Tag: loss

Little Jo Travels the World

On By Anna EastlandIn motherhood, Poetry, Writing4 Comments

It is with gratitude and bittersweet joy that I can tell you my new poetry book, written in the year after I lost my daughter Josephine in labour, is now available for purchase online at blurb.ca.

unexpected blossoming: a journey of grief and hope

After a year of writing, and a year of creating the book, my friend Rachel (who really made this project happen) and I, after some excellent final editing by my husband James, ordered several boxes of my poetry book. It shipped within three days, on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. There couldn’t have been a more poignant day for me, as I’ve drawn such consolation and hope from her in this journey. I really wanted the book to arrive on time for Josephine’s second birthday, on September 30th, and it came in good time only a week after ordering it. I am so impressed with the self-publishing company Blurb! Emotionally, I needed her birthday gift on time and they delivered.

To celebrate little Jo’s special day, we had an open house book launch, and filled our home with people from 1-5:30 pm. It meant a lot to be surrounded by loving friends and family. My mother and sister-in-law even took the ferry to be here. My amazing friend and midwife Terry-Lyn also came, with a tiny pot of white flowers. This made my day. The hands which held my baby, when so few others have, will always be sacred to me. I know she holds my Jo in her heart as well.

That day we ate goodies and shared stories and sold books. In the few weeks since receiving my boxes of books, 200 have sold or been donated. I had the honour of reading one of my poems at an event for bereaved families on October 14, the evening before international babyloss day. My books were available for any grieving families, counselors, funeral directors or other care workers who were there to take with them.

In a strange twist of fate, it turned out that one of the counselors there, Sarah, is close to a good friend of mine, Katie. She had driven her to my house the day before Josephine’s funeral to deliver the soft white blanket she is wrapped in. Funny how life works.

I am grateful that my little Jo is able to be so active in this world from Heaven. That her special mission to reach out and comfort other moms through my writing is being carried out. That she will be known and remembered. One of the sweetest comments about my book came from a Korean friend in broken English, after having read it, “I didn’t understand all words, but I think your baby very happy. She sees her mama loves her very much.” What more can I ask?

Today I mailed 20 more books, so my little girl is, in her own special way, seeing the world, as her book travels to Calgary, Tofino, Nelson, Saskatoon, Toronto, Rome, Hawaii, and the Philippines. My little shooting star…may she bring sweetness and hope to every heart she shines on.

PS If you know a bereaved mom or family member who may appreciate a book, please let me know in the comments below, or order one from the link above.

 

The night before

On By Anna EastlandIn Poetry3 Comments

Tonight
is the night before I lost you, dearest,
two years ago
when you burst from my womb
and were launched straight into Heaven.

Two years ago tonight,
it was Michealmas
and perhaps your passing the next day
was accompanied by him–
this warrior angel
this strong protector—
to carry you on high
in arms safe and loving as your daddy’s.

Great angel,
protect my spirit now
and give me the courage to face the night,
knowing what tomorrow brings.

Help me be brave enough
to feel the pain of loss
yet again,
ever still,
but also to live with the simplicity of my children
who know how to rejoice in each moment
and sing Christmas carols with gusto
no matter what the season.
Sufficient for the day
is the joy thereof.

My first poetry book! “unexpected blossoming: a journey of grief and hope”

On By Anna EastlandIn motherhood, Poetry, Stillbirth, Writing11 Comments

My first poetry book just arrived in the mail! It is dedicated in loving memory of my little daughter Josephine, whom I lost in labour almost two years ago. These poems chronicle my first year after her loss, my grief and love for my baby girl and also the hope I have of one day seeing her again.

Writing has been really therapeutic for me, and helped me give expression to the intense emotions that come with losing a little one. I want to share these poems with other families who have lost babies so that they would know that they are not alone…that others have experienced and survived such a loss. 

I first thought of this project when talking to my friend Anne Schweitzer, who makes “Mother Mary Baskets” for bereaved moms. The baskets contain little comforts like bath salts, lip balm, chocolate, a fancy tea cup, etc as well as a few books on healing and hope after miscarriage. There are also special prayer cards, including one to your baby in Heaven. We thought it would be so nice to include some of my poems in the basket. Now I’ve been able to publish them in a little book, the kind you can carry in your purse and pull out to read in those quiet moments when you have time to release some of the sadness welling up inside. 

