This is my first time writing for Still Mothers and I want to thank RaeAnne and Lisa for creating such a safe and inclusive place for women to just be with their grief without having to worry about coming across the triggers that seem to be everywhere these days. I’ve been thinking about this, about how difficult it is in our world to find a space where we know our hearts can simply rest for a little while – without fear, without worry, without constantly scanning, without having that pervasive feeling of guilt and “I know I should be happy for them but…”, without being surprised by an out of the blue trigger – a word, a photo, a story, a question, a look.
So to know that this exists in the Still Mothers community, that with the space comes a fierce advocacy for and protection of the hearts that come to rest here, is such a gift. In the depth of my grief – my husband and I lost three very-nearly adopted daughters (they lived with us for almost a year) after a decade long journey through pregnancy loss and infertility – I craved this kind of safe space more than I could articulate. I look back now and I know that my heart knew exactly what it needed, but I struggled within a culture that was quite clear that avoiding triggers and the heart wrenching pain of daily life was not an option.
My heart, had I given it every opportunity to express and create what it needed, would have chosen this exactly: I would have left my community and moved onto an isolated acreage far from my current home, hours away, out in the country. I would have lived in a small cabin on my own, with a wood burning fireplace, a freezer filled with homemade meals and soup, boxes of books, a telephone, and a giant beautiful bathtub. Nowhere in my world would I have encountered pregnancies, babies, children, playgrounds, school yards, grocery stores, or the constant stream of pregnancy announcements, family photos and motherhood quotes that seemed to be filling my social media feeds and seemingly every shop I visited.
I would have walked for long hours through fields, forests and trails, allowing the birds, the trees and the moonlight into my heart, still so wounded and raw, tearing open again so easily, all it took was to imagine the sound of a child’s laugh. My farmer’s market would be open one child-free day per week, where myself and the armies of broken mothers without children could gather – to tend to our physical need for nourishment, to lean on each other, to wail out loud or in silence, to gather, to know that none of us were alone.
Our hearts need healing time, and they need healing space. They need to be held with such reverence that we begin to believe ourselves that we are worthy, that we are honoured, that what we have been through matters, that our babies – and the dreams that we have had for babies, for a family, matter. We need to know that we are safe, and that even if we are not understood, that we are witnessed and treated with empathy wherever we go – so that we can in fact begin to take our shaky steps, to begin to walk again amongst the everyday simple-living-ness of life, to take our place at the table of every human being, with every heart that has ever broken, with all the hearts that wander through our days, broken open, filled with love, feeling safe and held with kindness and compassion, knowing we can get through this together.
We can be this safe and sacred space for each other. We can also, eventually teach others how we would like to be treated but only once we have learned ourselves what it is that we need and how to lean. To first learn the leaning and how to check in with our hearts we need a safe space, so here we are and I thank Still Mothers for creating it.
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Shannon has worked as a midwife in BC, Canada since 2003 and began her career as a doula over 20 years ago. She has worked with hundreds of families over the years through the joys of pregnancy and birth as well as through a full spectrum of loss, including infertility, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth and infant death, and the many complications and difficult decisions that can arise in pregnancy, labour and after birth.
While these experiences have been both challenging and heartbreaking, each has been incredibly sacred and precious as well. Shannon has been drawn to working with grief and loss over the past decade, through both her own personal story of infertility, baby loss, and adoption loss, and from knowing how much support parents need in these situations and how difficult it can be to access that support.
Shannon created Mothering Your Heart in 2015 after many years of dreaming about the kind of resources she would like to offer families who are struggling after loss. Having no living children of her own, she is drawn to the comfort that online communities such as Still Mothers provide. MYH is an ever-evolving work in progress that provides compassionate community and grief support for women who have experienced infertility, miscarriage and baby loss.
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- What I Wish I Could Tell the Non-Loss Community - November 17, 2020