Ethan's Hope

11/07/2020

This is just gorgeous! This is what’s called a gentle cesarean. LOVE this!!!! 🖤🖤🖤

05/30/2020

It’s NEVER okay to tell anyone grieving the loss of a loved one to “get over it”!!!!!

01/03/2020

Very true for me. I love loving people. 🖤

12/29/2019

Thinking of you all on this holiday season. Love to all! 🖤

It’s ok ❤️

11/09/2019

We are all in this together! 🖤

"I am a mother.
I am a bereaved mother.
My child died, and this is my reluctant path.

It is not a path of my choice, but it is a path I must walk mindfully and with intention. It is a journey through the darkest night of my soul and it will take time to wind through the places that scare me.

Every cell in my body aches and longs to be with my beloved child. On days when grief is loud, I may be impatient, distracted, frustrated, and unfocused. I may get angry more easily and I may seem hopeless. I will shed many, many, many tears. I won’t smile as often as my old self. Smiling hurts now. Most everything hurts some days, even breathing.

But please, just sit beside me.

Say nothing.

Do not offer a cure.
Or a pill, or a word, or a potion.
Witness my suffering and don't turn away from me.

Please be gentle with me.
And I will try to be gentle with me too.

I will not ever "get over" my child's death so please don’t urge me down that path.

Even on days when grief is quiescent, when it isn't standing loudly in the foreground, even on days when I am even able to smile again, the pain is just beneath the surface.

There are day when I still feel paralyzed. My chest feels the sinking weight of my child's absence and, sometimes, I feel as if I will explode from the grief.

Losing my child affects me in so many ways: as a woman, a mother, a human being. It affects every aspect of me: spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally. There are days when I barely recognize myself in the mirror anymore.

Grief is as personal to me as my fingerprint. Don't tell me how I should or shouldn’t be grieving or that I should or shouldn’t “feel better by now.” Don't tell me what's right or wrong. I'm doing it my way, in my time. If I am to survive this, I must do what is best for me.

My understanding of life will change and a different meaning of life will slowly evolve. What I knew to be true or absolute or real or fair about the world has been challenged so I'm finding my way, moment-to-moment in this new place. Things that once seemed important to me are barely thoughts any longer. I notice life's suffering more— hungry children, the homeless and the destitute, a mother’s harsh voice toward her young child- or an elderly person struggling with the door- abused animals crying out in pain.

There are so many things about the world which I now struggle to understand: Why do children die? There are some questions, I've learned, which are simply unanswerable.

So please don’t tell me that “God has a plan” for me. This, my friend, is between me and my God. Those platitudes slip far too easily from the mouths of those who tuck their own child into a safe, warm bed at night: Can you begin to imagine your own child, flesh of your flesh, lying lifeless in a casket, when “goodbye” means you’ll never see them on this Earth again? Grieving mothers— and fathers— and grandparents— and siblings and partners won’t wake up one day with everything ’okay’ and life back to normal. I have a new normal now.

As time passes, I may discover gifts, and treasures, and insights but anything gained was too high a cost when compared to what was lost.

Perhaps, one day, when I am very, very old, I will say that time has truly helped to heal my broken heart. But always remember that not a second of any minute of any hour of any day passes when I am not aware of the presence of my child's absence, no matter how many years lurk over my shoulder.

So don’t forget that I have a child whose absence, like the sky, is spread over everything as C.S. Lewis said.

Don’t forget to say, “How are you really feeling...?” Don’t forget that even if I do have living children, my heart still aches for the one who is not here— for I am never quite complete without my child.

My child may have died but my love — and my motherhood— never will."
- Dr. Joanne Cacciatore

Art: Woman with Dead Child, 1903, by Käthe Kollwitz, herself a bereaved mother and grandmother.
—
It takes a village. Join ours.



Get the #1 best-selling book, “You Are the Mother of All Mothers.” A gorgeous gift book for . ABedForMyHeart.com/buy/

11/03/2019

10/12/2019

Gut wrenching truth.

October is month.
“The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not, is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one whose children are well and intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear. Our children now come to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal, every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with their atoms – their hairbrushes, toothbrushes, their clothing.

We reach out for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded. A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed,it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly. At some point, in the distant future, the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened, but the empty space will remain–a life sentence.

Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our children in part, through talking about them, and our feelings for having lost them. Some go there with us; others cannot and, through their denial, add a further measure, however unwitting, to an already heavy burden.

Assuming that we may be feeling “better” 6 months later is simply “to not get it”. The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap–those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity.

And yet, somehow, there are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have understood, again each in their own way, that our children remain our children through our memory of them. Their memory is sustained through speaking about them and our feelings about their death. Deny this and you deny their life. Deny their life and you have no place in ours.

We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful, and the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice, we fear we would become truly unreachable and so we remain “strong” for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings, we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise.

People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard. Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every experience– and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will have actually managed to survive when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point nor who will still be with us.

We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those untarnished by such events, who wish to know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.”
- Michael Crenlinsten

It takes a village. Join ours.

Get the #1 best-selling book, “You Are the Mother of All Mothers.” A gorgeous gift book for . ABedForMyHeart.com/buy/

10/01/2019

Share your story or the story of a precious baby that has impacted your life!

04/14/2019

Daddy’s are SO important too!! Please don’t feel forgotten. You are worthy of your own grieving journey as well. 🖤

This is for the bereaved dads.
The dads who sat in hospital chairs with us while we waited.
The dads who held our hands when we stared at silent screens.
The dads who asked "Can I hold her now?" because you knew that time was precious.
The dads who came running when we yelled for them to "Come quick, I think something's wrong."
The dads who felt helpless.
The dads who would do anything to fix this.
The dads who couldn't leave work but would be there as soon as they could.
The dads who drove us to appointments even when they were so distraught they couldn't see where they were going.
The dads who said "It's okay," even when it wasn't..
The dads who knew just what to say.
The dads who struggled to find the words.
The dads who have cried.
The dads who have never cried.
The dads who are afraid to cry because it feels like they will drown in the tears.
The dads who speak up for us.
The dads who stand beside us.
The dads who carry children in their hearts.
This is for the bereaved dads, because this is for the dads.
We love you.
An Unexpected Family Outing / https://unexpectedfamilyouting.com/

04/02/2019

So very true. 💔

I am taking it a day at a time – and that is okay.

04/01/2019

There are SO many of us who are trying or who have been trying secretly for YEARS to get pregnant. The waiting, the testing, the excitement and anticipation before the huge disappointment, the hope of “that’s okay....we have next month”, the charting, plotting, planning, shots, meds, feeling crazy and sick, the multiple losses.....making love becomes a chore. Feeling isolated when I promise you’re not. Many of us women are on the same journey, just not vocalizing it. Nick and I have suffered from secondary infertility since we had Ethan. We wanted more children, but it seems God has different plans. Don’t feel alone Mama’s. You’re not alone and you’re not suffering through this by yourself. You are worthy!! Your journey is worthy!! Your BABY’s are worth it!!!!

Today is not a day of funnies. THIS is not funny. Before you do this. You better stop and have a think. If I see it, I’ll damn sure be saying something. 1 in 4 women suffer a miscarriage. 160 babies are born not alive in the US every day. This is not an April Fools Joke!!