Hanami Prints Blog: Learning to Live Without Our Children » Random Thoughts

Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death: MEND

hanamipapa — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:49:35 +0000

M.E.N.D. (Mommies Enduring Neonatal Death) is a Christian, non-profit organization that reaches out to families who have suffered the loss of a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, or early infant death…

MEND offers support groups and services both internationally and nationally. Based in Dallas/Ft.Worth Texas, MEND was founded by Rebekah Mitchell.

International Services Include:

Free Bi-weekly newsletter
Online support forum
And numerous resources provided through the MEND website.

Nation Services Include all the services listed above including:

Local chapter peer support groups (visit links for contact information and maps.)
- MEND Home – Dallas/Ft.Worth
- Arkansas – Northwest
- Georgia – Atlanta
- Kansas – Emporia
- Missouri – Springfield
- Oklahoma – Tulsa
- Texas – Houston, Hill Country, Texarkana

Please visit mend.org to see their resources, special events or to make a donation.

What do you enjoy most about MEND?

Memorial Charcoal Portrait From Our Latest Giveaway

hanamipapa — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:39:43 +0000

Noah Memorial Charcoal Portrait by Jason Marti

Today I’m excited to share with you the final charcoal portrait from our latest giveaway. He is a beautiful baby boy and a joy to memorialize for his parents. I know he will always be loved and missed.

What do you think about the portrait? Have you ever considered commissioning a charcoal portrait? Share your comments with the artist below.

A Small Victory: Helping Newly Bereaved Parents Create Memories with their Children

hanamipapa — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:56:31 +0000

A Small Victory is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization providing hospitals and other birth professionals with CARE (Compassionately Alleviating Regret Everyday) Packages which gently guide newly bereaved parents in creating memories with their children that will last a lifetime. Founded by Liz and Ethan Allen, A Small Victory also pledges to open their hearts and lend an ear to all who are in need of an understanding friend.

A Small Victory relies on generous contributions and devoted support from the community to continue the services they provide. It is their hope and dream, that their organization will be A Small Victory for bereaved parents everywhere by turning misfortune into memories.

Founded in 2006 A Small Victory has helped over 200 families spanning across 42 States, 3 Canadian Territories and the UK. It is wonderful to watch this great organization grow from year to year. The CARE (Compassionately Alleviating Regret Everyday) Packages are a much needed addition to the labor and delivery ward for parents who have experienced a loss.

Care (Compassionately Alleviating Regret Everyday) Packages

Certificate of Birth
Camera
Footprint Card
Hair Clipping Card
Journal
and much more…

Please visit A Small Victory’s Care Package page to get a complete list of items and a detailed description of each.

Useful Links:

A Small Victory is doing important work. I’ve lost count of how many families I’ve heard say, we wish we had something tangible to remember our baby by. Simply when in the whirlwind and shock of grief, you do not think about obtaining a keepsake. Fortunately for us one nurse asked if she could take pictures of our son–thankfully we have a few snapshots to remember him by.

Have you or anyone you know received A Small Victory’s Care Package? What do you think about their mission?

Faith’s Lodge: A Place Where Hope Grows

hanamipapa — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:56:18 +0000

Faith’s Lodge provides a place where parents and families facing the serious illness or death of a child can retreat to reflect on the past, renew strength for the present, and build hope for the future.

Faith’s Lodge is located on 80 acres of the lush north Wisconsin forest. With eight beautifully designed guest suites, each accommodating up-to six people, Faith’s Lodge is a wonderful place for bereaved families to reflect and heal. In addition to the serene surroundings and cozy accommodations, Faith’s Lodge also provides optional activities such as “professionally-led discussion groups, therapeutic arts and crafts and north woods adventures.”

In operation since July 2007, Faith’s Lodge has served over 300 families and is the only facility of its kind in the country. Operating as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, Faith’s Lodge offers these wonderful services at a minimum donation of $25 per night. “However, no one will ever be turned away for financial reasons.”

Download the Faith’s Lodge brochure here.
Download the Faith’s Lodge brochure for professionals here.

Other Useful Links:

Nominate Faith’s Lodge for the Chase Community Giving Contest on Facebook!

I just found out about this organization today and the whole concept has blown me away! Our family would have benefited tremendously from this healing retreat. A safe place away from the world, quiet, serene and surrounded by nature would have done the heart and soul some serious good during those first few painful years.

So today I am passing this message onto any eyes and ears that will take note. Spread the word about Faith’s Lodge and help nominate them for the Chase Community Giving Contest on Facebook! Faith’s Lodge has a wonderful opportunity to win more than $1,000,000 through the Chase Community Giving Contest with the assistance of Facebook users.

For all of you Twitter types out there copy and paste this message “Join me in voting for Faith’s Lodge to win more than $1 million in the Chase
Giving contest! Visit http://bit.ly/A3DZw“

What do you think about Faith’s Lodge mission? Would you have benefited from their healing retreat? Leave your thoughts below.

