Child Loss

When a loved one dies and our heart is feeling broken and raw and in pain, in can be difficult to feel that there is a gift in the loss. I know I have felt that several times with the loss of a brother, a son and a husband. With the death of my son and the birth of my fourth child two weeks later, I learned to dance with the emotions of deep grief and extreme joy.

Bereaved parents often feel isolated in their grief. Losing a child is a traumatic event in anyone's life, and easing the pain can make life bearable in the first few months after the tragedy.

For many women having had an abortion, however long ago it was, is something they felt they weren't able to share. It's a secret sorrow. There are many internal and external obstacles to working through this secret sorrow in order to move on and grieve it.

Forgiveness is a process, not an event. In the case of forgiveness and abortion I feel there are perhaps three areas of forgiveness. There is forgiveness of yourself, forgiveness of the father of the aborted child and forgiveness by God.

Survivor Guilt is a very insidious thing. It plays like the background music to your life, always a low hum droning on. After having an abortion many women go through the thought process of survivor guilt.

I learned something very valuable by grieving the loss of my son in 1993 and the loss of my husband in 2005: Take control of your grief. There is a fine line between denying the feelings and immersing yourself in the feelings for long periods of time. I found the rhythm of grieving, releasing and living life again, one step at a time.

My daughter would have been 22 today had she lived.

For anyone who has lost a child, and I myself have lost two, the pain, anger and sorrow don't become any less sharp. Those feelings may take a back seat to the inevitable everyday tasks and duties that we must carry out, but I find the smallest reminder can easily bring them to the forefront again. For me, it is birthdays or holidays, a certain child's cry, baby booties or a child s eyes looking into mine.

Oh, we talk about the best cold medications and if cherry cough syrup tastes better to kids than orange. We can recommend preschools and sneakers. But the hardest part of parenting is the least often discussed. The roughest aspect of being a parent is losing a child.

For the last eight days, I have read comments to my article “Stop telling me how wrong I am!” I have read the emails sent to me in response to that article. I have listened to what people have told me when they see me in the store or talk to me on the phone. I have cried because of the heartless and cruel things that have been said to me. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want. It doesn’t seem to matter how much pain I’m in and how much more those comments have added to it. Every day, every single one of the last eight days, I have cried because of something said to me about my grief.