Unimaginable Mother’s Day

I am here before you, a survivor of horrific trauma and loss.

I am here before you, a mother full of joy and sorrow.

I am here before you, a testament to the light pushing back against the darkness.

I am here before you, a bereaved momma facing another holiday with half my heart missing and my soul always a bit shredded.

My heart was once whole, and my soul upon a time smooth. That was before the unimaginable became the undeniable. “I can’t imagine what you have lived through!” is a treacherous phrase. Sneaky and slippery, well intentioned but full of venom nonetheless. This phrase is often shunted at me by friends, strangers, and even family. They want a way to acknowledge the depths of my despair and yet keep any of it from seeping into their consciousness. I know in my bones it is a reflexive shield thrown up to protect their reality and fend off the evil eye of the universe. Not at all meant to salt my wounds. Knowing these things doesn’t stop it from still stinging. I, myself have let this lie slip pass my lips in the time before. The truth is we can all imagine these hardships and traumas. But even in the imagining the pain can feel unbearable. Which is why we fragile humans deny being able to put ourselves in a world so unfair and full of anguish. Now in the after I really, truly can’t imagine the horrors of losing children because I no longer have that luxury of imagining a world without my children and stepping back into a reality they are still in. I now must bear the unbearable and accept the unacceptable.

In 2012 when my daughters Amara, Sophie, and Cecilia were killed I spent a lot of time trying to pretend they were still here. Just off on an adventure without me - just around the bend - just a breath away. In that sense my imagination helped buffer the painful process of acclimating to the after. The before was a blissful realm of taking for granted the miracles I had created. The before was when I was a mother and not the unnameable creature I became in the after.

The before ended on July 10th 2012. I woke up that morning a single mom of three beautifully complicated creatures. That afternoon my children were murdered. And by the end of the day I was a broken hollowed out shell. There is no word for a mother that has lost a child. There is no word for a mother who has lost all of her children. I became empty arms, I became the sound of stilled hearts, I became a gaping wound of sorrow. And then in that moment when I wanted nothing more then to simply stop being anything at all I had to become everything all at once. Early on in my recovery I clung to the idea that I had to keep going. That to give in to the despair would be truly leaving my children motherless and that I simply refused to do. I may have lost them to the ether, but I would never abandon my station. I would strive to be the woman that I wish they could have grown into. I had to learn to carry the pain so that I wouldn’t lose the joy those souls brought into this world. Amara, Sophie, and Cea were not all one pure thing. They were complicated, layered, prickly, soft, sweet, salty, endearing, irritating, kind, occasionally cruel, and the hardest thing of all honest. To truly honor them I had to be all of those things and more. Is that not the definition of motherhood to be everything and more?

I could have indulged in the easy path of utter despair and vengeful rage. And occasionally I do indulge in those dark feelings. I do. But I refuse to let the darkness consume me and blot out the light those girls left behind in this world. Instead, I took the hard road of trying to bring enough good out of their deaths to balance the harm the world had suffered. There is not a season, or month, or day that isn't threaded together with grief for me but Mother’s Day has always been one of the hardest hitters. Having more children hasn’t made the grieving and celebrating necessarily easier just more layered.

I celebrate Mother’s Day and often feel like I'm surrounded by strangers and then I realize I am the stranger. Loss has made me a stranger to myself. Who is this woman that walks around with such gaping wounds? Where are the daughters who defined her and made her whole? "Should be..." is a wall of fire I walk through. "Would be..." is a brutal wave that crashes into me. "Could have..." is a pit that swallows me whole.

Then I remember that I am always their mother. I am the woman who holds their memories, their very cells still swim in my blood, and their purpose is exposed in my actions. I am not a stranger for they would see in me all that they were.

When people ask how I manage to keep walking around with this broken heart of mine I think of the words of Kahlil Gibran. When asked to speak of joy and sorrow he answered: “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

My joys must be as high as my sorrows are deep. I have a duty to make sure that my angels’ deaths are the darkest point in my life and that every step I take from that pitch black moment brings more and more light into this world. I had to build a life that was as precious to me as the one I lost. I needed people around me that supported not just my survival but my attempts to thrive. I had to battle the idea that I was forsaking Amara, Sophie, and Cecilia by striving to find love, purpose, and yes joy. Survivor’s guilt is rampant in the walking wounded, and I believe to my core that curling up in a liquor bottle or becoming a zombie of numb grief would in no way honor my beautiful girls. I would not have wanted them to suffer endlessly as a tribute to me.

Do I suffer their loss every moment? Yes I do. I feel that pain and I embrace it as fuel for my journey. Do I find solace in the life that I have cobbled together out of the ashes of my heart? Yes I do. I strive to feel as grateful for my losses as I do for my blessings. Amara, Sophie, and Cecilia fill me to overflowing with gratitude and grace.

