Decade

So much changes in a decade. The trees grow, people come and go, plans are made, then destroyed, winters come and summers flow, all while time just keeps on ticking by. It’s strange to me that so much can change over the course of a decade, but yet, the day you came into our lives stays etched in my memory so vividly even after a decade has passed. For that, I am grateful. I am grateful that I still remember what you looked like, how still the world felt to me and how heavy it all felt.

Today, it doesn’t feel heavy, the world does not feel still and I still recognize you in every way. I have come to learn how to hold the sorrow and joy in perfect balance and harmony. I have come to appreciate the beauty that was beneath all of the rubble. I continue to uncover the lessons you teach. It all seems so fragmented yet united in this quilt of love that covers us – protecting us from the passage of time and the expectations of others that just don’t understand.

A decade is not a lifetime and there is much more adventure to uncover, woven into the days, months and years – however many more I may have here on this side of the universe, without you.

This year, the joy supersedes the sorrow and peace has nestled in somehow, tucking our love for you tightly underneath it’s coverage. It’s surreal to be here – to be feeling this way. To marvel at all that you have taught us, have morphed us into, have contributed to our evolution as human beings, as a unit, as a family. Today’s version of me was never a version I could have imagined on the night you were born. I would have never imagined today’s version of me being here – with you – at peace. With the only visible scars of your presence being how we love, how we embrace your infinite presence in our lives and how we share you and your lessons with others around us.

This journey, that you have taken us on, has been life changing. A journey through a Kaleidoscope of ever shifting patterns of lightness and darkness, hard edged shapes and circular patterns, which all focus in on one thing. Your love. Our love. Our purpose together.

From this place, we continue to honour you and the evolution of our journey together. I have learned to trust the journey. Trust in the love and in the purpose. Trust that in the next decade, you will reveal greater lessons that will once again twist and shift the Kaleidoscope, bringing greater joy then any of us could have ever imagined.

Happy 10th Birthday, sweet Jude!

xo mommy

The Art of Letting Go

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing

Shortly after loosing my son Jude, someone said to me “You have to let him go”. I can tell you now and certainly would have told you then, just a few short weeks after loosing him, that statement was not helpful – at all! At the time, my body and mind were still numb and I couldn’t even grasp at the basic intention that was behind the statement. I’m sure there was some form of pure support intention behind the statement, but the thing is, even if I was in a position to grasp the intention behind the statement, letting go of your dead child is just something that you simply can’t do.

It’s not as simple as releasing your grip on a balloon string and watch it float away into clear blue skies. There are no blue skies after loosing a child and your child is not a balloon. Being told that you “need to let them go” is not as simple as it sounds, nor is it as liberating from the darkness of grief as most of those around us want to believe. Letting go is not that simple – a truth that is once again being demonstrated by the worlds beloved Orca Killer Whale, Tahlequah, who is once again holding on to her dead calf as part of her grieving process.

This year, will mark a decade since I lost my boy and I’m still grappling with the art of letting go. I know I will never let him go and that is not what I’m grappling with. I know that he’s forever a part of me and I of him and that will never change or dissipate despite the passing years. What I am learning to let go of is the rituals that no longer serve my grieving journey, the guilt that overwhelms and consumes me, the need to share him with everyone. Letting go of those things and making room for new ways to share his light, honour the lessons and light the path for those traveling their own grief journey behind me is how I’m choosing to embrace this next part of my journey.

And like Tahlequah, the Orca Killer Whale who carried her first dead calf for 17 days (1,000 Miles) in 2018, we the bereaved parent, will only “let them go” when we are ready. Our definition of letting go is not the same as of those witnessing our grief journey from the sidelines. It is completely different and utterly unique – just like our child(ren). Grief paralyzes us, holds us hostage, changes us, moves us and expands us. We can’t let it go – it needs to let us go. And that does not happen with time, it can only happen with comprehension, appreciation and gratitude for the lessons learned and love endured.

Only the Bereaved Mama will Appreciate This

Child loss, Grief, Holiday Season, self care

It’s as much about the output as it is about the time spent.

