How to Celebrate Life While Honoring Your Loss and Your Baby.
Oophf. This is a hard one and honestly, it took me a while to figure out the delicate dance of loss and life. I mean in all reality every single one of us will have to face this duality. Whether it is the loss of a baby or older family member, sibling, parent, etc. And while a reality, it doesn’t make it any less easier.
Losing Evelyn taught me that I had no control over things that happened in life. There was no explanation that 100% explained WHY she died, let alone WHY it had to be her after a perfect pregnancy. Life didn’t make sense anymore. The first year was a blur and the last thing I did or even thought about was celebrating life. I was angry, bitter even. I hated myself, I hated God, I hated this world. How could you carry a baby to term and lose them in the blink of an eye? Life was SO hard, among the loss there were so many other things that happened to me in that year that caused me so much pain. I didn’t know if I was going to make it or not.
So HOW do we do this? How can we celebrate and LIVE our lives while honoring our babies in this lifetime?
I had to let go of the fact that I somehow could have prevented this, because “what ifs” will eat your life up. You will spend every minute of your life, if you let it, in your mind trying to figure out how to change the outcome of what has already come to pass. It’s insidious, to say the least.
I had to forgive myself and my body for thinking it was my fault. There is nothing I could have done. And as I write this, I still have the feeling that “What if… I would have gone in sooner?” or “ What if I would have trusted my instincts?” I’m almost 5 years out and this still happens once in a while. Nothing is concrete in our life, even though I’m on my healing journey, nothing is healed for good. If you have been on this journey for a while, you know that new things can cause this wound to reopen. And that is OK! It doesn’t mean everything you have done is pointless or not worth doing, keep going!
I had to acknowledge the pain that I carry, the LONGING for my daughter. This is hard, it is an ache, I’ve never felt and some days it is so physically intense, like cramping in my stomach, the feeling of sinking in the pit of my stomach, our grief can cause physical sensations. But again, this doesn’t mean you and I are not healing, it just means that this baby, meant and means the world to us, and our bodies were attached to them and as mothers, we will always be attached to them. Right now I’m thinking that it has been almost 5 years since I held her in my arms for the first and last time. Of course, we long for them.
I had to come to terms that living in a duality of life and death is a thing and just because our society doesn’t talk about it doesn’t make it not so. Every day is knowing how brief our lives can be but also choosing to live fully, not just survive. I often talk about the fact that I was living on autopilot before I lost her, not really understanding how incredible that our souls are here in these living bodies and that we don’t know anything beyond it, at least in this realm of life. I started really living. Some days I feel like I don’t, but that's because I have a one-year-old who doesn’t sleep well and I’m cranky most days. It’s currently 5:04 am and it is the only time I have to myself. We have to be intentional in our days, in this life. We have to CHOOSE to live better, to live more whole, and to live more fully. It isn’t easy, it never will be.
We honor her all year long, not just on her birthday, but as often as we can. We talk about her at least once a day. Her photo is up on the wall, we have trinkets and little things we were given to remember her, her urn is sitting right here on my desk in front of me and I often touch and hold it when I’m working— a reminder of what I do in honor of her, but to HONOR her life as well. Anytime I am in Target and I see an outfit that I would have bought her, I think, Evelyn you would have loved this– come on all little girls love to dress up, well lots of them do anyways. I talk to her in my head, I speak words out loud when I’m out on my walks and I miss her. I believe she is always with me. I often feel, what I believe is her presence. No one can tell me otherwise, because they are not me, they have not walked my path.
Her birthday is a celebration, although some moments are sad, most of the day we do fun things to honor her. Not sure what that looks like this year, but I ordered matching family shirts that say, Evelyn’s Mom, and Evelyn’s Dad, Evelyns Big Sister/Little Brother, and we will go pay for people's orders, I want to do something different this year so I’ll definitely share when we do it!
If you're in your early stages of loss and intense grief, some of this advice or writing may not be for you and that is OKAY. One day it will be.
Some days you have to hang on for dear life. Some days will feel so light you're not sure why you haven’t experienced it before. Take each day as it comes, honor your baby in any way that feels good and right to you. Don’t take too much into account what others think or feel– this is your baby. Just like we honor adults in death, honoring a baby shouldn’t be that much different. They were ours, we carried them in our wombs in life and death. They were pure love and innocence and honoring them is part of our life’s journey.
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