This very week, stillbirthday has been here for 2 years.  And, this very week, we have reached over 1,000,000 families.

We are growing and reaching in more ways than I’ve ever fathomed.

Which makes this message a painful one, an embarrassing one, but one I must share.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the Heidi’s Pieces section of stories, you’ve come to know that I had a very painful childhood, one filled with trauma, abuse and neglect.

And you’ll quickly come to know that I became a Christian in my adult life.

And then my baby was born in the first trimester.

My baby, who is not alive.

Who was called debris.

And we were denied services by a prominent bereavement organization I won’t even mention.

And my baby still doesn’t have a headstone.  Two years later.  Because stillbirthday is where I come to mourn, and because it is an honor to share this place with others who are hurting.  And because all funds generated through stillbirthday get poured back into stillbirthday.

My husband and I began stillbirthday, as a way to give a glimpse of hope to those enduring the darkness we have been.

And Christians, who wouldn’t ask me about my own personal experience, told me to make stillbirthday extremely pro-life.

And non-Christians, who likewise, never bothered to know about my heartbreak, demanded stillbirthday portray elective abortion as something light or easy.

I have done nor will do neither.

I have had the most slanderous and maliciously cruel things said about me, I’ve had my work stolen, I’ve had my grief journey insulted.

Christians, who didn’t ask me where my source of hope has come from, spoke with judgment and discrimination and told me condescendingly that the Bible needs to be the only source of encouragement for bereavement.

Non-Christians, who likewise, failed to be curious about the individual of me, accused me of being judgmental and discriminatory.

I have never done nor will I ever do either.

However,

In the darkness through which stillbirthday was born, I was panicked in my own faith.

I was terrified that God was not at all who I thought He was.

And in that panic, I did saturate evangelistic approaches in some of the thoughts I had early in my grief.

In a moment of pure transparency, two years later, 1 million people later, I desperately cry in embarrassment,

I am so sorry.

I am so sorry for the shame or condemnation or judgment I might have inadvertently cast upon you in your darkest of days.

I never, ever meant to bring any more pain.

I have grown and matured in this impossible darkness and terrible but beautiful journey, and I have since those earliest days revised the things that stung my heart as I found my old words through new eyes.

I am Christian.

I always will be.

But pregnancy and infant loss, it isn’t.

It knows no boundaries.

It touches every continent, every culture and every community.

I desire stillbirthday to do the same.

And, I realize that in order to truly do that, I need you to know this:

I am a 30-something, Caucasian, American, Christian mother.  This is the lens I come from.

But I want your help to learn about you.

And I beg your forgiveness as I stumble on the journey.

I have been through a lot, and I trust you have too.

I have learned,

That God isn’t who I thought He was.

I am Christian,

And it is not what I thought it was.

And while the lessons have been terribly painful ones,

I am thankful for them.

I am Christian,

And it’s probably not what you thought it was, either.

Whoever you are, wherever you are,

I just want to bring you love, but I am hurting too, and I ask you, to please find it within yourself, to bring love too.

The public pool.

I’ve heard that spending just a few minutes looking into a fashion magazine can significantly lower a woman’s self image.

Bright colored bikinis.  That perfect shade of hot-pink-almost-peach that makes her look perfectly tan.

In person.

Seeing the kiddie pool section.

Screams of joy, splashes, sunscreen, the sounds of tiny pool shoes flip flopping on hot concrete.

Here they are.

Women, mothers, in perfect roundness and fullness.

Maternity swim suits showcasing the newest little people who are swimming within.

I was here.

I was here, remembering that the last time I wore a bikini, I looked good.  Real good.

My breasts were full of milk, I felt motherly, I felt, sexy.

I was here, remembering that the time before last, my belly was full, too.

I was in a different swimsuit then.  You know, one of those maternity ones.

The ones that cost a fortune and you wonder why in the world they do.

The ones that you hope your friend will pass down to you because she indulged to get a super cute one.

I was here, this time, wearing a different suit than before.

One that I didn’t feel very good in.

Feeling flat.

Feeling small.

Crying into the water, wondering how many here would even guess I’m wondering these things.

Pushing the water, gently, with my hands.

It felt good, the water between my fingers.

Pushing again, stretching my arms out around me.

Walking deeper still, bobbing on toes now.

Twirling, swirling.

Feeling lighter.

Dancing in the waters,

Sharing these waters with life.

Doing a handstand, slapping the bottom of the pool with my flat hand, determining right then and there –

My love for my child goes this deep, and deeper still.

I will share this love.

I will dance in the waters with life.

Each baby swimming with me, may you be blessed.

May you swim with joy.

Each flat mother at the public pool this season,

May you dance with me,

May you swim with life.

{photo source}

It comes on fast, and it comes on strong.

Jealousy.

Hurt.

Rejection.

Disappointment.

Fear.

And, anger.

These are all parts of jealousy.

I cannot define jealousy without including each of these feelings.

I’ve carried these feelings my whole life, and to be honest, they make me weary.

But, there’s something else.

A strange feeling in jealousy.

In a lineup, you’d quickly pick it out as the one that does not belong.  But, it does.

I know, because jealousy is a feeling that has been there with me, my whole life.

It was there when I was a little girl, in yet another foster home, starting yet another school.

When I was locked in the dark room with the dark person, with the dark marking pooling onto his shirt.

I know, because it was there as I was unpacking strangers’ Christmas ornaments, studying them for the first time, yet again.