Grief Support After the Death of a Child: The Compassionate Friends

hanamipapa — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:21:30 +0000

The Compassionate Friends is a support group dedicated to help families following the death of a child of any age. Incorporated in 1978, The Compassionate friends began with a chaplain, Simon Stephens, and a set of grieving parents at a hospital in Warwhickshire, England. Chaplain Stephens realized that the support these grieving parents gave to each other was better than anything he could have provided.

Mission
The mission of The Compassionate Friends is to assist families toward the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child of any age and to provide information to help others be supportive…

With more than 600 meeting locations around the country, The Compassionate Friends deliver in building an emotional support group of grieving families whom all share in dealing with the devastating loss of a child. Meetings are not moderated by therapists but instead bereaved parents, siblings and grandparents in all stages of the grieving process.

I first heard about The Compassionate Friends through an old schoolmate who lost her son a few days after giving birth to him six years ago. To date, she is still very active in her local chapter assisting in fundraisers and community events. What I was most impressed by was that shortly after her son passed, she was taken to a meeting being held within the same hospital and was immediately embraced both physically and spiritually–the group sobbed together and let her know she was not alone. Crying together, my friend told me that she was so thankful that there was a group of people out there to help her walk the difficult path of grieving her son.

Useful Links:

Comment and Win a Charcoal Portrait

hanamipapa — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:03:50 +0000

Charcoal Portrait of Nicolas by Jason Marti

In keeping with the spirit of our “Grand Reopening,” we will be giving one lucky reader a hand drawn charcoal portrait created by our very own artist, Jason Marti.

The winner’s portrait will be hand-drawn in charcoal pencil, allowing for subtle shading and gradations. Jason’s artwork is created using acid-free archival materials with an invisible protective coating that minimizes smudging and fading over time. The portrait will be approximately 8”x10” in size, allowing you to mat and frame the artwork yourself or take it to a professional framer.

Jason normally sells his 8″x10″ charcoal portraits for $130US for a single subject, but offers Hanami Prints‘ customers a 50% discount. This is your chance to win one of these beautiful portraits–just in time for the holidays.

Rules

The rules are simple–leave a comment below and let us know what you think about the site. Submit your comment before midnight Thursday November 19, 2009. The winner will be announced the next morning Friday November 20, 2009.

Other places to have a portrait made from your photographs:

Hanami Prints
Portraits of an Angel
Pencil Portrait Drawing Artist
Portraits by Dana

It’s Here! Hanami Prints Blog Redesign

hanamipapa — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:54:31 +0000

Today I am proud to announce the redesign of Hanami Prints’ Blog: Learning to Live Without Our Children. For months we have been struggling with how to approach the redesign and what would be the best way to gather and distribute all of the helpful information and resources scattered across the Web.

Our goal is to provide grieving parents and family members, honoring the lives of their children, a safe place to share information, news and musings on miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant and child loss. Not much has changed in our philosophy but our approach is much different.

So what has changed?

The biggest change and one I am most proud of is in the look and function of the blog. As a traditional and digital artist the first design bothered me due to the lack of visual interest and organization. So this time around I decided to be creative and design all of my own elements and use a theme created by a great company called WooThemes–I highly recommend this company if you are looking to redesign your WordPress blog and don’t want to get your hands dirty with all of the programming.

The next big change is in the information we will be offering and how it is presented. There are a lot of websites and blogs out there that offer helpful information to our community, but many of them are difficult to navigate or hard to find. We will search the web and bring the information straight to you.

Medical Resources
Grief Support
Random Thoughts
Blogs
Videos
Photography and Art
Quotes and Poems

If there are any subjects that you would like to see or think that may be helpful, please feel free to share them with the community or email us.

Other ways to communicate with us

I invite you to join us in building and sharing our community through social media websites:

Facebook
Twitter
Posterous

Conclusion

We are so excited to share our new site with all of you and hope that you find Hanami Prints a valuable resource and a welcoming place to share your experiences with an understanding community.

We would love to hear your thoughts about the new design!

Hanami Season

An Unbearable Pain

hanamipapa — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:43:20 +0000

Losing a child brings a pain so deep and dark that at times there seems no way out, no hope, no reason to continue living. During the first year after Nicolas died, I wrestled with thoughts of my own death, for the first time wishing the airplane I was on would crash instead of land safely, for the first time more afraid to live than die. During those darkest moments, I saw no possibility of joy or purpose in my life and simply did not want to go on. I wish I could say I’m still here because I tapped some unknown and unexpected well of strength to push through those dark days. In reality, it is Nicolas’ little brother, Christopher, who saved my life. I became pregnant with Christopher three months after Nicolas died, which coincided with the lowest point of my grief. My pregnancy did not give me hope for the future as hope was an emotion I was incapable of feeling at that time. But it did give me a sense of responsibility and a sort of robotic reflex to continue eating, sleeping, working, living.

