• Child Loss,  Differences with Male/Female Grief,  Explaining Child Loss,  Healing after child loss,  How to Validate Your Child's Life after Death,  Self-Care after child loss,  Sibling Loss

    Child Loss Causes So Much Miscommunication in a Family

    When child loss occurs, there is often chaos within the family unit.  Nobody knows what to do or say.  Everybody knows that each person is suffering.  But, no words are spoken.  Why?  How do you even begin to communicate within a family when everybody is in shock and grief?  This radical miscommunication often leads to the breakdown of a family and that’s just what we want to guard against. “As we know, the death of a child doesn’t just affect the heart of a mother.” — This is a direct quote from the book Child Loss; The Heartbreak and the Hope.

  • Child Loss,  Sibling Loss

    Child Loss: Forgiving the Child That Died

    Before I begin this blog post, please know that this is a subject that is often not mentioned.  Almost never.  Yet, I feel it’s something that we need to address if we’re ever going to come to terms with our child’s death and find some semblance of peace. I’ll use a personal experience as my reference, but ask that if you can find the strength and the words that you’ll comment at the end of the blog so that we can have some honest discussion about a very closed topic pertaining to child loss. Let me explain what I mean by “forgiving the child that died.” When a child dies,…

  • Child Loss,  Sibling Loss

    Child Loss: Facing Thanksgiving Without My Child

    I had to get a few things from Walmart earlier today, and the store was filled with displays for Thanksgiving and Christmas already.  In fact, any store you go into has the same advertising going on.  I was pushing the cart along the doll aisle looking for a birthday gift for one of my granddaughters, when all of a sudden it hit me.  Grief.  Full blown grief!  I dug deep into my handbag to find a tissue to wipe the tears that were dripping down my face.  “Where did this come from?”  I asked myself.  I wasn’t expecting these emotions to come knocking on the door of my heart — not…

  • Child Loss,  Sibling Loss

    Child Loss and Family Pictures: An Entirely New Meaning

    I’m not exacly sure when it happened, but somewhere around age twelve I became a photo nut.  There was hardly ever an occasion when I didn’t have a camera in my hands.  I’m still that way today.  I have taken thousands and thousands of photos, and now that digital photography is available, I’m always snapping photos. It’s irritating to some people, but I love to have a photo to remind me of time spent together with family and friends. This week while having a rare, but necessary, meltdown, I was sobbing in bed one evening and decided to look through some of the thousands of photos stored on my computer.  It wasn’t until then…

  • Sibling Loss

    The Darkest Day of My Life: The Funeral

    Probably every person alive remembers the happiest moment of their life and when we recall that moment or occasion or person that brought us such joy that we smile from the inside out and get butterflies in our stomach! Thankfully,  I can remember several “happiest moments” in my life, and I hope you can, too! Our darkest moments — those days when we cannot believe we managed to continue to breathe — are the ones we want to forget, yet these moments seems to plague us forever.  These heavy, painful times dig right into the core of our heart and won’t let go.  The pain of grief gnaws at us continuously for a long…