“Please, just sit beside me. Say nothing. Do not offer a cure. Or a pill, or a word, or a potion. Witness my suffering and don’t turn away from me. Please be gentle with me. And I will try to be gentle with me too.”
‘My child may have died, but my love – and my motherhood – never will. Not a second passes when I am not aware of my child’s absence.’: Woman pens letter for bereaved mothers
‘My husband died on a Saturday. Monday, we planned the funeral. Thursday, I started a new job. I thought if I stayed busy, it would fix the brokenness.’: Woman urges self care for fellow widows, ‘It’s a daily battle’
“What no one prepares you for is what happens after the last sympathy card is opened and people have moved on. I stuffed away every bad feeling. I am a broken person trying to piece my life back together.”
‘I was told my chances of getting pregnant were 15%. To this, I took the Pee Wee Herman approach of ‘LA-LA-LA-LA I can’t hear you.’: Woman gives advice for those struggling with infertility, ‘Know your options’
“You probably spent your whole life trying to NOT get pregnant. Taking the pill, using condoms, panicking when your period was a few days late, taking a pregnancy test with your girlfriends and praying you wouldn’t see two pink lines. Now here you are, desperately hoping.”
‘I kept saying, ‘she’s beautiful,’ over and over. I knew I was giving birth to death.’: Mom and siblings honor baby born sleeping, ‘Thinking she’s been forgotten is excruciating’
“A sickening feeling took over and my chest tightened when the attending physician walked in. I could see bad news written on everyone’s faces, but I still didn’t believe it. We were left with ashes in a cardboard box.”
‘The midwife said, ‘You have to let her go.’ Her arms and legs moved around, as if she was searching for me.’: Couple lose baby due to missing DNA, ‘In her 50 minutes of life, we hope she knew nothing but love’
“I desperately wanted the pain and labor to end. However, I wasn’t ready for her to come out. I just wasn’t ready to let her go, for I knew it meant she would be leaving me. I remember half pushing and half trying to hold her back.”
‘I went into my late wife’s inbox and found some humbling words she wrote about what I meant to her.’: Widower thanks late wife after finding lost emails, ‘You helped me all these years’
“I haven’t cried in quite some time. But tonight, I did. It was as if I could hear her voice, something I haven’t heard for so long.”
‘She should be here to watch them grow up. I want the love of my life back.’: Widowed single dad creates new normal, ‘I’m different now and that’s OK’
“You are still the same person physically, with a couple of extra pounds stacked on, chowing down Doritos and binge drinking cheap wine on the couch while watching home movies and bawling for days on end. But inside, you are forever altered.”
‘I slid onto the floor as I heard the doctor speak. ‘Why do I have to have cancer again, Mama?’ Time seemed to freeze.’: Girl battles neuroblastoma, ‘Izzy continued to fight and the rest of the world just kept going’
“The call came just like it does in the movies. I sat in a rocking chair in her room and slid onto the floor as I heard the doctor speak. I stared at this little play clock. I can still see it so vividly — its tiny yellow hands stood still on its pink face. Time seemed to freeze in those moments. I would remember it as the day our life stopped.”
‘Today my husband had to sit in the hallway, and listen through speaker phone, to hear our baby go to heaven with their sister.’: Mom grieves loss of baby alone, urges ‘please, just stay home’
“This was us. We didn’t get to grieve together. We couldn’t even hug and tell each other it would be okay or that we would survive this. A father couldn’t look at his baby one last time, and a mother had to get the worst news about their baby…alone.”
‘If I’m forced to self-isolate a majority of the time, you can for a few months!’: Young woman with chronic illness begs for social distancing, ‘Maybe we will become better humans when it’s over’
“To those saying, ‘it’s just a virus,’ you may be able to fight it off with no issues if you were to contract it. But guess what? It’s not just about you! It’s about everyone.”
