Bereavement faces many challenges.
The strikingly contradictory response to our bereavement from our loved ones who espouse strong religious, political or other personal beliefs can be quite jarring and indeed, even traumatizing.
Loved ones who espouse strong pro-life beliefs, specifically if they are someone who would be the quickest to say that elective abortion is the murder of a child, when they shun a mother who has experienced miscarriage or stillbirth be telling her, in word or action, to quickly “get over it”.
Loved ones who espouse strong pro-choice beliefs, specifically if they are someone who would be the quickest to proclaim freedom of a mother’s rights and choices, when they shun a mother who is experiencing bereavement and attempting to deny her the freedoms and the rights to explore and express her bereavement journey, these rights and freedoms they otherwise believe all mothers to have.
Dear loved ones, we need you to have an eye to your own hypocrisy, because it is wounding. Whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, it isn’t actually Roe v. Grief, and we need you to become pro-healing.
Wow! Thank you for sharing that. It’s so powerful – our own agendas or biases can impact how we see and interact with someone who is walking through a grieving process… I appreciate your raising our awareness on that. That’s a time to love, listen, care & support!
As a mom who has lost 2 children, one who was stillborn and one we chose to terminate due to her fatal diagnosis, thank you for this post. People are hesitant to discuss my son, but NEVER discuss my daughter, as if what I did, as her mother, was a sin. Even in the baby loss community, people have shied away…I often feel I am the pirah among pirahs 🙁
Yes, Heidi. Thank you for speaking this truth. I know so many who suffer silently, and whether it’s due to a baby miscarried, stillborn, or aborted, a loss is a loss is a loss. God does not call us to condemn, or abandon, but to walk beside our sisters and brothers in this life. It is how His love comes down to us– through others.
Before I had lost a child I was strongly against abortion. I had no empathy towards those that had chosen that path and had no empathy for them in their loss.
Since losing my twin daughter I have come to realize that yes a loss is a loss. I also like Meghan would have chosen to terminate had a fatal diagnoses been made. Meghan you still had a loss. People whom have lost a child in whatever way deserve the right to grieve in their own way to be recognized and supported.