Friends & Family Friday

Let's get one thing straight. Women who have just had a loss are not only dealing with crazy hormones, but we're also dealing with a ton of emotional turmoil. Without God's grace over the situation, things said from the kindest heart in sympathy to a grieving mother can be taken by that woman as an insult. So on Fridays I will be posting directly to friends and families of people who have had losses, as well as encourage you to share it for the greater knowledge of our generation!

So here's a little peek into the mind of a woman who has just lost her child.

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Things that aid the pain...

Imagine someone would come up to me, knowing I am only 24, and I have plenty of life ahead of me and say (in the sweetest way), "At least you can get pregnant!" Now, seeing this from their perspective, they know one thing, and that's that I was able to be pregnant, even if I lost it. (I want to add here that I FULLY acknowledge that there are women struggling with infertility who would love to be pregnant, but no one is jealous of anyone. No one wants to struggle with IF, and no one wants to deal with loss.)

When you flip the coin and look at it from my perspective, you'll see how harsh it can sound through all of the emotions and hormones (not to mention massive amounts of grief). I could easily hear that as them saying that it was no big deal that I lost a child, as they pass over it and look towards future children. Seeing as I am still in the grieving process, I still want to give FULL recognition to this child, whether he's here with me anymore or not. Also, for many women, the fear of having future miscarriages is very present, and not all women are guaranteed successful pregnancies after a loss, so this statement just serves as the devil's weapon to make us feel like we're broken.

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"So you never saw the heartbeat? Well you're blessed it was so early!"

No. Just no. There is so much wrong with this statement. Yes, I can see how from an outsider's perspective that they can see that a loss at 20 weeks, or an infant loss would be worse, but when you're dealing with the grief of losing your child, NOTHING is worse than that. No matter the stage, everyone has grief, and if someone tries to diminish that by saying something like this, it's almost as if they're saying "Oh, you shouldn't be grieving this much, because it could have been worse." That pretty much says to me "Oh, you're being ridiculous. Just stop having a pity party and move on." Again, harsh, but it's the honest truth of how we see things.

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 "Now you have an angel up in heaven to watch over you."

I can see that this would come from a sweet place in someone's heart, but we don't need a reminder that we don't have our children here in our arms, where we can't see them learn to walk, learn to drive a car, graduate high school, get married, or have children of their own. As much as we do acknowledge it ourselves, we don't need that reminder.

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Things that we LOVE!!

 The number ONE thing to remember when speaking to a woman who has lost her child is to acknowledge the loss. Too many times women who have early miscarriages or chemical pregnancies get passed over in this, for the simple fact that people think they haven't had time to form an emotional attachment (let me assure you, we did).

"This child was unique, special and irreplaceable. I know children are not interchangeable and the fact that you can have other children does not lessen the grief of losing this one."

 These words are those of sympathy and compassion. There is no way to take this the wrong way, it is fully understood that you are acknowledging our child and our pain, without making it seem like we're being ridiculous and not diminishing our child's mark on our lives.

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"There is no particular way you 'should' feel or things you 'should' do. There are no rules about how grieving should go."

These words give us the freedom to grieve as we feel we want to. They give us the freedom to let go of our fears of whether something is wrong with us and to spend some time mourning the loss of our child. Everyone mourns differently. Some people can be as normal as they will ever be (which is never quite the same) in a month, others it may take five years. There's no recipe to get over the loss of a child, so when we have friends confirm that we aren't abnormal, it provides comfort!!


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I have created this blog with the intentions of using it as a community and support for women who have suffered a loss. If you would like to share your story, or share things that your friends and family have done to help you through this time, please contact me at sarah.myheartsmusings@gmail.com