. It could be that the culture in which a mama lives doesn’t recognize life at conception so, really, what was lost? Perhaps many women in her family have had similar experiences and THEY didn’t “make a big deal” out of it, so why should she?
Then there’s guilt.
So, so much information is shoved into mothers’ faces about what they should and shouldn’t do to promote a healthy pregnancy and birth. Eat this, don’t eat that. Take this, don’t take that. Exercise-but not too strenuously. Drink water. Don’t drink alcohol or too much caffeine.
It’s easy to blame yourself when a baby stops growing.
Some brave mamas carry a baby for months and to the point of birth-see that precious bundle on an ultrasound, hear the heartbeat, watch and feel those legs kick-yet never hear a cry or hold a warm infant in their arms.
That’s a kind of awful no heart should have to bear.
And yet, that loss too is often unacknowledged.
How do you celebrate a life that was lived only inside the comfort and safety of the womb? How do you share a photo of your precious baby when the only one you have (if you have any) is of him wrapped in a blanket, eyes closed, your eyes crying?
If a second pregnancy follows any kind of pregnancy or infant loss, friends and family almost always pounce on the opportunity to push a mama’s heart forward fast and furious to the future of her “rainbow child” making it even less likely her missing baby is acknowledged or remembered.
But she never forgets.
A mama’s heart never lets go of the life that lived inside her.
That tiny baby-one week, one month, full term-is her son or daughter.
Counted among the others.
Just as precious.
Always.
I’m remembering with you, my sweet friends. Tonight I will light a candle along with millions who also remember, to honor the baby I never held. May the multiplied voices and hearts joined together help others hear the message that our child matters.
Every child matters.
❤ Melanie
I’ve written before about how I choose to leave some things just as Dominic left them-even over eight years later.
It’s my way of maintaining physical space in our home that represents the space in my heart where only he can fit.
It’s also more than that.
As time progresses, nearly every other tangible evidence that Dominic existed is being worn away.
Read the rest here: And The Gap Grows: Trying To Remember In a World That Forgets
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