The time I allow myself to immerse in something that is truly just for him. It’s the equivalent of bedtime stories, bath giggles and dinner time conversation. Time I spend just with him. For him. Where my hands and my heart are in rhythm and my mind is somehow tricked into believing he is present. I allow myself the indulgence of the process itself. In selecting the design, materials and decorative pieces that speak to me and connect me to him leading into the holiday season.

The output is never picture perfect and it will never make it to someone’s Pinterest board. Instead it will face the wind, rain and snow that comes with the season year in and year out. It will be carefully and proudly displayed at his garden for the holiday season as a badge of love – a token of remembrance that we miss him and that we remember him – always.

My heart will flinch when I see it covered in inches of snow loosing its pristine newness look. I will feel the disappointment as I watch it slowly break apart, trying to find ways to mend it year after year until it can no longer be. The scabs of my mended heart will itch reminding me as to why it needs me to continue this simple tradition of creating holiday wreaths. An unlabeled act, initially forced upon me as a coping mechanism to bring back meaning to the holidays, remembrance assurance to my worried mind and a place of rest for my grieving mama heart. It has now become labelled as a tradition, but it’s one of purpose and not transmission.

For now, I will give my heart permission to silence my mind and indulge in the act of placing this brand new wreath at his resting place as it braces itself for the most triggering time of the year. For that is what my heart needs to gently invite the season in and embrace the tricky balance between sadness and joy that only a bereaved mama can gracefully do everyday, but especially during the holiday season.

So if you’re a grieving mama navigating this ever so tricky season, I invite you to join me in finding ways to bring comfort to your heart and meaning back to the season. Traditions start somewhere – start a new one this season that opens up space for your grief to flow through, your heart to rest, your child to be included and remembered. Grace and deep breaths will get us through this – together.

It’s the most triggering time of the year….🎶

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing, Self Growth

“The black one mommy! The one that goes choo choo!” She said motioning her hand to signal the lever pull of the train sound. Her eyes were filled with excitement as she shared with me the fact that the black train we include as part of our annual Christmas Village set up tradition, was her absolute favourite. She continued on about the black train and how she couldn’t wait to see it set up for Christmas this year, as the excitement in her voice and facial expressions bounced off her bedroom walls. The lines between my living child and my dead one blurred for a second (like it usually does given how much alive he is in my heart) and my mind thought about how much she would enjoy in that moment, reading the Polar Express storybook.

And there it was. The trigger. Pulled in a split second by one single thought that immediately sent me back to the first Christmas after we lost Jude. The Christmas where we spent countless numbers of hours searching for everything and anything that could possibly serve as a fitting gift to sit under our Christmas tree for Jude. The gift that we knew would be wrapped by us, and opened by us, alone. The gift that we placed all of our hope on healing our broken hearts and help us get through the holiday season. The gift that would fill the void. We finally landed on one – the special edition of The Polar Express storybook.

As the grief slowly seeped through the crevices of my heart, it was swept up by the current of my daughter’s excitement of her new found awareness that Christmas was on the horizon, and splattered all over the room. With very little white space left in my heart to distinguish between grief and joy, I found myself breaking my own rule and asking her, “ Would you like to read a story about a Christmas train? We can borrow one of Jude’s special books to read tonight”. She immediately said yes and hopped her way over to the space in our home that we reference as Jude’s room, where a library of story books belonging to Jude are kept.

That blended current of joy and grief bouncing around in the walls of my heart is what I need to prepare myself for, get comfortable with and accept to be my reality for the next 2 months. To a bereaved parent, the Holiday Season approaches like a freight black train. We can see it coming. We know it’s beautiful. We know it’s grand. We know it’s magical. But when it finally get’s close enough for us to see inside and notice the one single empty passenger seat, the speed at which it hits your heart is enough to kill you all over again, and again, and again….

So be gentle. Be accepting. Be open. And even be ok with not wanting to participate in anything that is brought on by the black train. Your heart will tell you what it needs to be able to survive the impact.

