Lost Potential

I'm stealing this from a newsletter that I receive... but to give it context it has been one year since I found out that my baby was no longer growing. This has been a really hard few days so far. For the most part I've been doing ok but having anniversaries come up can be really painful.

As an aside, if you know someone who has ever gone through a miscarriage. Stop pretending like it didn't happen. Sometimes the best thing you can do for them is actually bring it up even if it is painful. It's nice to know that people other than myself remember. Not talking about it doesn't mean we've forgotten, it just seems like you have.

Lost Potential

"Last year I attended a workshop presented by a specialist in grief named Dr. Cable. Dr. Cable said many important things about the grief process, but as a bereaved parent one thing stuck out in my mind. He said that if you ask a bereaved person to describe his deceased mother, he will say, 'Oh, she was so sweet. She always wore flowered dresses and loved to bake cookies.' But if you ask a bereaved parent to describe their deceased child, she will say, 'Oh, he would be five this year and just starting kindergarten,'  or, 'She would be twenty-two this year and graduating from college.' You see, we bereaved parents grieve the lost potential of our children. Our children don't stop growing up in our minds. We grieve again and anew each year as our child would have been a different age."

Chris Anderson, The Compassionate Friends, Walla Walla, WA