Letters to Nora - March 12th, 2013

March 12th, 2013

Dear Sweet Nora,

I have found writing again.  The space that has been left empty in my heart by your absence has been driving me to fill it.  I am moved to create, to form, to produce, to give birth.  I guess I do this because that is what my life was the last nine months with you.  You were my novel, my poem, my sonnet.  You were the love in my words made into life.  But now, words are all I have of you.  Not even many memories to call our own.  

But, Nora, how you have opened my world even in your absence. I was expecting to grow and change when you were born into this world, as all parents will.  I wanted to blossom, to transform, to become.  I wanted to find a new role; a new meaning in life.  I was so nervous for this, so fearful, so scared, but so eager to take on this challenge of change.  However, this transformation did not come in its expected form, as most profound changes often do.

Your death resulted in my rebirth of sorts.  In order to fill the void inside of me, I have revived parts of me that have lain dormant for days, weeks, years.  Parts of me I have not seen since my days as a child.  Your death brought me closer to my inner voice, my inner truth.  I draw on this well within me, this well of love and peace, where I believe you reside.  I feel once again connected to all parts of me.  It’s as if my body and soul are meeting again, in an effort to find you, to feel you there. 

Nora, no matter how much pain this union of fruitless searching brings, I cherish it.  I cherish it because it brings me comfort.  It is as if the writing, the creativity, the voice within, is a surgeon slowly suturing the wound on my heart by pulling the thread and needle through each inch of the torn apart vessel, doing his best to save the heart, to save me from joining you in that dark abyss.  Little does this doctor know that even if he were to give me a transplant, he would not be able to heal my grief.  There will always be a scar from where the new one is attached to my body.   There will always be a little reminder of the broken heart that was once there.  

But, writing, the creativity, the voice within me, is slowly touching the pain, washing it away in spurts, like a rain shower in the sun that blurs the side walk chalk left by the children.  The pain will always be, in some form or another, but maybe the pain, like my writing, can create, form, produce, and give birth to a new piece of art, like the rain changes a chalk ‘life-like’ portrait into a Picasso.

So I guess what I am saying, Nora, is your essence, your being, has moved me, changed me, brought me back to a child’s wonder while at the same time it has aged my soul.  I wish this could have happened with you in my arms instead of in my mind.  I really do wish all of that. I really do.

Love Always & Forever, 

Mom 

Faith's Lodge

My Husband and I attended Faith's Lodge in January of this year, three weeks after Nora's death.  The lodge is a gorgeous facility nestled in the northern woods of Wisconsin next to a small pond surrounded by tall pine trees.  Faith's Lodge is a special place dedicated to healing after child loss.  Here bereaved parents and families who have experienced the death of a child or are unfortunately, preparing for their child's death due to terminal illness, can come to focus on their grief and their child.

Faith's Lodge was founded by Mark and Susan Lacek in honor of their daughter Faith, their first born child, who was stillborn at 38 weeks gestation in 2000.  Mark and Susan opened Faith's Lodge's doors in 2006 as a tribute to their daughter's memory and to provide other bereaved parents a serene place to focus on their grief and meet others who have walked the dark path after a child dies. The ultimate goal of Faith's Lodge is to provide families with hope and healing during their darkest hour.

The lodge provides weekend retreats that brings together parents that have experienced the same type of child loss. Nick and I participated in one of these weekend retreats with four other couples and one mom that had all experienced the death of their child during pregnancy or shortly there after. But the lodge offers retreats specializing in different child death situations including SID's, teen death, terminal illness, and even children that have past away in their college years.  They even do specialized groups for child death due to gun violence.

When others ask what we did at Faith's Lodge, Nick and I often reply, "We spent time with Nora."  While we were there we were able to focus our attention on our daughter, share stories about our pregnancy with other parents.  We were able to speak her name without shame to those who understood the pain and the pleasure from doing so.  Some of our best relationships and connections were made at Faith's Lodge and the other bereaved parents are the ones I feel the closest to in my journey because of the focused time we spent together sharing about our children, the loss of hopes and dreams we had for them, along with our few but magical memories we cherish of them.