Because my main goal is comforting other babyloss moms, every time a copy is sold, another will be donated to a bereaved family. I’d like to reach as many people as possible, so that instead of just an impersonal pamphlet from a hospital, bereaved moms could be given something special, something beautiful, something that honours their love and grief. I hope to donate copies to hospital chaplains, midwives, doctor’s offices, etc, as well as giving them to individual moms. It will be a thoughtful gift for people to give loved ones who lose a baby…something for them to give when they don’t know what to say themselves…

I want to thank my dear friend Rachel Lalonde, who really helped move this project along, taking care of all the technical details and keeping me on track. She also did the delicate rose photographs on the front and back covers which wrap my poems in beauty. I couldn’t have accomplished this without her! And also thank you to my brother Monti, who believed in the value of this little book so much he donated $100 towards the project when it was still just an idea. That very bill will soon be used to order copies to donate!

I’ll keep you posted once my book is available online via the publishing site Blurb, and in the mean time, for anyone near me who’d like a copy, be sure to let me know; when I do a bulk order I’ll be able to save you some shipping costs. It will be a joy to hand it to you!

      

Deafening Silence 

On By Anna EastlandIn motherhood, Stillbirth

This is one of the most loving, beautiful and expressive posts I’ve ever read about miscarriage…the hidden quiet, heart shattering pain of it, and the difficulty we have discussing this kind of loss. Well worth reading, both for those who have lost babies, and for those who’d like to understand better how it feels so they can support their families and friends who have.  Click on the link below to read it all if you wish. 

It’s in the quiet moments that I hear it the most. The soft pop and hiss of tiny fractures spreading across my aching heart. It reminds me of that first step you take onto thin ice. You feel …

Source: Deafening Silence 

Mystery and Loss: International Bereaved Mother’s Day

On By Anna EastlandIn Friendship, Ponderings, Stillbirth4 Comments

So for some reason things were hitting me harder than usual this week, and my perceptive friend noticed and decided a mommy date was in order. Some time to decompress. So we both arranged babysitters (small miracle) and took off to a fancy part of town to have tea and scones at a classy café. Creamy earl grey tea and a heart shaped cheese scone with Devonshire cream and raspberry jam. Very civilized!

We settled in our cosy wicker basket seats by the window to talk. After some chit chat we got into discussing the mystery of suffering. I say mystery not problem, because as philosophers explain, problems are things that can be fixed, like a broken clock, while mysteries are things to be entered into. The heart cannot be fixed simply by turning certain screws or thinking certain thoughts. Some wounds remain forever…not in the sense of being deadly, but in the sense of forever transforming a person’s heart. 

 Having both experienced deep suffering and loss, we agreed that there is really no answer to the “problem” of suffering….in the sense of a solution that makes it all go away or become fine. To treat sorrow as a problem to be fixed is to trivialize grief. Sometimes the worst thing a person can do is to try to make it all better by explaining it away or giving little pat answers to the great mystery of suffering. 

The pain of losing someone (a child, a spouse, a best friend), is not something that needs minimized with band-aide phrases meant to make you feel better. Instead, suffering needs to be entered into, acknowledged, faced. So my sweet friend, noticing me a little discouraged, suggested a visit to my little Jo. We hadn’t been to the graveyard to see her since we moved, and I was feeling it. After our tea we bought her the prettiest little pot of flowers we could find, did some therapeutic window shopping, and got take-out to go have a picnic with her. 

  

I told my friend, as we sat with my little daughter, sleeping beneath her flowers, about a poem I had written shortly before she was stillborn, back in those innocent days when I had no idea what was going to happen. It was called “Mama’s waiting to hold you.” Of course it hurts to read it. But there’s a kind of prayer at the end, which I do feel was answered, just in a radically different way than I expected. I ask that my daughter be blessed, and through her for God to bless the world. 

You could say, “How awful, how ironic…” but I don’t think of it this way. I feel she is very blessed…very safe, happy, free from any sadness or danger…that she is glowing like a little jewel in the Heavens, and so fully her little sweet self. And I know that she has brought many blessings, and continues to touch many lives. She continually transforms me, and helps my heart to grow. 

It is hard not to have her with me in my arms. But …

There are no shadows

Without the sun,

No darkness of the cross falling upon my soul

Without the brilliance of glory

Shining behind it,

Awaiting me

With hidden brightness…



There is mystery. There is sorrow. There is hope. I cannot explain it. I can only embrace it, and do so strengthened by the love of those people willing to share this journey with me. To all who do so, thank you. 

Belly Laugh

On By Anna EastlandIn Poetry3 Comments

I blow on your bare baby belly

and you chuckle those first precious laughs

as you cling to my hair.

My heart aches with bittersweet joy

for the giggles I never heard,

the solemn silence of your big sister,

born still. 

Yet I am so relieved you are here safe—

that you are laughing and alive.

On an impulse,

I lay my ear on your warm little chest and listen:

“Badda -boom, badda-boom, badda-boom!”

