I’ve recently started coaching baby loss moms on how to get past that place of “stuck” in their grief and emerge into a place a joy that honors their lost child.
Making the decision to start offering this type of coaching was difficult. (Understatement of the year.) It took months of soul searching and insecurity and fear and ultimately, the decision to simply follow my heart and let my angels guide me where I am needed. And that’s the doorstep where I was dropped off.
I believe I struggled with this for so long for many reasons, but a big one was – “What can I really offer that these women can’t get in an online support group or therapy.” but that was just my brain speaking louder than my heart. My heart was saying “There are So many women that suffer these losses that can’t face their loss. For whatever reason, they can’t. But they want to. They need someone to hold their hand. Right now, that person is you.”
That’s a hefty load to absorb. So I ignored it.
But the universe had different plans.
The universe dropped conversations in my lap that made me question the universal perception of baby loss and the rampant idea that we can just “get over it.”
The universe placed women in my path who were yearning to face their long ago losses, but were terrified to open the door.
The universe was not going to let me get away from my responsibility that easy.
And I’ve learned to realize, in just minutes of conversations how blessed I am to have the luxury of grief. How blessed I am that my daughters came and went at a time in my life where I was surrounded by stability, love, and well-intentioned, (if not always well-delivered) support.
In the depths of my grief I wondered how women years ago coped without the support and sisterhood I’d found online. I thought of the 1950’s cliché about women having nervous breakdowns and their husbands committing them to the psych ward and I thought – “Well, surely, those women were grieving a loss. I most certainly would have been committed to a psych ward if I didn’t have this collection to women letting me know I am not, in fact, crazy, despite the crazy-making thoughts in my head.”
But even today, there are women who find themselves alone in their loss, without the luxury of grief. Girls who lose babies they are not given “permission” to cry over. Mothers denied access to their children who’ve passed, who are told “It’s better for you this way. Get over it.” and who have no one to turn to. Whose lives, very realistically, could crumble around them if they take for themselves the luxury of grief.
So they “stuff” it. Lock it in a box inside themselves and pretend to throw away the key.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes they carry that closed box all the way to their grave.
But that box is filled with love.
It’s LOVE.
And it’s been wrapped with chains of regret, guilt, remorse, sadness, shame, and fear.
I feel like it’s my calling to help those who are ready to pull back those chains, one link at a time. I don’t know how, and I don’t know why me. But it’s a calling I simply can’t ignore any longer.
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