The weekend consisted of many organized but laid back activities including journal making for the women, wood working for the men, and group therapy.  One activity we did at the lodge that I found incredibly healing and special was the "heart stone" exercise.  Here we picked out a heart shape rock and painted it and specialized it to represent our departed child.  When we were ready, we would place the rock out by the Hope Bridge, with other children's memorial heart stones.

I vividly remember the last morning of our stay, when Nick and I walked down to the bridge hand in hand, holding the stone in my free palm and preparing to say goodbye to Nora in another ritualized way. As we trampled through the snow I brought Nora's heart stone close to my face and whispered loud enough for Nick to hear, "Goodbye Nora.  I will always love you." And with a kiss to the stone I handed it to Nick and he brought Nora's stone up to his lips and kissed it gently as he would have his daughter's forehead and said, "I love you my baby girl."  After we kissed her rock goodbye each one last time we placed her heart stone in a tree by the bridge where Nora's stone now rests with other children's stones who have left this earth and their parents too soon.

Words can not describe the importance and healing qualities of Faith's Lodge and what it provides.  It was an important part of our healing journey and in assisting us in connecting with others and starting the journey of healing through our connections through our time spent there and the shared experiences and memories we made with others.  The combination of nature, others who understand, and rituals in healing that Faith's Lodge provided laid out a framework for Nick and I to move forward in our grief towards healing and finding hope, as Faith's Lodge sets out to do.

If you need to get away with others who know child loss and who walk with grief like you do, consider contacting Faith's Lodge.  Here you will be able to take a break from the chaos of life and truly focus on your deceased child in a way the brings healing.   Faith's Lodge is a secular organization that is not based in any religion and is open to all who have experienced child loss.  A stay at Faith's Lodge does cost $50 a night, but includes rooming, food, and programming.  Faith's Lodge strives to serve all those who wish to visit and does not turn anyone away for financial reasons.  Scholarships to cover the cost of the stay are available on their Website.  For more information go to their Website at FaithsLodge.org, it's a special place.     

To see what others say about their stay check out my friend's article Beginning To Heal in Lasting Imprint's webpage.  Here Becky talks about her stay at Faith's Lodge along with quoting others who stayed there with her and what they gained from their time there.    

      

My Grief Project March - The Importance of Friends Old & New

“In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook 

The Importance of Old Friends

Nick and I have been lucky when it comes to our relationships with our friends since Nora died.  From the very beginning our friends have been supportive.  Over 100 people came to her funeral, which was unexpected, since we thought it was going to be a small event.  Since then our close friends have reached out to us, embraced us, and have also given us the room we need when we aren't in the mood for friends.

But some people aren't as lucky. I have read other people's blogs about how their friends just didn't understand why they were grieving the loss of their baby so much.  I have also heard from other 'baby lost' moms about how some of their friendships have changed, and even ended, due to their friend not being able to understand how to relate or connect to them as parents whose child has died.  Going through the loss of my daughter has caused enough pain and grief; I can't imagine the pain that is added on top of that for those who can't find support in their once closest friends.  

However, if you are "prepared to battle the hurricane together" with your grieving friend, as Kristine Brite McCormick, author of Cora's Story (a blog) so elequently puts it, then there are resources availble to you.  One of those resources is Kristine Brite McCormick's downloadable pamphlet When a Friend's Baby Dies, a how-to guide on how to provide support to your grieving friend during this difficult time.  In the pamphlet she discusses what not to say, how to help immediatly after the loss, along with advice about how to interact with your grieving friend, such as remembering to use the child's name, calling her even if they don't answer, and not judging her grief process.

What I have found most helpful and supportive from my friends, is that they have been willing to provide support in the form of actually letting me talk about Nora at times and at other times distracting me by providing something to do or not talking about my grief at all.  One of the greatest gifts my friends have been able to give me is not treating me any different then before.  Personally, I didn't want people to feel sorry for me.  I wanted my friends to remember that I was still me--Lindsey--but at the same time understand that parts of me had changed.  This is a difficult task to ask of a friend who doesn't walk the road of grief after child loss, but my friends have navigated this terrain well. 

The Importance of New Friends

Even though our old friends have been extermely supportive, there is still something comforting in talking to other parents who have experienced child loss.  Research states that often times bereaved parents find that their friends and family can't always comprehend, relate, or understand the pain they are going through, and I must say to my old friends that it's okay that they don't understand because we don't want them to have to.  Since family and friends can't always meet these support needs it is natural and important to make new friends during your journey through grief after child loss.

