at the kitchen table: speaking of faith

1. Before your loss, how would you describe your faith? How would you describe it now?

2. What do you believe about an afterlife? Where do you think your baby(ies) is/are now?

3. Have you had any experiences of visitation--spiritual, bodily, paranormal--from your baby(ies)? If you haven't, would you want to?

4. Glow in the Woods has always been a haven from talk of "angel babies." Why has this been important to you? How do you react to the term "angel baby"?

5. Are your family's beliefs different from yours? Has it caused any tension within your family relating to the death of your baby(ies)?

6.What do you say, if anything, to people--well-meaning or otherwise--when they say those cliche religious phrases like "God needed another flower in His garden" or "Your baby is with God now"?

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At the kitchen table: speaking of faith

At the kitchen table: speaking of faith

Many of Glow's contributors and readers are here to escape talk of religion—of God's plan, of our babies as angels, of life after death in some particular Heaven. But today's Kitchen Table discussion tackles questions of faith, something many of us do after the loss of our children. Some lose it. Some find it. Some, like me, limp along in a strange limbo. As if I'm still in shock, eighteen months later, from my son's stillbirth.

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at the kitchen table: connecting through loss

1. We know that sometimes families talk less and less about pregnancy or infant loss as time goes on. What, if any, other losses in your family were revealed to you after your loss? What was it like to hear about those losses?

2. Did anyone who had already experienced babyloss reach out to you in the months after your loss? What was it like to connect with others who had already been through babyloss?

3. If any of those babylost parents were from a different generation, what did you find was different about your experience from theirs?

4. Did you attend a local area support group after your loss? What was helpful--or not--about your support group?

5. What role has the internet played in connecting you to other babylost parents? How has that been different from connections you may have made in person?

6. Many of us have found, as time goes on, that we are suddenly in the supporting role, as "experienced" babylost parents. How has reaching out to others with newer losses helped you in your grief journey?

7. How have you found yourself relating to other people's grief in general? What about people around you--friends, coworkers, neighbors--who have experienced the loss of other family members, not babies?

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at the kitchen table: tick tock

at the kitchen table: tick tock

Babyloss parents often find themselves clinging to Auden's Stopped Clocks—the sense that life has frozen for us, and we're stuck in a (hellatious) moment while just outside our window, people scurry on with no idea what it is we're experiencing. For this Kitchen Table discussion, Glow's regular contributors explore the phenomenon of time—when there wasn't enough, or when it wouldn't stop.

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