The grace I can offer to each and every one of you who is new to this feeling, is with acknowledging that you are swimming in uncharted waters of isolation. I can meet you where you are, sinking into a shade of blue you haven’t known before, with an outstretched hand that knows better than to judge anyone in vulnerability.
Read MoreI specifically show you this image, and chose my words wisely. I call it a portrait of a Mother & her Son, not, a portrait of a Bereaved mother. Because while Bereaved is what I am, the gravity of this role is lost in phrasing, and you don’t truly see the weight I carry unless I show it to you.
Read MoreA family receiving care at Canuck Place Children’s Hospice is there to learn about, and tend to, the letting go of their child. What could be a more important or enormous task in life?
Read MoreThere are too many moments of heartbreak wrapped up in this day, too many startling memories that leave me breathless. Too many moments I’ll never share, not ever. Perhaps that’s the way I’m made, a woman who carries it all deep within, my inner workings fueled by heartbreak as equally as joy.
Read More“These bloom in April every year” he said. “Sometimes at the start, sometimes at the end, you’ll never really know. But it will bloom in April” and he left us to choose.
It will bloom in April.
The month of our boy.
And I want to reach across the void and touch her with my hand, and tell her what I finally know to be true.
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Tragedy has no patience, it will not allow for daydreams. No part of him could be saved for my future self.
I’ve let go of ever slipping into her shoes again, I could never fit, and maybe I don’t want to. They hard edges of me muscled forward by loss have also made way for my soft insides.
Read MoreThere is an exhaustion that lives in my features that no skin cream can cure, these lines have been earned through trauma & sleepless nights of bad dreams.
Read MoreOne image of heartbreak infused into today’s waterfall of happy photos. This isn’t meant to dampen your mood, only to stir a greater understanding that the world is full of happy & sad parents today.
Read MoreImage by Jayme Lang.
I remembered how incredibly angry that remark used to make me. I couldn’t believe someone’s shortsightedness would allow them to think I had a choice in living my life after losing my son, to think I had a choice in putting one tired & broken foot in front of the other, and I would silently hate them.
Read MoreThere are days that friends can give all their time to help your heart heal, and there are days those same people need a break. Build your support like a well oiled Jenga tower, when one piece needs to tap out and rest on top, lean into the pieces on the bottom that are ready and waiting to give all they can.
Read MorePhoto by Jayme Lang
Instead of the break being negative, something to hide or cover up, the break and all it’s many shattered bits are celebrated, as the creation of something new and… beautiful.
Read MoreYou grow + stretch + patch your heart with years of grief and when life breaks you again and again, you hope that your muscle of resilience has been worked enough to make up the difference.
Read MoreLochlan's home was here, in this hospital. This is where I knew him. His only nursery was a private tiny room filled with machines and nurses. We never left, everything I did to love and support him happened here.
Read MoreThe light comes through the cracks. The healing joins with the breaking. The change comes after we fall apart... and rebuild
Read MoreI fuss over the dresser next to my bed, constantly rearranging where things go, changing the photo in the white frame and the flowers that always sit there. It’s important work for me to care, nurture and pour love into this tiny space - this plot that I’ve given to my boy.
Read MoreTime moved slowly for a very long time, we blindly went through our days for weeks on end, always keeping busy but never doing anything at all – the hopeless dance of the grieving.
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