Nick and I have made some new friends and relationships through our time at Faith's Lodge and other supportive connections and networks that have linked us with grieving parents like ourselves.  I find that with these new relationships there comes a sense of relief in connecting over our shared experiences.  It's nice to have others in our lives that we can go out to dinner with, where we talk about every day topics, and then in the next sentence talk about our dead child, and then go back and talk about the weather with knowing that our new friend doesn't see this string of conversation as morbid or awkward.

The importance of these new relationships have been researched and studied by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore and Laura Umphrey in Coping with the Ultimate Deprivation: Narrative Themes in a Parental Bereavement Support Group.  Cacciatore and Umphrey note that relationships with other parents who have experienced child loss assists each couple in processing their own grief around the death of their child.  It makes each parent feel understood and provides relief in knowing that what they are experiencing is "normal."   Ultimatly, these new friendships help grieving parents, like myself, find "comfort in the similarities" as Elizabeth A. Catlin writes in her 14-year research on Bereavement Support for Couples Following the Death of a Baby.

So, on this journey through grief after child loss, it is an important task of the grieving parent to renavigate old friendships as well as establishing new ones.  Through connections and realtionships, old and new, we will learn how to function again in a world with one less child.  Though these relationships and connections will not replace the loss of our loved one, they can provide us with comfort and a different kind of love.

If you want to know what to do to be a support to your friend whose baby has died, there are a few resources listed below.  The big point to remember is that EVERYONE GRIEVES DIFFERENTLY, the resources below are suggestions from bereaved parents of what worked best for them or what they would have liked their friends to know, but remember EVERYONE GRIEVES DIFFERENTLY, so sometimes the best thing to do is to have open communication with your friend and ask what they need.

Resources

When A Friend's Baby Dies  by Kristine Brite McCormick

10 Ways to Support the Person in Your Life That Just Lost a Baby  by Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope
What Do I Say? Expert Advice on Helping Friends and Families Cope with Baby Loss.  by Belinda Miller @ Healing Hearts.

Some Things to Say & Do/Somethings Not To Say  by Healing Hearts

For Family & Friends by Share: Pregnancy & Infant Loss Support, Inc.

My Grief Project - Support Groups

 “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Stillbirth only happens to 1% of pregnancies. So, when Nora was born dead, I felt like I was all alone, part of this unlucky 1%.  I was surrounded by the other 99% who got to have 'take home babies', a term I would later become familiar with as Nora was not one of those.   Being in the 1% was lonely.

But as we moved forward in our journey of grief, Nick and I learned that stillbirth happens more than SID's and  Downs Syndrome combined and there was a whole community out there waiting to embrace us. However, I wasn't ready to relate yet.  I wasn't ready to realize this pain happens to others and often.  I thought my pain was special and part of me wanted to keep it that way.

Then, in a couple's therapy session one afternoon, our therapist suggested that we go to a support group.  I told her how I wasn't ready.  I told her how I didn't believe that people could really relate. However, as a mental health therapist I understood the therapeutic importance of support groups.   According to Joanne Cacciatore, the founder of the MISS Foundation, support groups provide bereaved parents with benefits that include reduction of stress and depression, diminished traumatic grief reactions (particularly in women), finding meaning and purpose in death, and reduction of isolation.

So this month, in March I started to attend a support group and no matter how much I hated going, I found it to be helpful.  There were other couples there, all with deceased babies but different stories, and as I listened to one woman say, "I don't know if I can trust my body anymore?" In my head I screamed, "That's it! Yes! That's how I feel".   And then another mom later in the group said, "I would do it all over again." And I cried inside and out at this statement, because part of me said in my head, in a sad, smaller voice this time, "That's it. Yes.That's how I feel," as tears rolled down my checks and my head nodded in agreement.

Other people's stories helped Nick and I process and understand our own.  When we left group that day we realized that we do not have to carry our pain secretly and that we are not alone in this horrible feeling of grief.   Other people's stories and feelings about life after child loss validate our own emotions, no matter how difficult and ugly those emotions might be.