It was there when I was hiding in a battered women’s shelter.

It was there as I looked upon the ultrasound monitor, as I looked upon my lifeless baby, bobbing gently in his waters of my love.

It was there when I sat, crutching my broken womb in the shadow of my car waiting for my husband and his  father to come to the hospital to pick me up after I learned that our baby was not alive.

It is here, as I meet with jealousy today, my lifelong teacher, my invisible twin.

Jealous, I am, for husbands who have not received the phone call my husband did that day.

Jealous, I am, for children, who do not have to share their mother with bereavement.

Jealous, I am, for women who bask in naivety in pregnancy and birth.

For people who do not know what I carry in my heart.

For people who feel simplicity.

What a rich sorrow when I allow this jealousy a place to manifest in full emotion.

When I heave, when I crumble, when I sob and cry loudly and weep unabashedly.

When I slip to my knees, collapse in tears, when I moan, when I groan,

“What is this supposed to mean?”

What is the purpose of this jealousy?  What is it for?  What good will it do?  Bring?  Grow?

I do not yearn for others to have this pain – quite the opposite, I instead simply want their simplicity.

In shame, I try to push this jealousy away with logic that there is no room for jealousy in gratefulness and humility.

Oh, gratefulness and humility, my weaknesses.  How I desire to have poise and grace and humility!

But, I allow myself this meeting with jealousy.  Not all the time, but, sometimes.

On a day, such as today.

I encounter it, and I invite it in.

For a time, the wailing and the crying fill and float and linger.

And then, on the floor, soaked in tears, throat and soul raw, something happens.

A stillness creeps.

The sixth feeling, it quietly appears.

It’s presence, a whisper.

It doesn’t answer the questions – at least, not immediately.

And, I’ll tell you, it often brings with it, even more questions!

It’s a part of jealousy that is as real as the others.

What is it for?  What will it do?  Bring? Grow?

I don’t know.

But this part of jealousy is as real as the others, and so I sit with it, this stillness, this whisper.

Strangely, it draws me into community, simply by it’s feeling, without answers, without solutions, without reason.

Community, that I felt abandoned from, forgotten from, neglected from.

Community, that I so, very, achingly, desperately, wearily, need.

By it’s own simple merit and by it’s own intrinsic goodness, it soothes and heals, this often unaccounted for, sixth part of jealousy.  It is:

Hope.

May you listen for the whisper.

My parents met in Las Vegas.  Both raised in conservative Christian homes, and both rebelling.

Both addicted to drugs.

Both criminals.

The day my mom began labor, my dad fell asleep, drunk on the couch, but not before telling my mom “You’d better only wake me up if it’s really time to go.”

Through the night, my mom labored quietly, tip toeing through the apartment, through his snoring, through the increasingly painful contractions.

Laboring me, her “rainbow” baby.  My older sister was born still.

Finally, in the darkest hours of morning, she woke him up.

Still recovering from an evening of drugs and alcohol, my dad started the motorcycle.

Nine months pregnant and laboring, my mom straddled the motorcycle behind him.

They pulled up to the front of the hospital.  He waited for her to get off.  Then he rode away to the bar to start his morning and wait for her call.  She walked into the hospital, alone.

I was born at 3 in the morning.

A few years later, a few abuses later, I was placed in foster care.

Because I wasn’t adoptable, I was relocated.  A lot.

“Relocated” means, some of my things were put in black trash bags.  Some of my things were forgotten.  Some were left behind.  Some were stolen.

“Relocated” means, new strangers to live with.  New rules to learn.  New people to call family.

“Relocated” means, new academic standards and lessons; things I hadn’t yet learned.  New bullies.

This week, a D.J. from my local Christian radio station asked, “What has your mother given you?”

And, I find the question gives me pause.

My mother, well, has always been a mother, even through the separation, the years, the families and the relocations.

She’s been a mother, without me.

And, my need for a mother, went on, without her.

Very special women were a part of my life, if even for a moment.

A girls group home took me to get my first training bra.

A foster mother bought my first tampons.

A special woman named Jan Evans, to think of her love, brings me to tears, even today.

And today, my mother-in-law has had such a big role in loving me.

My girlfriends, let me just blurt out my confusions, my fears and my frustrations.

Through what my mother wasn’t for me, what she hasn’t given me, I have learned more richly, what a mother is.

And if you have struggled with fertility, but you can only see your children in your dreams,

If you have given birth to one or more babies via miscarriage, elective abortion or stillbirth,

If any of your children have been cremated or buried or reabsorbed or flushed,

If your reality is overlooked this Mother’s day,

If you feel excluded, left out, ignored, trivialized,

If you feel your pain is hidden, misunderstood, silenced,

You are still a Mother.

So, you have a decision to make.

How are you going to Mother, particularly on this Mother’s day?

Are you anticipating feeling disappointed with how your motherhood won’t be acknowledged?

Or are you preparing your heart to submit to humility, to give grace, and to mother those around you by sharing your wisdom, that your role of motherhood has given you?  You have a truth, worthy to be heard and shared and given.

Instead of dreading what you won’t have, and what you won’t get, dare to enter into Mother’s day seeking what you will give.

3 John 1:4 (Amplified Bible) I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my [spiritual] children are living their lives in the Truth.

The rumor behind this photo is that the mama tiger’s babies died,

and so the zookeepers wrapped piglets in tiger skin, and she took them as her own. 

This rumor isn’t true – but the photo is still darling.