Mama share.... posted by ♥Chrissy♥ Today is the 6th anniversary of my angel babies death....in honor of her I wanted to share this... Ive been told that I should quiet down and keep my thoughts to myself. Ive been told that now isnt the time for my brutal honesty. Ive been told that Im too raw. Ive been told to be complacent, to be silent, to be someone Im not... Today Im choosing to break my silence. To be honest. To be real. To be transparent. Today Im choosing to honor my responsibility as a bereaved parent. Today Im choosing to honor my daughter. Webster’s dictionary defines grief in the following way, a deep sadness caused especially by someone’s death. a cause of deep sadness. trouble or annoyance. Deep sadness. So deep, its used twice in the definition. I know a lot of people that have been sad. A lot of people who have been heart broken. A lot of people who have felt lost, broken, or hopeless. I dont know very many people who have experienced real true grief...a deep sadness. A sadness so deep it becomes physically painful. A sadness so deep it destroys you, takes a once joyful person who was full of life, and turns them into nothing more than an empty vessel. But I have experienced this...I experience it every day, every moment, in every breath I take. There are many ways to describe loss. And loss as a result of death is labeled in many ways. As the survivor of loss, you are labeled. When you lose a spouse you are labeled a widow. When you lose a parent(s) you are labeled an orphan. But when you lose a child, there is nothing to define you, nothing to sum up your loss. The label’s that many bereaved parents earn are often negative ones, ones given to use by people who cant possibly understand our pain, but somehow still feel entitled to labeling it. We are told to move on. We are told to be thankful for the time we had. We are told you have other children, or you can always have another child. We are told to let go. We are called crazy, depressed, strange, difficult, hard to be around, impossible. We are accused of living in the past. And worst of all, we are given a timeline for our grief. We are told how long it is appropriate grieve for, and when we appear to still be sad outside of that timeline, it is labeled as unresolved grief and we are viewed as unhealthy. I was recently told I needed to resolve my grief. I was forced to sit in front of a group of people and have my ability to function in society measured by my grief. I was told that my grief was outside of the box. After already losing a child, I then had everything I hold dear ripped from me because I have not followed societies rules about grief. I have not done what someone who has never lost a child thinks I should do. There is so much wrong with this idea, that it is hard to know where to start...so Ill put my feelings aside for a moment. Let’s just deal with some cold, hard facts. 1 in 4 women lose a child through miscarriage, still birth, or infant loss. ONE OUT OF FOUR. That is 25%. That is your neighbor, you mother, your sister, your friend, your coworker. For many of you reading this, that is YOU. More women will suffer this kind of loss than any other traumatic event-breast cancer (1 in 8 women) or widowed (about 1.1%, and of those the average age is 55) are two examples. Domestic violence is the only trauma with similar statistics, averaging about 1/5- to 1/4 women experiencing it. But these survivors are encouraged to speak about their experiences for years after their trauma. They are hailed for their bravery and their strength. Every decent size city has a support group or workshop for it. We dedicate special days, or months to recognize them. Celebrities work for these causes. We educate ourselves and our children about these things. By no means am I insinuating that these things are not traumatic, or that these women should not be honored and these causes made important...but folks, twice as many women lose a child as suffer from breast cancer. And yet, it is deemed inappropriate to speak about our loss for too long. We most often find support through internet groups because support groups or coping skills workshops dont exist in our communities. We are considered fragile or weak. And those who are educated about our kind of losses, gained their education because they were personally affected, not because a celebrity got on TV and told us about it, not because a teacher in a school told us about it. Death is a nasty topic. I know it, you know it, society knows it. But...death is inevitable. Its the only guarantee in life. No one wants to talk about it, but everyone thinks about it. Death of a child, its unspeakable. People feel that it is just too awful to talk about. And I can understand that. It IS awful. It IS unspeakable. But, it DOES happen. Every day. To millions of children, to their families, to their moms. So why cant we talk about it? Perhaps our grief remains outside the box for so long, because we arent talking about it. Because our loved ones, our communities, our society, chooses to pretend it didnt happen and we are asked to remain quiet. Losing Kennedi the way I did taught me a lot, it changed me a lot. Who I am now is a shadow of who I once was. And for most of the last 6 years I have been quiet, I have cried alone, I have said Im fine when Im not, and I have done what I thought I should so that those around me never had to deal with the discomfort of my reality. I am done being that person. I will NOT stay quiet, I will NOT pretend my heart is not broken, and I will NOT feel guilty for my grief. My child should have outlived me. Which means that every day for the rest of my life I CAN and WILL miss her. My heart will break a little bit every day for the things she will never experience. And this doesnt make me unhealthy, or crazy, or weak. This makes me better, it makes me stronger, it makes me HUMAN. I am 1 in 4. And I am not alone. So today, on the 6th anniversary of my daughters death, I will bravely share my grief. And I dare you to tell me to keep it to myself.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 12:49:18 +0000
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