Piper Lynn

The first exercise I did with my grief therapist after Piper was delivered, was filling out the life balance circle. Pretty much everything on there was rated low, joy was the lowest with creativity and relationship being rated the highest. My husband and I were closely managing our sadness together. I was knitting and writing to manage my response to the trauma having and losing so quickly. But even within days of completing that exercise, things were shifting to a darker place and it wasn't looking good. I remember, as I filled it out, that I trully believed life always had been void of joy and always would be. The messages depression was delivering to my concious mind were percieved as the truth. As I sit looking at this life balance circle, I feel like I am looking at someone else's circle. It seems like that person is so sad, helpless, lonely and apparently she was. When grief is no longer alone in your brain and depression makes its landing, shit gets real, real fast and ...

After our sweet Piper was delivered at 18 weeks and my husband and I began a part of our parenting journey, we so innocently thought we would never experience, I began feeling isolated in my grief. As I reached out via social media support groups and read articles about pregnancy loss, it appeared that I was not alone in my loneliness. As I lived my experience more and more each day, I kept questioning this isolation during and after pregnancy loss. I first chalked it up to people just not knowing what to say to the 1 in 4 of us that experienced this. Then I generally blamed society for not creating a safe space for us to talk. Then I thought it was because we, as parents, were so tired in our grief journey,  that we perpetuated the stigma surrounding pregnancy loss. But none of those fully addressed my wondering.  The dark cloak of judgement and embarrassment that many of us wear after pregnancy loss, isn't made solely of any of my prior wonderings. The fibers that make up th...

Before you had Postpartum Depression, your days were structured much differently. Feeling validated in your self worth and connecting with your sense of identity involved a lot of moving pieces that you were the leader of. Well balanced meals would have been planned, doctors appointments made, programs created at work, friendships confirmed and house cleaned. All in one day. To have a sense of satisfaction, A LOT would have to happen. But now you are experiencing  Postpartum Depression, everything is deemed impossible by the chemicals in your brain that you have no control over. You don't get to be validated by a long day in the office or managing household duties. Now that you are experiencing PPD you have only brief moments to achieve any sense of worth and they come in the form of sitting up and moving your body, or taking a shower, or having a half-lucid conversation with a close family member.  You are beaten down by depression and you are slowly being robbed of confidenc...

Today was a bad day, one that made me question my progress and mental stamina. I felt low, anxious, hateful towards myself and regreted every decision I made parenting up to this point. Grief doesn't slowly get better, it gets better and then worse and then kind of better and then new feelings emerge. This happens day to day, hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute. That is the complicated nature of grief you don't know about until you are experiencing it. I started to worry again that the scary side of post pardum depression was making its way back to the forefront? I wondered if it was another wave of grief unfamiliar to me? Then while walking our dog, I happened to look up at the stars in the dark night, and it became clear, it was actually much more simple, I simply missed her. For a moment I allowed myself to believe that I deserved that feeling, the deep missing of what could have been. This feeling, by far, has emerged to be the single most impossible one to aknowledge ...

I remember hearing stories of friends who had miscarriages. That term thrown around here and there in close circles, usually a passing conversation. Rarely the story spoken by the person who actually experienced it. When someone hinted at that term, I felt sad for them for a moment and always said "healthy babies are a miracle" and then moved on. That was as much as I knew how to say and embarrassingly to admit now, I couldn't understand how someone could have such strong, long lasting feelings surrounding their experience of a miscarriage. I didn't say baby, because to me it was a miscarriage. I think in those moments my heart and soul couldn't bare to consider that type of hurt, honestly it was too hard for me to know how to feel or what to say. I had three healthy boys with no issues getting pregnant, I could not empathize. I know I said things that were probably hurtful not knowing so. I am sure I complained about parenting challenges amidst women who so wante...

As we move into 2021, it seems to be common thought that 2020 was awful, and must be forgotten. 2020 created experiences and uprooted uncomfortable feelings for our entire world. Some people were filled with anticipatory grief and fear, while others were living in the thick of awful traumas and sadness. Some people ignored the realities of our world, while others chose to stand strong and tall, and speak out. For me, 2020 was a shit show mixed with confusion, fear and appreciation. The most impactful experience for me was our daughter dying due to Trisomy 13. I felt all sorts of things, each changing everyday. I experienced depression, worry, fear, grief, sadness, desire, hope, love...  But as we each enter 2021 searching for "better", let us not assume those of us who experienced death and loss want to forget that part of our story and merely move on. As mothers and fathers who had hoped to ring in the new year with sleepless nights, tiny bows and coos from our babies, we en...

I Surrender    I became a parent 9 years (and some months) ago, when my husband and I welcomed our oldest son, Brayden, into the world. Since then, I have had three more children. That makes three boys living earth side and our youngest, our girl, living in our hearts. I delivered Piper at 18 weeks GA. She had died sometime before, but we didn’t know until an US was completed in follow up to abnormal genetic testing results.  Piper was diagnosed with Trisomy 13, a genetic abnormality that we had no control over. The day we found out she might have Trisomy 13, our grief journey was initiated. The day we delivered her sweet, tiny body (perfect in every way), we set foot on the actual path.  Two months after I delivered Piper in the hospital, surrounded by rooms of screaming babies, my grief changed from channeled energy, self-sufficiency and healthy discussion to sadness, fear, chest pain and incompetence. I withdrew from my life.  The holiday season had commenced...