I didn’t learn how to carry my grief and my joy on my own. I am blessed with many supportive souls that take the form of friends and family. I was hoisted on to the path of recovery by a bevy of professionals including therapists, advocates, and ministers. Other supports that made a difference were groups like Halos of St. Croix. An organization whose mission is to support families grieving for children lost too soon. It was so helpful for me to be able to share space with peers who also could no longer imagine such a loss because they were living it. Due to the trial and the media attention going to an open support group was not an option for me. I could not trust that a group would be secure enough. But I could communicate with bereaved parents individually and the trinkets that the group made in honor of Amara, Sophie, and Cecilia gave me something to hold in my hand and know that I was not alone in my grief.

Again and again the incredible power of sharing our stories of loss and grief buoyed my resolve to carry on and was a salve to the other as well. Losing a child is devastating not being able to share their story (no matter how sad the ending may be) is catastrophic for a survivor. As a human it is vital that we understand that none of us will come out of this thing called life unscathed. All of us will experience loss, grief, and trauma to some degree. How these stories are shared can have an immense impact on all involved. I fully accept that simply meeting me and becoming aware of the blows I have suffered can be traumatic for others.

An example if I may: I am just out in the world floating around doing regular things when the inevitable question comes my way:

“Do you have children?” It’s a simple question, right? An invitation to give a simple safe answer: Yes, no, or maybe soon… Every time I am asked this, I must smash the unspoken rule to keep it light. I know I could lie but I have never been good at it and frankly I love my kids too much to hide them under social niceties. My answer is always “It’s complicated.” Followed by emotionally gut punching an innocent breaker of social ice with this line “I had three daughters and they (here is the really tricky bit which word to choose) died which leads to questions of how, were murdered cuts straight to the quick, lost is gentle but too vague and confusing, slaughtered which is far too sharp for a blunt truth, or the age old “passed”. While the person is processing this undigestible information I rush in to fill the vacuum with the rest of my answer: And now I have two more living breathing children and a couple of step kids that I can’t claim by blood but still parent. So yeah, it’s complicated. And I am sorry too that some of the mess that is me has gotten on to you, but I am not sorry for my sorrows or my joys. And I will never be sorry you asked.

There have been times where my answers have caused the inquirer to cry, or to rage, or simply sink into a protective shell of denial. But most often my truth is met with empathy and gratitude for bringing more honesty and vulnerability into the world. By being honest about my own story I give others an opening to share their hard truths. So yes, my particular tale can cut one person but be the balm to another’s wounds.

Our culture is getting better about making space for the sharp edges of loss. Most days we aren’t expected to hide our dearly departed or pretend they didn’t exist because their deaths make others uncomfortable. But there are some days where it is still taboo to mention our lost children. Or mourn the mantle of motherhood that was stripped from our shoulders to be used as a funeral shroud.

Which leads me to the holiday that is around the corner waiting to corral us all into nice tidy boxes. Mother’s Day. A day rooted in good intentions and benign assumptions that has blossomed into a holiday full of emotional landmines and guilt trips. Mother’s Day was conceived by a woman who had lost her much loved mother and wanted the sacrifices mothers made for their children honored and celebrated. See the best of intentions and yes mothers should be honored and celebrated but uffda that gets tricky quickly.

What if your children died are you still a mother and who will honor you in their stead?

What if your babies never made it out of the womb or passed shortly thereafter?

What if some are alive and some not?

What if you are the mom in all but blood?

What if What if What if you just don’t fit into the tiny little box that is labeled Mother?

Mother’s Day can be hard even when you do fit neatly under the lid of that box. Even before I had a miscarriage or lost my daughters Mother’s Day was often less than stellar and rife with remorse. I am sure I am not the only mama who wanted nothing more than extra sleep and no fighting for just one day and instead had to buy herself flowers and make a brunch for everyone else. When you become a mother, you sacrifice all you are to get everything the universe has to offer.

And now here comes a whole day where we are supposed to be honored for those sacrifices and celebrated for all the labor that motherhood entails but not give space to or acknowledge how heavy our hearts can be. How even if you get to raise a child from birth to adulthood that path is full of million tiny losses and hairline fractures of our souls. Because motherhood is hard but hard can be the best thing ever.

This is the thing with grief and trauma (much like addiction recovery) we may all be taking the same steps, but each journey is different, and many don’t reach the summit. We can smooth the path for others as well as ourselves by being honest and vulnerable. By making space for others to share their dearly departed while extolling the reasons they continue to breathe. To stand in the middle of a celebration of being a mother and say this moment is as bitter as it is sweet. Becoming a mother means dividing your heart and sending pieces of it into the universe and never getting some of those pieces back. It does not mean sacrificing the reasons that holey heart of yours still beats to make others more comfortable in their worlds where they claim they can’t imagine your loss.

I say if you have made a new life no matter how long or short, stepped into the mantle of motherhood, or opened your very soul to be a mother to a person no matter whose womb they escaped from this day is to honor you. It does not matter if you have lost that child in the most permanent way the love you give, the love they left, and the love that continues to grow from that connection is not tarnished or diminished.

For those of you mourning a child this Mother's Day I wish you the strength to celebrate with them, the knowledge to know you are not a stranger to yourself, and the freedom to see the hope that makes navigating this journey possible. Happy Mother’s Day to each one of you as you embrace the losses and extol the joys that can only be gained by giving yourself away a little bit more every day.