Research has also shown that bereaved parents use support groups as a way to connect with parents like themselves outside of the group, providing them with a community, like any other to share their journey with.  I know the ladies in my group developed a closed Facebook group and arranged outings to spend time together outside of group to build stronger relationships and integrate each other into their lives because these were the people that really "got it."  These were the people that understood.

When I asked other group members what they found most beneficial about the group, answers included, "It gives us a place to remember our babies even after our family and friends have stopped asking how we are doing."  Another women responded that there is something different from all other support, such as blogs and counseling, "That being in a room face-to-face with people that get it...helps us heal."   Other women talked about how they are able to express their grief openly and not be judged.  Overall, the other group members shared about how being face-to-face with others who truly know your pain, makes your own a little easier to bare.

So, do I like support groups?  No, I do not like taking 2 hours out of my week, twice a month to talk about babies dying, especially my baby dying, but it's helpful.  Not just for the time spent in group honoring our children or talking about our grief, but for the connections it forms. Maybe now being in the 1% won't be so lonely after all. 

If you are looking to find a support group in your area below are some great resources.

Resources

The Compassionate Friends - Chapter Locator

The MISS Foundation - Support Groups

Missing G.R.A.C.E. - Has links to International and UK support groups as well as local

Finley's Foot Prints - is a UK organization that will help you find a local support group in the UK

Psychotherapy & Healing Associates - This is a local Twin Cities psychotherapy clinic specalizing in support around pregnancy and child loss.


  

My Grief Project - Technology and Social Media As a Way of Healing

"Don't expect everyone to understand our journey.  Especially if they've never had to walk your path." ~ anonymous

In the days after Nora died, I would lay on the couch with my head in my husband's lap, Googling 'stillbirth' and 'pregnancy loss' on my iphone.  I would type questions into the Google search box as if it were a crystal ball or a fortune teller, asking Google to provide me with reassurance that I was not alone in this tragedy and that I could go on to have a healthy child again.  At one point I remember putting in the words "why me" and "will I have more children" in the search box.  I did not click the magnifying glass icon in fear that Google might actually have an answer and I didn't want to know.

But, reading other peoples stories on the internet was helpful.  I realized I wasn't alone.  One website of information led to the blog Glow in the Woods, and the blog led to an online magazine, Still Standing Magazine, and the magazine led to online support groups like the MISS Foundation and The Compassionate Friends.  I slowly realized that I was now a part of this secret society of 'baby lost' mothers that I never saw articles about on the Baby Center webpage’s I visited with diligence while pregnant. 

As a therapist, I am used to therapy in person and face-to-face, but I decided I would give connecting through social media and the internet to soothe my grief a try.  I joined an online support group forum on The Compassionate Friends website.  Women welcomed me and e-mailed me and told me about their stories of stillbirth and loss and I would share mine.  One woman who contacted me was the age of my mother, and shared her story of losing her daughter to stillbirth in the 1980's.  I was the age of her daughter and this woman still remembers, still grieves.  In a way, this validated my grief.

Then a week before I was supposed to go back to work I got a letter in the mail.  This letter was from my cousin’s good friend who had just lost her baby in November of this year, when she was six months pregnant.  I was so touched that this woman reached out to me with a heartfelt letter and she asked me to contact her through e-mail, how could I not e-mail this woman as she referred to me as a mom in the letter, which I often still questioned my status as such. But, she got it! She understood.  We have been e-mail pen pals ever since, like the Grieve Out Loud Pen-Pal Program.  

And of course there is Facebook. While pregnant I had been posting my belly growing pictures on there and in the days right after Nora’s death I knew people would probably start to ask where the pictures of the baby were if we didn't post anything. I was in fear of saying anything on Facebook, I always viewed it as a place of fun, not for depressing stories of babies dying. But Nick and I decided to post something anyway.  Nick wrote and posted a beautiful obituary about our joy of expecting turning into loss and sadness at Nora's death.  And I am glad we decided to do so because we were surrounded by overwhelming love and support from friends and acquaintances on our Facebook walls and at her funeral due to the post.  The use of this social media is what led to there being so many old friends, with whom we haven't spoken in years and who lived over 250 miles away, show up at Nora's funeral.  Facebook truly brought a community together, not just online, but in person that day we honored her.

