Today I am honored to welcome Laila from Loving an Angel Instead. She shares with us how she is transforming her grief into a legacy of love for her daughter Sahar. In doing so she is helping other bereaved families along the way. It always amazes me what the courageous individuals in our bereaved parent community do to give back to others. There is community love here. That is why healing can happen in our community, because of people like Laila.
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Hello there, my name is Laila and I am a bereaved parent. After 21 weeks of pregnancy, we were told that our little girl had an extreme form of Hydrocephalus. She would never be born alive. On May 7th 2013, she was born, and miraculously, she was born alive. Alive to say goodbye. She left us an hour later. In the blink of an eye, our world turned into a very dark place. There was so much sadness, pain, and heartbreaking grief… But there was also so much LOVE… In the earliest, most raw days of grief, I came across a few truly inspiring people going through the same loss (including the beautiful owner of this website). They have brought an incredible amount of comfort and healing to my heart. Reading all these stories, filled with so much sadness but at the same time this incredible love, made me feel less alone. It made me realize that I too, could survive this. Although the pain is still unbearable, although my heart will forever remain broken, I truly believe I can learn to enjoy the small things in life again.
Once you lose your child, a very hard reality follows. You lost her, she’s gone, it’s over. For a parent, that’s never ever the case. Which is why I felt the need to tell my story, Sahar’s story, and let everyone know that she was and will always be my daughter, that she is loved and remembered every single day, and that she is still a part of this family, even if she’s not with us today. Inspired by all the beautiful parents that share their story, their grief, their sadness, their feelings, and their incredibly heartwarming love, I felt I wanted to do the same. I wanted to #SayItOutLoud and tell the world that my daughter mattered, and always will. So I started this blogging journey on LovingAnAngelInstead.com
The blog was only a start. I came across the beautiful idea of creating memory boxes on Carly Marie’s inspiring website. After going through the idea with the local hospital and their entire medical staff, we finally kicked off this beautiful healing project. I truly hope these boxes of hope (that’s how I like to call them), bring comfort and healing to the hearts of parents going through the terrible heartbreaking pain that is pregnancy or baby loss. If you would like to help, take a look at my website. I’ve provided lots of information there on how you can help, or donate to help enabling me to continue this project.
Everyone thinks of loss as a sad and painful event. And it is. By all means, it is. It is heartbreaking, soul shattering… There are no words to describe this kind of pain. But my girl was my firstborn daughter, and for me, she was STILL a miracle. The most beautiful thing that EVER happened to me. The only sad thing is that she couldn’t stay. There was nothing sad about HER, only the circumstances were. That’s where I decided that I wanted to transform my grief into more than sadness and grief alone. I wanted it to become love; I wanted it to become beauty, because SAHAR was all about love and beauty. I wanted the whole world to understand what a beautiful impact she had on our lives… This is my way of honoring her. And it’s something I’m working on every day since we lost her, and I will keep doing so for the rest of my life.
Laila is a bereaved mother and the author of Loving an Angel Instead where she writes with love and beauty about her daughter Sahar. In effort to transform her grief she has started a "Boxes of Hope" memory box program in Belgium for families whose babies are born still.
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Hello there, my name is Laila and I am a bereaved parent. After 21 weeks of pregnancy, we were told that our little girl had an extreme form of Hydrocephalus. She would never be born alive. On May 7th 2013, she was born, and miraculously, she was born alive. Alive to say goodbye. She left us an hour later. In the blink of an eye, our world turned into a very dark place. There was so much sadness, pain, and heartbreaking grief… But there was also so much LOVE… In the earliest, most raw days of grief, I came across a few truly inspiring people going through the same loss (including the beautiful owner of this website). They have brought an incredible amount of comfort and healing to my heart. Reading all these stories, filled with so much sadness but at the same time this incredible love, made me feel less alone. It made me realize that I too, could survive this. Although the pain is still unbearable, although my heart will forever remain broken, I truly believe I can learn to enjoy the small things in life again.
Once you lose your child, a very hard reality follows. You lost her, she’s gone, it’s over. For a parent, that’s never ever the case. Which is why I felt the need to tell my story, Sahar’s story, and let everyone know that she was and will always be my daughter, that she is loved and remembered every single day, and that she is still a part of this family, even if she’s not with us today. Inspired by all the beautiful parents that share their story, their grief, their sadness, their feelings, and their incredibly heartwarming love, I felt I wanted to do the same. I wanted to #SayItOutLoud and tell the world that my daughter mattered, and always will. So I started this blogging journey on LovingAnAngelInstead.com
The blog was only a start. I came across the beautiful idea of creating memory boxes on Carly Marie’s inspiring website. After going through the idea with the local hospital and their entire medical staff, we finally kicked off this beautiful healing project. I truly hope these boxes of hope (that’s how I like to call them), bring comfort and healing to the hearts of parents going through the terrible heartbreaking pain that is pregnancy or baby loss. If you would like to help, take a look at my website. I’ve provided lots of information there on how you can help, or donate to help enabling me to continue this project.
Everyone thinks of loss as a sad and painful event. And it is. By all means, it is. It is heartbreaking, soul shattering… There are no words to describe this kind of pain. But my girl was my firstborn daughter, and for me, she was STILL a miracle. The most beautiful thing that EVER happened to me. The only sad thing is that she couldn’t stay. There was nothing sad about HER, only the circumstances were. That’s where I decided that I wanted to transform my grief into more than sadness and grief alone. I wanted it to become love; I wanted it to become beauty, because SAHAR was all about love and beauty. I wanted the whole world to understand what a beautiful impact she had on our lives… This is my way of honoring her. And it’s something I’m working on every day since we lost her, and I will keep doing so for the rest of my life.
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