Although a somewhat taboo subject, even among parents who have lost children, I imagine most bereaved mothers and fathers have contemplated suicide after burying a son or daughter. I read today about a couple who decided this world held nothing for them without their only child. Their beautiful boy, Sam, suffered two tragedies in his short life. He survived the first, a car accident at one year old that severed his spine and paralyzed him from the neck down, but succumbed to the second — a sudden massive bacterial meningitis infection that took his life on May 29, 2009, four years later. The TimesOnline reports the bodies of Neil and Kazumi Puttick were found at the foot of Beachy Head in Sussex, England, with two rucksacks: one contained a toy tractor and teddy bears and the other little Sam’s body.

I am not a grief counselor or a psychologist or even an especially perceptive person and cannot comment on how or why some parents are able to fight the overpowering urge to join their children in death while others cannot. But I feel nothing but empathy and understanding for the parent who makes that fatal choice, nothing but a sadness for the unbearable hurt that drove them to pull the trigger or, as in Neil and Kazumi’s case, to jump off the cliff. There is no selfishness in this act, as some people believe of suicide — only a desperate pain and hopelessness.

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A Love Unburdened

hanamipapa — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:24:43 +0000

For a long time after Nicolas was born and died, I could not separate the love I felt for my son from the pain I felt at his death. I was consumed equally with these emotions, making it impossible to understand whether I was mourning the life Nicolas lost or celebrating the life he had. Love and grief did not exist as separate but equal entities in me, like oil and water, but were one and the same. They did not compete with each other for space but subsisted as one being. Like any new parent, I fell so deeply in love with Nicolas the moment I saw him and held his still warm body in my arms. Yes, I loved Nicolas before he was born, but that love solidified into form in Nicolas. Knowing he was already dead, knowing I would go home without him, did not undermine my love for Nicolas. The grief and pain simply joined the love and joy to become one powerful, crushing emotion.

More than a year after my little boy died — with much of the hard work of fresh grief behind me, I realized I was afraid to let go of the pain for fear of losing Nicolas entirely. All I had known of Nicolas since his birth was grief and hurt. I did not see him open his eyes; I did not hear his first breath or newborn cry. I did not have the chance to create joyful memories with Nicolas because he was dead before I first held him in my arms. If I put the grief away, if I lay down the burden I carried for so long, would I also let go of the love? It was a long struggle, a tedious effort, to unravel the pain from the love, the grief from the joy. I came to understand that, despite his unexpected death, despite the trauma of birthing a full-term, dead baby, despite the pain of outliving my child — Nicolas was still the first, great blessing of my life. While I will always wish Nicolas had lived, while I will always mourn the life he should have had, I will forever be grateful to have known him at all — to have been his mother for even a short time.

I read today a letter another mama wrote about her first-born son, who died two days after his birth from labor complications. She said she tries to hold her babe in love rather than in grief. Such a beautiful and wise sentiment. Three years after Nicolas’ death, I am able to process the pain and joy as independent emotions — I am finally able to hold my sweet son in a love unburdened by grief.

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No Word for Us

hanamipapa — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:25:09 +0000

There is a saying, though few have probably heard it, that expresses an oversight of the English language — a missing word to describe a pain and a grief that should never be: “a wife who loses a husband is a widow; a child who loses a parent is an orphan. But there is no word for a parent who loses a child.” As malleable and ever-changing as our language is, why is there no word for us? The tragedy of a child’s death is nothing new — too many parents throughout time have buried their babies, their toddlers, their teenagers, their adult children years before their own deaths. Since Nicolas died, it seems I hear about a mother who has just buried her child almost daily — not because these deaths are happening more often but because I pay attention now, having survived my own son. It is a commonly agreed upon truth in our society that no death is as tragic as a child’s, no grief as deep as a parent’s. So, again, why is there no word for us?

A child who precedes her parents to the grave goes against the natural order of things — it shatters our illusions of what is fair and what is right. A baby should not lose his life before his first breath. The young should not die before the old. I struggled with these truths for a long time after Nicolas died, struggled with the knowledge that I had already received the gift of three decades of life — thirty years of sunrises and sunsets, holidays with my family, swimming in a cool river on a hot day, traveling to new places, experiencing first and second and third loves — while my infant son received nothing. It is not natural, it is not fair, it is not right. Is this the reason there is no word for us — because burying a child is so unnatural, so appalling, that we cannot name it?

In an interesting article to mark Memorial Day, journalist Karla Holloway attempts to name our grief, to name the unspeakable loss of a child. After losing her child, Holloway searches the world’s languages and settles on a Sanskrit word, “vilomah,” which means “against the natural order.” While “vilomah” may never catch on, it would give some comfort to have our grief, our loss, openly named.

Parents deserve word to convey loss of a child

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