I Am Still Standing

Today is International Bereaved Mother’s Day . It’s not a Hallmark holiday, and you won’t see a card section for it at your local store. It was started by a woman in Australia who lost her son. It’s the Sunday before the standard Mother’s Day every year, and generally no one has ever heard of it until they’ve lost a child. I know that’s true for me.

For me, it’s a day to reflect. I think about all that we have lost, the challenges of a bereaved mother in parenting a child who needs nothing from her, and the knowledge that the rest of the world sees me very differently than I see myself. I think about all that my children have given me – an appreciation for the small things we take for granted, a better understanding of the fragility of life, a stronger marriage, perspective on what really matters, the knowledge of who will be there when life isn’t pretty, and the strength to get up and face every day.

This day is also about breaking the silence. For the life of me, I will never understand the taboo around miscarriage, neonatal loss, and grief. They are topics that make people uncomfortable, and people tend to shy away from them. I’ve watched it first hand – that steady backward step away from me as I talk about my children or my grief, the stammering in reply when I say I have a daughter who died, the flow of clichés on how to view my situation more positively (“there’s a reason this is happening” “just believe” – I could go on for hours).

There is no silence on this topic in my world. I know that my talking and writing about loss, infertility, and grief is too public for some people in my life. These are supposed to be “private matters”, handled and discussed as a family. Why is that? What good comes from keeping something so life altering and defining private? That only serves to make bereaved mothers feel even more isolated and different from the rest of society. If my daughter were alive and well, it would be perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged, for me to post pictures of her and talk endlessly about her. But because she died, I am supposed to internalize those maternal feelings, plaster a smile on my face, and go about my life as though nothing has changed.

Not talking about my losses and grief is simply not an option for me. I feel a responsibility to break the silence and tell people what it’s like to lose a child and live with infertility. I am responsible to my daughter, whose life and death have impacted me in ways I haven’t even figured out yet. I am responsible to the loss community to do what I can to lift the taboo and help people not feel so alone, so disconnected, so misunderstood, and so abnormal. And I’m responsible to myself to be who I am, feel what I feel, and not be worried about whether it makes other people uncomfortable.

I am the face of neonatal loss. I am the face of miscarriage. I am the face of infertility. I am the face of a mother who will grieve for her children for the rest of her life. How, I'm not so sure, but I am still standing. And I’m breaking the silence.