Hanami Prints Blog: Learning to Live Without Our Children » grief

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:

Subsequent Pregnancy After a Loss Support (SPALS)

hanamipapa — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:43:26 +0000

Subsequent Pregnancy After a Loss Support (SPALS) is a closed email-based, community support group that has given thousands of grieving parents a safe and compassionate forum to connect and share experiences with others who know the depths of grieving a child and the fears associated with subsequent pregnancy. Whether you have experienced “the loss of a child due to miscarriage, selective termination, stillbirth, neonatal death, sudden infant death, or accidental death,” SPALS offers an extremely active and supportive community to those currently pregnant, trying to become pregnant, or contemplating trying again after loss.

How active and supportive?

Very! Within moments of my wife posting her first email to the group there was an outpouring of support from members all over the world letting her know that we were not alone. It has been over three years since that first email and I can tell you the momentum and strength of the group hasn’t slowed a bit.

Shortly after the passing of her first child, due to severe preeclampsia and HELLP Syndrome, Sarah Grimes Founded SPALS in December 1995. Sarah is still very much a part of SPALS and is one of two list administrators.

Sarah shares her experience “The Life and Death of Haven, our Beloved Daughter.”

Conclusion

SPALS is a wonderful support group that has been a tremendous resource. Its members have helped us through some of the darkest times. There are many support groups out there, but SPALS offers an atmosphere of intimacy and privacy that is very comforting and reassuring.

Useful Links:

SPALS Home – Subsequent Pregnancy After a Loss Support
SPALS Faq – Frequently asked questions
Join SPALS – Join SPALS now
Sarah Grimes – For general enquiries and history of SPALS

Do you have a story to share about SPALS? What would you tell our readers looking to join a support group? What support groups have you found most helpful?

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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Long-Term Consequences of The Death of An Infant on Surviving Siblings

HanamiMama — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:32:56 +0000

A study into the long-term consequences of the death of an infant on surviving siblings has recently been published. While the focus of the study involved infants who died in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), it seems the implications can also explain the affects of stillbirth, as well as the death of older babies, on living siblings. One of the most interesting findings shows that regardless of when the baby died – either before or after the surviving siblings were born – there was no change in how the living brothers and sisters dealt with the loss.

I have often wondered how Nicolas’ death will affect my living son, Christopher Nicolas, who was born three days shy of Nicolas’ first birthday in February 2007. My need to honor and celebrate Nicolas’ memory through displaying his photographs all over my home, lighting candles on important days, wearing special memorial jewelry – and simply speaking his name – has at times competed with my need to protect Christopher. My instinct tells me Christopher will be a better person for having known his brother, if only through my memories. But I worry that introducing the concept of death, and that death can happen suddenly and unexpectedly even to healthy infants and children, will be a lesson on the cruelty and unfairness of life – a lesson Christopher should not have to learn at such a young age.

I was relieved to read, at least according to this study, that creating rituals in celebration of the baby who died – sharing photographs and memorial keepsakes, participating in family traditions to honor birthdays and holidays – establishes a symbolic link between siblings and connects them in healthy ways. Surviving siblings who grow up celebrating the memory of their deceased baby brother or sister experience fewer negative consequences and feelings than those whose parents kept their grief for the baby private. Parents who try to shield their surviving children by never speaking of the baby who died ironically cause more trauma in the long term.

Death Of A Child In The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit: Long-term Consequences For Siblings
ScienceDaily (2009-04-06) — Little is known about the long-term effects of the death of a child in the neonatal intensive care unit on survivor siblings. These siblings may encounter unforeseen emotional difficulties and developmental consequences that can occur whether the siblings are born before or after the infant’s death. … > read full article