Navigating the Early Days

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing, self care

I’ve had the fortune (or misfortune – depending on the lens you look through) to be consulted a few times on how to support a newly bereaved mother. By no means do I consider myself to be a professionally qualified consultant on the matter, but I do have one credential that places me in a different segmentation of the average individual. I am a bereaved mother. And so, by default, that makes me somewhat qualified to be consulted on the topic.

During the most recent ask to consult on what to say or how to help a recently bereaved mother in what I think is an impossible situation, I found myself a little lost for words at first. To be honest, swearing was the only cohesive speech I managed to share with the friend who was so dutifully asking me for my advice on the matter, admitting that she had absolutely no experience and very aware that not everything that is intentionally helpful, helpful to a newly bereaved mother.

My mind immediately raced through all of the things not to do or say – the cliches, the religious anecdotes, the “at leasts…”. But then I paused, took a deep breath in and let myself carefully drift back to those early days of grief — early hours of grief, where the shock of loosing your precious baby(ies) is still very present and you feel nothing but numbness. The early hours of grief where you stare out beyond the world, for hours, and the world stares back through you, carrying on as if nothing had happened. The sun sets, the moon rises, the traffic flows, the stars glow, the sidewalk bustles, the emails ping, the people smile, the flowers bloom, the snow falls, the clocks run, the school day ends, the tide rises and the waves crash and it all just flows through like nothing ever happened. In those early grief days, none of that matters. It’s all just swept up into the numbness and shock of the perpetual thought of “my baby(ies) just died – does nobody give a fuck?”.

So, as an innocent (and concerned) bystander, all you see is this shell of a person who you love, is maybe just stillness and silence and not responsive to the world around them and all you want to do is fix it. Take their pain away, make them smile again. See them happy. See them live. So how do you do that? What encouraging words can you offer? What actions can you take that will help them “snap out of it” and get back to life?

Before leaping into action, what you must realize and come to terms with, is this. Your loved one, didn’t JUST loose their baby(ies). They LOST their baby(ies) AND they lost THEMSELVES. So much of themselves is lost in that moment when the realization that their baby(ies) have been lost forever. Just because that newly bereaved mother is still physically alive, does not mean that she did not also die with their baby(ies). Believe me (I guess this is the qualification factor), a large part of us as individuals, vanishes when our baby(ies) die. So the best thing you can offer any newly bereaved mother is space.

Space to grief. Space to tell you about her baby(ies). Space to share her birth story. Space to cry, be angry, be resentful, be sad, be happy, be confused, be honest. Space to just be. That gift of space, can be wrapped and gifted in so many different ways. It can be wrapped up in a walk outside. A drive along the country side road. A hot cup of coffee, tea, soup broth in a quiet, private place. It can be bundled in the shape of a colouring book and colourful pencils to give her a place to rest her mind. It can be wrapped in the form of a journal with a sharp pencil or felt tip pen to give her a place to unpack her emotions and try to answer all of the unanswered questions. It can be boxed along with some bath salts, moisturizers, essential oils and soft slippers to remind her to take care of herself. It can also be just a simple stuffed animal toy to give her empty arms something to hold.

None of those things will bring her baby(ies) back. But having the space to navigate the thick grief fog, rollercoaster of emotions and process of re defining herself is a good start. There’s no timeline and no end game for the bereaved mother. Her grief will not come to a magical finish line. Her love for her baby(ies) will not end, therefore, all she is left with is the space in between – to tread the journey. Just be there. Quietly and gracefully, treading beside her.

This is Seven

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing, Parenting

Seven looks a little different. The lead up to seven has sped through our lives like a gust of wind that comes quickly and with purpose – a reminder that another season is upon us. Another year has passed. Another year of your present absence.

Seven feels like a pivotal year. One that signifies change. One that enables movement forward, although we have somehow managed to keep moving without you. It hasn’t always been forward, but it’s movement; and in grief, that’s all that counts.

For seven years, we have shared you within our world. We have openly and freely said your name. We have lived and loved unapologetically in your honour. We have continued onward with our lives as best we could – living in parallel realms, with and without you.

But seven is not enough. It’s not enough to heal. Infinity is not enough, so why would seven be? Instead seven feels like a pause in a time lapse, where we assess our vantage point and reposition before continuing to record this journey we’re on with you.