Thank God, thank God, thank God! Goes your little drum. 

I fight tears as your pull my hair with your chubby little hands

into your sweet, warm mouth. Thank God, thank God, thank God!
  

  

Holy Saturday

On By Anna EastlandIn Poetry4 Comments

  
Day of silence

Of exhausted aftermath

Of unbelief

Can it really have happened??

The strangeness of life continuing 

Just as it had before

Yet—on the inside— 

Earth-shatteringly different 

Every mother who has lost a child 

Knows this feeling

In the core of her soul

In her hollowed-out heart

In her empty aching arms

The day after death

For most of us

The long wait for reunion

For resurrection

Lasts a lifetime

One long Holy Saturday 

Until death breaks the silence

And we hear our babies laugh

To endure this day

Stay close to the mother of the one they pierced

No sorrow deeper

No love stronger

No patience more graceful

Than that of the one who spent that Holy Saturday

Weeping tears of hope

Good Friday

On By Anna EastlandIn Photos, Ponderings5 Comments

Today I want to tell you about my sorrow
But words catch like thorns in my throat.

    
Today we mourn the loss of someone we love deeply. Today there are no words. Only tears. And so for all who have lost someone they love deeply..heart of their own heart, flesh of their own flesh, I offer you my silent company. I mourn with you. I weep with you. And I hope with you. The hope of one who has been broken-hearted and again seen the dawn. 

  

A Quiet Remebrance Day

On By Anna EastlandIn Family Life, HomeschoolLeave a comment

  

This year we had a quiet day at home and missed the parade as our newest recruit is only 9 days old, and I wasn’t up to marching anywhere yet. Instead we read some articles about Remembrance Day, such a the D-day memories of a 90 year old veteran, who joined up at age 15. We also read the fictional journal entries of a young British WW1 soldier as he joined up and experienced his first months in the trenches, followed by losing his leg and his close friend, Private Harry, and travelling back home to share the news to Harry’s mother. 

In both things we read, there was the contrast between the young idealistic hopes of a short, heroic experience of war, and the reality of a long, painful and ugly struggle.  The kids felt sad for these young soldiers, and my five year old declared quite a few times that she did not want to go to war, and that we would never let our new baby boy do so!

 

We talked about the generosity of these men who were willing to give up their lives to protect others, and how grateful we should be to them. In the past we have visited the war monuments in the graveyard, and taken time to discuss the sadness of war and to pray for the soldiers and their families. I remember being very moved by the tombstone of a very young soldier who died serving in the bicycle brigade. Imagine…so vulnerable! 

 

366 days ago I wrote a draft of a post entitled “We Lost the Littlest Soldier.” Remebrance Day last year was only 42 days after I lost Josephine in labour, so my pain was very raw, and I was still bumping into neighbourhood acquaintances who innocently asked me that horrible question, “Where’s the new baby?” Tears came easily at the Remebrance Day Ceremonies that year.  

 

No matter how old our children are when we lose them, they are still our babies. My heart goes out to all parents who have lost their children to war. My you be strengthened by the memory of their courage, and by the sure hope of seeing them again, in the land beyond pain, beyond suffering, beyond anything but peace and the knowledge that we are all, no matter where we come from, precious children of God.  

 

A Letter to Heaven

On By Anna EastlandIn motherhood, Stillbirth3 Comments

  
Dear Little Jo,

Tomorrow is a big day for Mummy. Your little brother is going to be born. We are going to coax him out into the world three weeks early, in hopes that he can be safe. In hopes that things will go differently than last time. He kicks and wiggles hello to you, his big sister in Heaven. 

Know, my dear one, that you are very much in my heart right now, as ever. Your little brother is, as a friend told me today, one of your many gifts to me. So I thank you for constantly making my life richer, deeper and more exquisitely beautiful. How much I love you!

After losing you in labour last time, I am afraid. When I think about how I couldn’t save you, I tremble. I want to cry. I want to hide my head in my blankets and not come out. But I know there is a greater, deeper plan than the one I can understand. I know you are safe and beautiful and loved. That you always will be. 

And I want you to know, my little sweetheart, that no matter how much time passes, you will always be my special baby, even when you have grown wise beyond your brief time on earth by so much time spent in Heaven, that timeless place of Love, where I hope to join you one day. 

Save me a huge hug and so many kisses, and tomorrow shower us with the grace of your perfect little prayers, as your brother makes his epic journey into this world. I know that we are wrapped in the wings of angels, and lifted up by the strength of so many heartfelt prayers. 

I pray that our new little one may, above all, become like his sister, a saint—a sweet beacon of love for the world. 

All my heart’s embraces,

Your Mummy

The Feast of All Saints