We're all so different—from different places, and with different backstories. Different things led to this loss for me than for you. Some of us are ten days out. For others it's been ten years. Post-grief, we've picked up and let go a jumble of subsequent disappointments, joys, achievements, and gauntlets. There's a shorthand to shared experience that crosses everything that would otherwise make us strangers.
Read MoreJo-Anne, our forum moderator, is writing for us today. Her daughter Zia was stillborn on July 16, 2013. She says, "The years have passed and they will continue to do so. The sadness and initial rawness of grief has slowly subsided but there is still sadness there. It comes and it goes. Sometimes its a gentle breeze at other times a tornado ripping my insides. Explaining that isn't difficult, making people understand is. Opinions do not matter so much but how do we change the way society supports newly grieving parents if we cease the fight for significance of life. There truly is no footprint too small."
Read MoreOn that day in July, overcome as I was with the fear of being lost with her, I still had no idea of how lost, how irretrievably lost I would be, in a few hours, and then forever, without her. As I take a breath, a few steps, a turn, and then another in this town and in this life, I am forever paused at the stop sign where my little explorer Raahi last stood with me, and showed me the way.
Read MoreThe concept of God seemed to be filled with empty promises, ambiguous ideology about His view of humanity and morality, and cherry-picked scripture verses from the Bible that had nothing to do with me. God started to seem like a figment of everyone’s imaginations and nothing more, and yet I am still angry, and trying to salvage remnants of my faith.
Read MoreWhy Jake? Why any of our beautiful children? This is something I haven't learned yet, may never learn the answer to. Sadly, even if we could get an answer, there is no reason good enough. I have learned that my lot, like Don Quixote, is to bear the unbearable sorrow. What have you learned (or relearned or un-learned) in the months/years since your child(ren)'s death? What brings comfort or a sliver of enlightenment? What is simply too painful to integrate into your life?
Read MoreWe are a narrative species. When Joseph was died and born, we were conscious of his narrative. The way we shaped it, intentionally and not. We were afraid that Joseph would become his story. That, in the telling, he would be reduced to a tidy, practiced recitation safe for mass consumption.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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