Walk to Remember - Miscarriage, Stillbirth, Early Infant Loss

Walk to Remember: Honouring Little Lives Lost

momstown attended the Walk to Remember this year as a group.  Some of us have lost little ones and many were there just for support.  The event always surprises me because it's such a sad topic yet there is so much positivity and hope.  We have attended the walk every year since we lost Maya and it affects me differently every year.  Every year I grow and my grief has changed.  Although I miss Maya and think of her everyday, I feel at peace and this year's walk meant so much to me.  To be surrounded by women who care so deeply for me and my family that they put aside a whole saturday afternoon to support us was overwhelming.  

At the walk each year every family releases a balloon for the children that they've lost and that childs name is written on the sidewalk.  This event is so unbelievably touching and every year I feel more at peace with my loss.  I am so blessed to have had the opportunity to share this day with my momstown mama's and family. I hope the walk brought some closure to those who were there to mourn their children and understanding for those there to support their family and friends.

 Kate Inglis spoke at the event, she is a blogger and a fellow Angel Mama.  Her words touch me every year but this year the words below really resonated with me so I thought I'd share.

"You might say, My Baby is gone, and I don't know how to feel. I don't know how to breathe, I don't know how to walk, I don't know how to exist when my baby doesn't. I don't know what to do.

Four years into this, I don't know either, to most of it.

But I can tell you what to do.

In the last moments, you looked at your baby and you thought the same thing I did.

Please live. I don't mind if you dye your hair kool-aid blue. I don't mind if everything you believe turns out to be different from what I believe. I don't care who you love or how you love, as long as you find some and give some. I don't mind what you're into, as long as you're safe. I just want to support you. I want to witness you. I want to see the things that make you smile. I want you to have the chance to be. To be happy.

Please live.

And then your baby died, like mine, and unconditional love was illuminated for you. You might have thought you knew what it was before, but you probably didn't. Now you do.
Carry it with you. Every single day, turn that into compassion for other people, all of whom started out as somebody's baby.

When you're moving through the world, you'll come across people with blue hair, who live differently and love differently and speak and think differently, who are perhaps in every way -- aesthetically, spiritually, culturally -- the opposite of you. Or maybe they're not sure what they are yet. Maybe they're struggling. Maybe they have nightmares too.

Extend them the same compassion that you would have given your baby, had you been given the chance. Regardless of how they align -- or don't align -- with you.

It's one of the only things you can do, after a loss like this. To treat others the way you would have liked to treat your child. With care, with hospitality, with humility.

It's a daily practice, and it does bring some peace, to look at every person and think, There goes somebody's baby. Could have been mine.

And before you're finished, extend some of that compassion to yourself.

That's what you can do."