At seven, we can pause and see the light that you have shone through the cracks in our hearts out into the world. We can see the brightness that you have lit our world with. We are starting to understand the purpose of your love in our lives. Understanding is not accepting – it’s simply understanding and opening ourselves to whatever else you teach us along this journey.

Such a small number for a big lesson when you put it into perspective. With every season and every year that passes, we are reminded that your love is present and purposeful. It’s a guiding force if we surrender to it and it will continue to be until our realms once again collide and our lights are no longer pouring through the cracks, but intertwined together. Once again whole.

Until then, we love you and wish you were here everyday.

Happy 7th Birthday sweet Jude.

xo mommy

Champagne 6 on the 6

Child loss, Grief, Healing, self care, Uncategorized

I suppose champagne birthdays are only really a thing only when you’re an adult – when you can actually drink champagne! By definition, today we could have potentially be celebrating your champagne birthday. You would have been turning 6 on the 6th this year. And even though you’re not here, I’ll still raise a champagne flute to celebrate. Celebrate you. Celebrate me. Celebrate us as a collective family. Celebrate the fact that we have survived 6 years of this balancing act of grief and joy. Love and pain.

6 years in, I still hold this day sacred. And I know that in some shape or form I will continue to hold it sacred until I die. It’s the day I honour you but also honour the person that you made me. Honour the strength, the perspective and the grace that I had anticipated to be born on this day, but never did. Instead, all of those things were born much earlier, in a completely different setting, in the most unexpected way, shaping the person that I have become.

Self care is one of those phrases you hear as a bereaved parent very early on in the grief journey, but holds very little merit. It’s not much, much later in one’s grief journey that you come to recognize the critical role it plays, in not only surviving, but also living through the journey.

Today, on your would have been champagne birthday, I choose self care – even if it comes in the form of a champagne glass.

Definition of a good day

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing

Is today a good day? What constitutes as a good day? From my vantage point, today is a day. A special day. But not sure it’s a good day — but then again, what is a good day.

What I know is that today is our day. Our day to connect. To reflect on what may have been. What could have been. What should have been.

I’ve been holding this day dearly for 5 years. The entrance into this new decade starting in 2020 has abruptly reminded me that you and I have been apart for half a decade already. Half a decade. Time still flies when you’re grieving. Nothing sits still.

I claim this day every year since loosing you to honour us. To honour you, my sweet Jude on what could have been your birthday and to honour myself for surviving this journey.

I saw the words scripted in blue marker on the side of my cup as the barista handed me my comfort tea this morning and wondered if she could see through my broken exterior shell. Could she see that I need to be reminded to “have a good day”? Maybe. Maybe she was simply carrying out her perfected customer experience ritual that gets carried out with every customer.

But today, I’d like to think that message was unique to me. That it wasn’t the barista’s message at all. That the message came from you, reminding me that today is a good day. That today, is a day that we can hold in our hearts together and indulge in this non conventional love that we hold for each other in a way that only you and I understand.

Today is a good day after all.

4 minus 1

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing, Parenting

4 years. It’s been 4 years since we had to say goodbye to you physically, but to us, you’re more alive then ever. You’ve been the first thing I think about and the last thing I think about almost each and every day. You’re in my everyday, so how could I possibly forget you?

The butterfly visits, gentle wind breezes and random song playings on the radio, are all daily signs from you that bring my heart joy. These little secret messages from you are what make your love so vivid and present. Yet, my mind often plants seeds of pressure to move on, to stop honouring you, to forget. And it waters (or drowns sometimes) those seeds with expectation, either self imposed or imposed by others. But the truth is, that my heart, simply cannot comply.

The guilt that comes with the thought of not honouring or holding space for you in our lives is a reminder that my heart is not healed and I don’t think it ever will. The space that we hold in our hearts for you is what enables are hearts to be whole. Without it, they just crumble back to a million pieces. And so far it has taken us four years to glue those pieces back together to resemble our hearts.

