Dancing With My Grief

October provides the opportunity to focus our attention on many worthy areas of awareness, but the one closest to my heart is that October is the month for awareness of pregnancy and infant loss. It is a cause close to my heart because not only am I a mother, but I am also a bereaved mother. My second child Hope died at 14 weeks gestation, four years ago this past July. And so, as yesterday was the actual day in October for this awareness and remembrance, I find it hard to stay silent.

It is hard enough being a bereaved mother, add into the equation the fact that I am a bereaved chaplain mother and sometimes it gets complicated, particularly since one of my areas of ministry is the maternity unit. I do feel privileged and called to be present to these mothers in their times of celebration when all goes as expected, but also especially when these mothers are simultaneously saying hello and goodbye to their little one(s). But this also means that I am working in the face of my own remembered grief on a regular basis. It is a very careful dance with my grief that I do some days. I am grateful for a staff that understands when I find a corner to wipe away the tears after I leave a room. I am grateful for coworkers who recognize how hard some days are. Sometimes it is the only way I survive. I am still in the process of trying to figure out how to do all this well, but that is not the purpose of this blog post.

Today I am writing to give voice for the mothers and the families who share this grief and loss. You may notice that I mention families. It can be very easy to focus on the mother who has carried the child, but in taking this journey myself I have come to realize it is the whole family who is affected. Fathers grieve a child, children sometimes very young are trying to figure out how to miss and grieve a sibling; grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – all are affected. I discovered I could not care for my family in the first days; I needed others to minister to my family. I needed others to minister to me. Even now, sometimes this is the case. It goes back to you the simple truth that you cannot be a chaplain to your own family.

There are no easy answers here, just the simple truth that I still grieve and I still minister to grieving families. It is a dance I will always do. And I am grateful to know that I have God and Spirit as my dance partner. And it is in this spirit that I will carry on as a Bereaved Chaplain Mother.