Reflections on Writing and Grief: A Journey of Twelve Years

About a year ago, I was preparing for my book, Still: Making a Whole When Parts Go Missing, to be ready for pre-order on Amazon. I had been busy navigating all the exciting yet stressful details of the self-publishing world.

This memoir was been 12 years in the making. I started it in a UCLA Extension class in 2011 on writing as a way of life. When I started the class, I would never have guessed that I'd begin writing about our stillbirth son who died in 2006. I didn't imagine I wanted to write about it because at the time I'd only been writing entertaining parenting scenarios for a newsletter for moms. However, once I started, it became clear that my journey of grief and then pregnancy with my second son was something I needed to write about.

Over the years, I'd wanted to stop. I'd told myself there were enough stories about pregnancy and infant loss. Yet God kept putting people in my life who not only encouraged me to keep writing but also revealed to me a need for women and marriages to heal after infant loss. Grief, unlike other emotions, will reveal the weaknesses in marriages because no two people grieve alike. Grief, left unprocessed, likes to blame and it provokes feelings of helplessness so it's more difficult to ask for what we need. It likes to lash out in order to cover the powerlessness invoked in dashed dreams and hopes, like those we had for our son.

Through the goodness of having a great therapist, colleagues, friends, and family, we found our way through this loss. I found my way. What my son's brief life gave me was a reorienting of what matters, what doesn't, and what needed tending to. I learned the beauty in vulnerability, the safety net of friends and family that can hold any devastation in my life, and the only moment that matters is the one I'm living right now.

What has this year held for you so far? I'm still navigating the implementation of better habits of movement when I do sedentary work all day and not skipping lunch (I so often forget to make it until I'm running out the door). I'm also recognizing what a poor job I'm doing of spiritually listening — I'm too into my own spiritual thinking. Stay tuned for refinement!

Drop me a line when you have time. I love hearing from you.

Shalom Aleichem (Peace Be With You).