Moving Towards Remembering…

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month.  For nearly 7 years, this month has been one of learning to remember the little ones who are always with us, even if they’re not with us in our arms, or sitting at the dinner table or playing with their siblings.  And it is a time to acknowledge the ones who say goodbye to their children, or their hopes and dreams of THIS child or THIS pregnancy.  In so far that I can use words to express in an embodied way, October feels to be the perfect month for this, at least in the part of the world that I call home, especially this year.  

Each year I am in awe of the trees-how can there be so many hues of reds, oranges, yellows and greens?  These ones we waited for all winter long; for the sweet sap to flow, those little spring buds that one day seemed to magically open and bloom into unique leaves.  All summer long we watched them dance in the sun, wind and rain, with squirrels playing and birds singing in their branches.  With each bright leaf that falls, then browns on the ground, we experience the abundance of summer transforming through the beauty of autumn towards the darker and colder winter months.  Trees and their leaves teach us so much about resilience and life and beauty and well yes, death shows up too.  When we’re willing to notice.  

I am blessed to have a few teachers. One of them once held up a handful of soil and asked if we knew that there were billions of living organisms alive in this small amount?  And another teacher held a handful of earth while asking if we knew how much death happened in just this one handful of soil? 

My Story of Remembering

October 7th is the date I birthed my sweet baby boy at 16 weeks, 7 years ago.  I used to think that my Teenie Tiny’s life was somewhat like the leaves of this season.  But maybe our non-breathing children’s lives are more like the seeds that also fall from trees?  We may not have noticed them or acknowledged their continued aliveness as much as we might connect to those glorious leaves and the trees they came from. Perhaps we’ve forgotten that all these seeds come from their parents and usually stay close by?

Some of the fallen seeds will take root next spring and some will forever stay in the earth.  Some may be eaten by bugs, squirrels or birds-taking a slower route towards the ground. Some will stay buried in the earth-perhaps to nourish the soil.  Fallen seeds help to sustain the soil that continues to nourish the parent tree, all the previous sibling seeds that grew into saplings and for all the trees and plants to come.  

I think when a child dies or a wanted pregnancy ends, it’s like saying goodbye to something or someone you didn’t know how much you loved before they were physically gone. When I had to hand over my baby boy, who looked like my other boys, I couldn’t possibly know how his little life would transform and nourish my own life. In the presence of his absence, I am still learning to hold both grief and gratitude as I tend to all the living ones around me.

Maybe your seeds never grew into saplings, maybe they didn’t germinate as perhaps planned. Now I know you’re learning to live with a broken heart and I wonder, if these seeds continue to bring beauty or a sense of aliveness to your world these days?