Identity Crisis after my Stillbirth… Who am I suppose to be now?
Stillbirth & miscarriage open up this black hole and it devastatingly sucks in everything that was before. Our old life, old beliefs, relationships that can’t withstand the blast, and most debilitating is our identity before we lost our child.
…Who am I know? What do I do? How do I live? How can I parent my other kids? What is going to happen to my marriage? Why do I feel so alone?
This experience breaks everything down to its most basic forms. Everything seems so confusing and so hard. Waking up to the realization that our wombs are empty, yet our babies are gone. (In the beginning of our journey). Our faces are swollen half the time from the buckets of tears that have streamed down our faces. We are bare, we are exposed, vulnerable, and split wide open. We realize how cruel it can be to be human while at the same time being so insanely grateful to be alive. Losing a baby creates this duality that we will be living for the rest of our lives.
Everything we do we may do with a little extra caution, anxiety, indecisiveness. I noticed I didn’t like to make plans anymore, I didn’t want to be social for a time and I just worried about being stuck. I worried that I would never smile again, laugh again, or find the teeniest bit of joy. I didn’t know what to do next. I slapped a fake smile on whenever anyone spoke to me, pretending I had it all together because most of the time I didn’t have the energy to break down and cry again. Isn’t there a limit on how many tears we can lose?!
So then what do I do next?
Everything I knew and everything I was, was stripped away. I was blank. An angry, sad blank human. That had this postpartum body that carried my daughter past the 40-week mark and she died anyway.
Nothing made sense anymore.
And all I could do was get up each morning, live through the moment of “she’s dead” and keep going.
If I am being honest, ever since becoming a mom, my identity has changed over every season and every child. That is one of the coolest things about being a mom and parent. To be a better version of myself and the next version mother, I have to grow and change with the seasons.
I think this alone helped me to realize that I had to keep going. For me, I had 2 little girls that depended on me. And so I focused on them and the house. We spent so much time cuddling, we adopted a puppy that was born the same day Evelyn was. ( Synchronicities.) He brought so much love and joy and gave us a break from our grief. The girls had a focus and so did I. It became a soft place for us. For me.
I slowed down with everything and just tried to be. I had some of my best friends moving within months of my loss so my community became smaller and smaller and I became more reclusive. ( Military life problems) I couldn’t stand the trite problems of everyone around me, the surface issues that cause everyday irritations that people just get stuck in.
There were 2 things I knew…
I could not be around stagnant or stuck people- you know the type I am talking about. These are the same people who would allow me to sit in my grief and victimhood for the rest of my life if I wanted to. Complaining for the rest of my life.
I needed to do SOMETHING. I needed to HELP someone. I needed to give all this love to someone. ( Besides my girls, believe me, they probably got tired of my hugs haha).
Before I lost Evelyn I took my Postpartum Doula workshop so that I could be a doula! I started jumping into the work as soon as I could. As soon as Jon got home from his deployment.
I got my first family- my twin family. They are some of the most special people in the world to me. They trusted me and allowed me to help them in such a vulnerable and raw time. I loved it. It was HARD, but I loved it. I was also pregnant with my rainbow baby so I got to spend my nights with my twins and Emmett.
This gave me a sense of purpose. Of fulfillment. It also threw me into a million ideas about who I wanted to help and what I could do in this space. I was hooked on this field. I was right where I needed to be. And it was only the beginning of my journey. Almost 5 years later, I am chasing so many dreams and trying to create spaces for doulas and moms and help loss moms turn their pain into a purpose.
If you feel as if you can’t seem to “move on”. Just know there is no moving on from our babies… like why would we even want to do anything that suggests moving away from our babies? They will always be with us. The grief will hit us throughout our lifetime at unexpected times and we will be triggered but that doesn’t stop this life.
We can grieve and find purpose.
We can grieve and feel love and joy.
We can grieve and still spend our days with a smile on our faces.
We are Bereaved MOMS.