You, Jude, have taught me so many things in these short 4 years. You have taught me how to love fiercely and unapologetically. And because of that, my heart cannot simply move forward without you. It can only move forward with you.

I have come to accept that my grief is a reflection of my love for you. I can’t expect it to ever go away, stay the same or even dissipate. That’s just not how true love works. It changes, grows, breaks apart and molds back together – each day feeling different.

My heart too has changed. It has held space for 2, then 3, then molded back to 2, then grew to hold space for 4 and it’s now changed to hold space for 4 minus 1. It’s no wonder grief feels like one step forward, two steps backward at times. It’s love. Changing, longing, growing, missing. That’s what love is.

4 years later, I continue to wonder. Maybe if it all had gone to plan my love, you would be starting school this year. I watch those markers in my life grow up so fast and find a dose of comfort in knowing that I won’t have to watch you trek off to school independently. I relish in the fact that unlike their moms, I get to keep you snuggled up in my heart for yet another year as my baby. These are the bittersweet moments of our love, sweet Jude.

There are many reasons why your birthday feels different to me this year. Amongst the blurred busyness of this year, my heart carries heavy doses of guilt for simply not mindfully being with you. I know that’s all part of the ever changing process of grief, but my mama heart finds that difficult to accept. I hope that despite everything this year, you have continued to feel my love. I know I have felt yours, my sweet boy.

Happy 4th Birthday Jude!

xo mommy

Mother’s Love Day

#judedays, Child loss, Grief, Healing, Parenting

Since loosing our sweet Jude, there are so many mundane conversation starter questions that I simply don’t use anymore, and dread being asked them; including “do you have any children?” or “ how many children do you have?”. These questions for a bereaved mom are dreadful and grief triggering, irrespective of where in her grief journey she is.

During my subsequent pregnancy after loosing Jude, I was introduced to a whole new set of triggering questions such as “is this your first?” or “ are you excited to become a mom?”.

Since having my daughter, a new set of triggering questions have presented themselves, but the one that has been triggering me the most is, “ how are you enjoying motherhood?”.

Like all of the other aforementioned questions, they are often asked innocently and mindlessly which to most moms, is ok. But not for a bereaved mom — and here’s why.

I’m already a mom. I’m already experiencing motherhood.

Before I was a mom to my daughter, I was a mom to my son Jude. He made me a mom.

The question itself implies that I’m new to motherhood which denies the existence of my son. And that is the triggering point. Any bereaved parent will tell you that the only thing that hurts just as much as loosing your child is the thought of your child being forgotten. His memory diminished. His existence erased.

There are multiple forms, sides and dimensions to motherhood.

Motherhood is easy when your child gets to live. It’s when they die that it’s hard.

Now I know that’s a bold statement to make, but as a mom that has the privilege to mother a child amongst the stars and mother a child below the stars, I have become familiar with the multiple dimensions of motherhood and can stand behind the statement. Each dimension has its joys and sorrows. It’s good days and bad days. It’s peaks and valleys. But at the end of the day, I get to hold my daughter and kiss her goodnight everyday — something I cannot physically do with my son. Something so many other moms who hold their babies only in their heart so desperately want, but simply cannot have. And not having that simple ritual is hard. Really hard. Unbelievably hard.

But yet, we manage to move forward every day – one day at a time. Tending to our heart and our child as if they were physically present, because to us, they are so unbelievably present in our hearts, our minds and in our souls. Every. Single. Day. That dimension of motherhood is hard.

So when asked the question of how I’m enjoying motherhood, I often respond with a somewhat mundane response sprinkled with a bit more raw honesty than most new moms would, which catches the inquirer by surprise. Just imagine how surprised they would be if I answered them truthfully and said that Motherhood is easy when your child gets to live. It’s when they die that it’s hard.

So today, on Mother’s Day, look around and acknowledge and honour all moms (and dads) – whether you can physically see their children or not. Afterall, as nurturing human beings, whether we bear our own children, raise someone else’s, have them physically with us or carry them in our hearts, we are all programmed to love, teach and nurture them in our own unique way.

Wishing you a gentle happy Mother’s Love Day today.