08/06/2024
I thought about sharing this first post as a video, but I feel that the crying is distracting and really want you to hear my message.
I'm going to teach you how I prepare a Hearts Release, if you'd like to know, so that you can prepare a Hearts Release, too. That will be later, but first, I want to tell you why.
Something spectacular happens at every Hearts Release. The sky opens and transforms right before us. It's wondrous and amazing.
This year, it was something different. It wasn't given to all of us, and I am so sad for that. This year, it was something just for me. The entire 7 hour drive home, I was contemplating what I'm sharing now. Talking it over with my daughter. Crying. Thinking some more.
And the dozens of butterflies who flittered above, alongside, and near us, as we drove the entire way home, was more than noticeable. It was an obvious declaration.
My child who is not alive would be 13. Stillbirthday is 13.
And I think there's something to my kiddos becoming teenagers, that shifts things in the way I parent.
It's become sort of a family joke, the way I do not share my babies, particularly when they are babies. Folks leaning in to make contact? "No thank you." For real, for real. "Please don't actually breathe over my child." "Here, you can touch his foot (with socks on)."
This is probably from my childhood trauma, something I'm still sorting through - seven times seventy.
But somewhere around the teenager mark, I start to realize that I really do actually have to share my children with the great big world. It starts off small, you know? I've shared Hearts Release details with incredible stillbirthday doulas over the years, so that they too can prepare one for their communities. But even that, these years later, feels a little bit more exclusive, like I'm holding tight, a little more than maybe I ought to be.
Thirteen years ago, when I first began stillbirthday, I poured everything I knew as a mom and doula about uneventful third trimester birth, and translated that into birth in the second trimester, and birth in the first trimester. There are birth plans for every birth experience. Links to resources and supportive ideas - the whole thing is free, and available to anyone, anywhere. The doula training? It's just leaning in to these things with more detail, and even that, is always incredible affordable. But it's time to stretch even more.
So, I'm going to be... well... releasing, the Hearts Release.
I've seen families drive 8 hours to attend.
I've seen them return to attend more than one. This year, someone attended representing 12 years of being part of the stillbirthday community. Someone else attended a Hearts Release about 4 years ago. And another attended the Hearts Release last year.
And then they all drove all the way home.
And all I can do is muster feeble trinkets, hugs that could never reach way down into the bruised parts of their souls, pauses that could never capture the universe of emptiness, while cradling thousands upon thousands of wee paper Hearts, and watch as they open their hands and let the babies' names be carried by the breeze, for just a moment, floating gently until they drift above waters and then burrow into soil to be changed into flowers.
I can never give enough away. I can never produce enough gestures of kindness toward these brave, vulnerable, mighty, loving people. I can never create an elaborate enough of a special event.
I can't bring their babies to life in all the ways our parent hearts long for.
I can't. And I am left feeling defeated and raw.
So maybe if there was a Hearts Release closer to their home, the drive wouldn't be so long. So silent. So empty for them.
So before I handwrite even one beloved baby's name onto a Heart, I would need that family to know where my heart is. And mine is so broken. So, deeply, broken.
My daughter and I have talked so very long and often about this. She wanted a larger place in the Hearts Release and we ran this year with her having that - y'all, for real, wait until you see her in the photos. She's such a loving sister.
But soon, she will be of an age where folks would have to ask her to clarify - "Have you experienced pregnancy and infant loss?" And, I pray more than you can imagine that she is never the mother of a beloved baby not alive. She is a sister, an incredible sister, to a precious child not alive. Her experience matters. But to fully represent the Hearts Release as she continues to get older wouldn't be as authentic as we feel it should be. You deserve better than having to ask the question, and she deserves better than having to be asked it.
I need to give you the best. And I am a mess with some real work I need to do to heal, from some long overdue grieving of my own. I miss my baby who isn't alive. I want to keep my child all to myself.
But alas, it is time to release. And I will.
And as we connect, we'll even be able to coordinate where Hearts Release events will be held. You'll have Hearts Release events you'll get to choose from! And then I can attend them, too.
This will come with questions, and in time, I'll be answering them here on my wall. For now, I need to let the tears fall as they've so desperately longed to do for so very, very long.
Friends, please don't give up on me. There are more things I want to share with you soon. Things that are deep and meaningful and hopeful and healing to me. I want us both to be excited when I share them.
