The building buzzed with excited kids and parents, lights blinked and carols played. My boys and I stood in line, my oldest son cradling the weighted bear we use to hold our baby’s place in pictures. The bear was dressed in Christmas jammies, the ones I had spotted in a store the night before we…
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Resuming a Career After Loss
Continue...When I left my satisfying career after the birth of my second child, my husband and I devised a plan to get me back to work as soon as our oldest began kindergarten. We had all sorts of plans. To say little Reece wasn’t the ultimate surprise pregnancy would be coloring it lightly. I really…
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Generations Of Loss: The Silence Breaker
Continue...It was simple how she broke the silence. “I was nine when my baby brother was born. I remember I would come home from school and my mother would hand him to me and I would sit and rock him, sometimes feed him a bottle, so my mother could make dinner before my father arrived…
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Your Marriage Isn’t Doomed After Loss
Continue...While talking to my friend the other day, she told me she and her husband are divorcing. She, like me, lost her youngest son to unexplained stillbirth. That got me remembering that one time, jut a few short months after my son died and was born. I Googled in fear. I Googled “Statistics of couples…
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Healing Without Another Baby
Continue...“There are many ways to heal,” she said, holding one cupped hand up like it was holding something precious. “Even now, watching your hands, I noticed you elevated the second hand higher than your other to indicate that you feel having another baby is superior to another path. But each story of healing is of…
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Grief And Letting Go: A Lost Friendship
Continue...Our friendship had endured for many years. But I’ll never forget the phone call she and I had. I was six months into my life as a bereaved mother. I had become a recluse due to the anxiety attacks I suffered when I encountered a crying baby in public. And I hadn’t slept well since…
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Six Ways Loss Has Positively Impacted My Life
Continue...Often when I think about losing my son, I don’t focus on the positive changes his death caused. I’m not sure anyone does. I know there was a time in my grief that I could not ever imagine good being born out of such pain. But in reflection, I can see how the loss of…