Tag: grief and healing

Artistic Expressions

Q&A: What Songs Touch You?

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Have a question for Ending a Wanted Pregnancy? Email us. QUESTION What songs touch you in relation to your experience of ending a wanted pregnancy. Please share the artist, song title, a link to a YouTube video and if you like, a few words about how the song connects to your experience/grief/loss or healing. ANSWERS Happy Birthday by Piper and Flipsyde. Flipsyde – Happy Birthday (We The People) Pearl Jam’s Black was the first song that really got to me. I remember sitting in the Target parking lot crying when this came on the radio. “Now my bitter hands cradle broken glass of what was everything. All […]

Q&A

Q&A How Are You Getting Through Mother’s Day?

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Mother's Day

I know I am a mother even though my son is not with me. Have a question for Ending a Wanted Pregnancy? Email us. QUESTION We asked our support group members to share their answers to these questions: How will you deal with Mother’s Day this year? Are you making any special plans? Do you have any Mother’s Day traditions? Will you create an activity or add a new tradition to honor the baby you lost? How will you let your family and friends know what you need this Mother’s Day? ANSWERS I focus on my mom on Mother’s Day. I haven’t ever thought my […]

Amniotic Band Syndrome

Q&A: Where Can I Find Support?

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I live in a rural area and am not close to any of the in-person support groups for this type of prenatal loss. Have a question for Ending a Wanted Pregnancy? Email us. QUESTION My husband and I decided to end our pregnancy seven months ago after learning our baby had severe issues due to Amniotic Band Syndrome. I tried several times to sign up for a Yahoo listserv that was featured prominently on the A Heartbreaking Choice® website but got absolutely no response. I’m still struggling with our decision almost daily. I just need to talk to someone who has been there. I do have a counselor and […]

Artistic Expressions

It’s Always, Always Up

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By Kate C. They don’t want to remind me of her. Don’t want to say her name. Don’t want to bring it up. But it is up. It is up in the morning. It is up in the afternoon. It is up in the evening. When I’m laughing, When I’m running, When I’m resting, On her birthday, On Christmas, Every day, It is up. To remind me of my daughter, To surprise me with my grief, To bring up my dead baby girl, Implies that I ever could forget. It is always, always up.   Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Articles

Women Who Experience a “Socially Unacceptable Kind of Grief” Find Community Online

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By Tara Culp-Ressler After picking out a baby name and decorating a nursery, the last thing you expect to do is have an abortion. So, when Grace made the painful decision to end her pregnancy at 20 weeks after she learned her unborn son Leo had serious health defects, she thought she was the only woman in the world who had ever gone through that. When she stumbled onto a website filled with stories from other women who had also terminated wanted pregnancies, she couldn’t believe her eyes. “I had never heard of this happening to anybody,” Grace told ThinkProgress. “I read all the stories. It […]

Articles

Stepping Out: Transforming Pain into Loving Action

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By Marna Cathleen Today is the second anniversary of Blue’s EDD (expected due date). Two years ago today me, her father, family and friends gathered to honor her life. This year as I anticipated the day I didn’t know what to expect. To my surprise something unexpected and beautiful happened two days before her day that made March 16th a very beautiful day. I worked at a homeless clinic as medical social worker for the last year, and left in January for a new job. I believe that my experience with Blue and the deep pain of that loss has widened my bandwidth to hold other people’s […]

Articles

Q&A: How Did You Cope?

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How did you cope?

“I wish I had sought you all out in the very early days. I was too scared to look online. I was too afraid of judgment.” Have a question for Ending a Wanted Pregnancy? Email us. QUESTION What helped you to cope in the aftermath of ending your wanted pregnancy? How did you cope physically and emotionally? What got you through those first few days and weeks? What do you wish you had known at the time? ANSWERS All answers are from members of our private support group. There are two mottoes that helped me: “I took the pain so my baby wouldn’t have to feel […]

Articles

The Gulf Between Grief & The Regular World

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By Kate C. It has been two years since my husband and I left our home, eldest daughter, and entire support network behind on a last-minute flight to the Rocky Mountains. There, there was a doctor who would help us let our baby girl go. With a single injection, he released her spirit from its broken body, then, over the course of several days, safely, carefully, he released her body from mine, so that I didn’t have to follow my baby into the abyss. I birthed her, still and whole, exactly one week after an MRI shattered our world. People sometimes ask me what that was […]

Articles

What Is Grief Work?

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By Nancy W. (Part 1 in a series) The classic grief process In 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote her first book, On Death and Dying. She identified stages of grieving: shock and denial, sadness, anger, bargaining and acceptance. At first it was thought that people all went through them in some particular order … time taught Elisabeth and many others that there is absolutely no order … that a person can experience all of these things in the space of a few hours and over and over in different orders. There is no right or wrong way to experience grief, but some ways are healthier, and lead […]