Now Facebook has kept me connected to the new people I meet along the way in my journey of grief from child loss.  I recently joined two Facebook closed groups, one from my own in person support group that the women have formed on Facebook, as a way of being able to vent to each other at any moment we need to about our struggles with grief.  Another group I joined is the same concept, but is open to anyone who has experienced a stillbirth called S.O.B.B.S.  There are over 2,000 members from across the United States with whom I can ask for advice or see where they are in their journey of grief to know that I am not a lone voyager on this journey.   

I was even able to connect to mothers who had lost their babies on Pinetrest of all places.  I started making boards of pregnancy and child loss quotes.  Then women would re-pin the quote I had just pinned and start to follow me on Pinetrest.  I would look at their profiles and see why they had lost babies too.  It said so through their profile pictures of a baby on an incubator or a mom writing in her profile description about her being a mother to an angel.

Technology and social media has opened up a whole world of possibilities for me to connect and share my grief with others and gain support, if it be through blogging, Facebook, e-mail, online support group forums, or even Pinterest.  Social media and technology have provided me with so many paths to healing in creative new ways.  It has connected me with other moms and parents who have experienced the same kind of loss as I have and have traveled this road of grief before or with me at this moment in time.  This provides me with hope, that I will be able to navigate this sea of grief and now I have other sailors to go on this voyage with through my social media connections.
  
I look forward to continuing to use technology and social media to heal and can't wait to see how this type of healing will continue to form and shape my grief journey.  There are so many resources that I use and find helpful besides the ones I have discussed above.  In my website's section on this blog I will continue to update it with links I find helpful as well as the 'blogs I follow section' on the left hand side of this page.

A few websites that I did not get a chance to talk about in more detail include Still Standing Online Magazine focused on bereaved parents and infertility issues, Unspoken Grief where any family member can share their stories about miscarriage, stillbirth, and neonatal loss, as well as Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope where they put a face on miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss.

What form of technology, social media, or website, have you found to be most helpful and why?

My Grief Project - March

Nick and I were very social people before we met each other.  He was a member of a fraternity in college and I was always running around with different circles of friends.  Then, once we started dating, we blended our worlds and our friends.  But once we got married we eventually settled down into our own routine with 'couple' friends and even more family time.  This became even more true once I got pregnant.  As the pregnancy went on I was more tired and less interested in spending time with friends.

After our loss, Nick and I were really surprised when we were overwhelmed with outpouring support from long lost friends, co-workers, and family members who all showed up at her funeral.  And even in the two months after, we are still supported by the people around us.  No one has forgotten about our loss, like I heard so often happens.  We have been lucky so far.

But no matter how much our friends and family comfort us, at times, it is nice to talk to another grieving parent.  Someone who has walked the road of grief we are currently on.  So, for the month of March, I want to focus My Grief Project on healing through connections.

This month I plan on starting that stillbirth support group that I have been dreading to attend.  (Even though I am a therapist I am at times more comfortable with other people's vulnerability and emotions than my own). I also have been reaching out through technology and social media.  I connect with other bloggers, joined support group online forums, and I even have a pen-pal. Finally, Nick and I have decided to spend more time with friends, rebuilding those old relationships we neglected as well as nourishing the new relationships we have made with other grieving parents we have met so far.

On Friday of each week this month I will update you on My Grief Project.  I will ask you to take the journey of healing with me.  Try out that week's healing method and share with me your experiences of its healing effects for you.    My journey through grief this month will be as follows:

• March  9th - 15th - Healing Through Social Media and Technology
• March  16th - 22nd - Healing Through Face-to-Face Support Groups
• March  23rd - 31st - Healing Through Friendship

Every Friday I will report on if I found that week's specific healing technique helpful in healing after pregnancy and child loss.  I ask you to travel this journey with me and after every weekly update I will ask you to share about your experience with the healing technique, in the past or present, and see if you found that particular healing technique useful or not. All feedback is welcome, just please be aware that some healing techniques are more useful than others. Grief is very personal and unique, like each of us, so please be respectful to others points-of-view when sharing your own.

I believe that grief can be a transformative process and a way that we can stay connected to our lost children by going on living and celebrating our life while remembering them through being intentional about our grief and our healing.