We all know there is a larger purpose for the so-called “bad” things that happen in life, but life will only reveal that purpose when you are ready and open to receive it.

I’ve recently been introduced to two women who have lost their babies. One baby was 7 weeks old and the other was a miscarriage. I know that my experience with losing my baby is valuable and I am actually glad that it all happened (as strange as it may sound) for many reasons.
I wrote the following piece after my daughter died and updated it when I was still pregnant about 6 months ago.  I hope anyone who has lost a child or anyone dealing with death can gain something from my experience and perspective.

Losing A Child

By Angeline Longshore

For a woman, having a baby is probably the most life-changing event of her life.  For me, it was everything I dreamt it would be.  As a young girl I would imagine my big belly, nice and round.  I would imagine the miraculous, yet bizarre changes that my body would go through.  And I would imagine that baby cooing in my arms as I rocked her gently with all my love.  When I had my baby, it was all that I had imagined.  What I didn’t imagine was what happened twenty hours after she was born.  She stopped breathing and she died.

For most women who lose a child, it’s devastating.  I know a woman who couldn’t leave her house for a year she was so stricken with grief.  For me it was different.  Yes, I was in shock for a little while and of course I was sad.  I missed the ever-present feeling of her being against my body, her little beautiful face looking up at me and her baby smell that I had grown attached to even in that short period of time.

For the first few minutes after her death, I did torture myself with thoughts that it may be my fault and tried to place blame somewhere.  Then it dawned on me.  It wasn’t anyone’s fault.  It just was… you could say it was divine.  Just like everything in life, there’s always a larger reason for things… but we just don’t know it.  When I look back on my life, I see that all things that happened (good or bad) had to happen for me to be who I am today.  Every experience fits into the puzzle perfectly… and without the difficult times, there would be pieces missing… sort of like holes in my character.  And when I look back I can see that those difficult times are what make me feel rich with complexity and compassion.

So when my baby died, I decided to trust life like I always do– trust that there is a larger reason that I just can’t see right now.  My intuition told me that my baby’s little spirit had a purpose for living inside of me for nine months, pushing through the trauma of birth and looking into my eyes and my husband’s eyes with her sweet smile.  She had her reasons for being on this earth just as we all have our reasons.  My husband and I talked about how the person that dies isn’t the one in pain, so there is no reason to feel bad for them.  But what we are really feeling is our sadness and the loss of our expectations of her life with us.  We pictured her growing up… what her hair would look like and what her eye color would be.  We pictured her learning to crawl and walk and calling us Mommy and Daddy.  We pictured her learning how to surf and growing up to do things that would make us proud.  We pictured our little family curled up on the couch, watching movies together or snuggled up together in our big king-sized bed.  All of these thoughts that made us sad, we realized, were just ideas and expectations we had for her life.  In actuality these ideas never really existed.  That means what we are missing and feeling sad about is something that doesn’t really exist.  That didn’t mean, however, that I didn’t have the right to be sad and mourn.

Somehow, knowing that there is a larger purpose for her life and death… And knowing that our sadness is for something that never was, made our pain dissapate.  What we were left with was an experience that enriched us.  The joy of creating life, giving birth and seeing our happy baby in our arms is still with us.  No one can take that experience away from us.
When my husband and I looked at our life we saw that we were happy before the baby was born and we are still happy now.  We have all that we had before and now in addition, we have this incredible experience.

We did grieve.  It is important to take time to grieve.  I realized that it is possible to be happy, enjoy life and grieve at the same time.  There are no rules.  Everyone’s grief process is different and it’s best for each person to allow themselves to grieve in their own way.  There is no timeline, no cut-off point to grief.  In order to heal, I found it best to “indulge” every step of my process and be gentle with myself.  It wasn’t always easy.  When I had to leave the house and go to the store for the first time in nine months without my baby with me, I felt as if I was I was missing a body part—like I left my right arm at home.  I knew that strangers couldn’t understand why I had this big belly still (without a baby present) and why I had a hard time walking across the parking lot.  I told myself that this was my adjustment period and to be patient and I would feel whole again one day soon.  What was also hard was that my body’s mothering instincts continued to remind me that there was supposed to be a baby there to mother.  My milk and my hormones were still flowing causing my body to ache for that child to nurse and to nurture.  Still, I knew in time, this would pass and I told my self to be patient in my grieving.

My husband had his own way of grieving.  As we allowed each other to grieve in our own ways, we supported each other every step of the way.  That brought us closer together in a situation that can tear people apart.

I wrote emails telling friends and family about how my husband and I were not devastated by her death, instead we felt enriched, stronger and more in love from the experience.  People called to talk to us and others came to visit…. And everyone seemed to say that they were so emotionally distraught until they heard from us.  Somehow our peacefulness about our baby’s death was not only a relief to them.  They said it was also inspiring.

It’s been a little less than a year since my baby girl died… and although I don’t think about her that often, I still believe I am happily grieving and probably will for many years to come.  My husband and I are expecting a baby boy in just a few months and we are very excited to welcome him into our lives.  Still no matter how many children I have, the experience that I had with my baby girl will stay with me and no one can or will ever take her place.

Whether you are a first-time pregnant mom, someone who has lost a child or someone who has brought a child into this world, I hope my baby girl’s story has shed a new perspective on life and death and how beautiful it can be.  I believe one reason she was born is to inspire all that hear her story.

I now see that threshold of the beginning of life and the ending of life as the same—a wonderous transition for our souls to move in and out of in order to experience our personal journey.  And as I look to the future with my baby boy about to be born and the inevitability of older relatives and loved ones dying—I feel peace and joy knowing that I can embrace those events fully.  With the wisdom learned from Jadelin’s birth and death, I can send them off on their journey with all of my blessings and love as I did with Jadelin.

Jadelin Makena Longshore
July 11, 2006- July 12, 2006 – living in spirit form to infinity~
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