Handling Holidays

Next weekend I'll attend the Bereaved Parents of the USA conference and do a workshop on how to include your baby in family traditions. I know so many traditions have to do with holidays and I wanted to ask- what holiday is hardest for you, and do you have any ideas to help get through them? I know a lot of you have more recent grief, so I'm hoping we can help you anticipate and get through some of these days.

peace-
emily

Hang in There

Is anyone having a week like I am where I've just lowered my expectations and gone into survival mode? This summer is crazy busy. No big drama, just tons of little annoyances. I DID work out today, which for me is huge! And I'm giving it another shot at my 'no sugar or soda' attempt at a diet.

Hope you are all great. I'll try to get more regular about posting. Is there anything you would like to discuss?

((hugs))

Have a good Father's Day weekend

This is from this month's newsletter. Some of you may not have signed up to recieve my newsletter, so I wanted to be sure the dads knew I am thinking about them. ((hugs)) I'm going to be out of town until Monday, so have a great weekend.

I want to wish a gentle Father's Day to all the dads out there. You know who you are. Most of my readers are women, I suspect. But sometimes the men show up.

Grieving dads have a hard time- they are supposed to be 'strong' and often feel their role is to 'fix stuff'. Yet how do you 'fix it' when a baby dies? Impossible. So they put on their game face and hang tough. And then their wives accuse them of not grieving, or not caring.

It's a tough spot to be in.

Men grieve differently than women. I'm not a man so can't claim to be an expert on this. But I know I grieve differently than my husband. I spend hours online reading message boards and blogs. I make scrapbooks. I wear jewelry in memory of my baby. I cry.

He does none of these things. At least not when I can see them.

But he goes along with my projects. We've done March of Dimes. He designed my logo for my site. He lets me shut down when I need to, he gets the balloons for our balloon releases. He does what he needs to and lets me do what I need to.

So big ((hugs)) to all you dads out there. I hope this weekend is an ok one for you. Go do something manly with a hammer or some sort of power tools. Go golfing. Play some sort of zombie shooting video game. Whatever you want.

peace-
emily

Aloha Remembered

I was invited to write about my sand site for the next SHARE newsletter, so I decided to also post here in the event that some of you may not know about this site.

I was recently invited to send in photos of my kids for a slideshow presentation. That stopped me for a minute. Gabriel was stillborn at 21 weeks and while I do have a photo of him, it is not one I often share with just anyone. And then I remembered his sand photo.

My sister wrote his name in the sand of a beach close to her home on the Windward Shore of Hawaii. It is a beach set aside as a ‘place of quiet reflection’. I love how the photo turned out- and it seems so suitable to me that it is not a permanent thing, but rather, just like Gabriel, it is here for just a minute and then gone. But for a brief moment, the world is a little different because of him.


At times it seems he was just a figment of my imagination. I am always looking to find ways to remember him and it is a comfort to see his name in print as another verification that he DID exist.


If you'd like us to write your child's name we'd love to do it. Please visit our site www.AlohaRemembered Aloha means hello, goodbye, love, peace, compassion and mercy- A perfect word for the many emotions a mom feels who has had too short a time with her baby. Aloha Remembered is a place for us to remember all our babies gone from us too soon.


peace-

emily

Beware the movie: Up

I am going to say straight off I have NOT seen this movie yet- my husband and kids went to see it last weekend. But on SHARE today someone mentioned to be careful because UP has a theme of pregnancy loss in it.

As soon as my husband walked in the door I asked him. "Oh, yeah", he says. "I forgot."

I guess at the beginning as they are showing the old man's history they do it by flashbacks and show his wife crying in the doctor's office. They don't go into specifics so you don't know if there is a loss, or infertility or what but it is there.

I have heard it is a great, wonderful, fantastic movie. But be careful. I hate when I'm already fragile and then get hit with something like this unexpectedly.

Has anyone seen it? What do you think? I hear there is a happy ending.

Waiting for you..

WARNING, SLIGHTLY RELIGIOUS, but whatcha gonna do?

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
-Walt Whitman

I do feel like our babies are waiting for us. And that we will see them again someday.

I try to remember that eternity is a darn long time. And our time on this earth just a quick second of it. I try to picture my son playing with his friends. He tells them, "Hold on a sec", pops in for a real quick "Hi, Mom!" and then he is back again to his friends, back to his game he was playing.

Someday I'll catch up to him. For now I'm glad for the quick minute I had with him, and just waiting until I can hug and squeeze him as much as I've wanted to for so long.

peace-
emily