Are you a bereaved mother or father, or someone who has suffered a loss? If so, I want to hear from you! I’m starting a rolling blog series called “Life After Loss”. I’ll be interviewing people just like you. That means mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers and everyone in between. I’m looking for real, authentic, down-to-earth, non-sugar coated snapshots of what your life after loss is really like. The beautiful, the ugly and everything in between. This will be your chance to tell it like it is, to offer a deeper and true glimpse into the daily struggles and triumphs of navigating the often bumpy and unpredictable road of your life after loss. It will give the world a more true and clear look at what life after loss really looks, feels like and tastes like.
Real people. Real interviews. Real life.
Interested? Email me at abedformyheart(at)gmail(dot)com and we’ll get started!
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note: I’m looking for real everyday kind of people. This means you do not need to have a blog, a following or a public face online. None of that matters to me. I’m not looking for well-known people, I’m looking for a well-lived in person just like you.
Each of us deserves to speak our truth and experience the healing power of doing so.
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* This will be a rolling blog series and will keep on rollin’ for a good long while. *
Please be patient if you don’t hear back from me right away. I am personally reading every email. If you’ve expressed interest in being interviewed know your submission will be lovingly considered. I’ll be scheduling interviews in the order they are received. Thank you all for the overwhelming interest. This is going to be an incredible series!
[Update:] I have now *temporarily* closed submissions for this interview series but only because I need time to catch up! If you’ve already emailed me and received an email back from me please send back your interview to me whenever is convenient for you. Submissions will re-open in a couple months and I’ll be sure to let everyone know once they do. Thank you all for your enthusiastic response to this series. I’m honored to interview so many brave souls from within our beautiful community.
Interested in interview/blog.
I am a bereaved mother…
Because its conducted by you, I think I can handle this
Hello, Angela. I lost my almost 11 year old son (he was shy a month of being 11) in a car accident. It will be two years on August 7, 2012.
I guess you could say I am as real as you can get. 🙂 Sharing my feelings and my story has helped me in this process we call grief. I have a husband and 2 other children that I have to be strong for, but there are so many nights I go to bed and cry myself to sleep. I feel like I am alone.
Thanks a bunch. Jennifer
I am 35 years old. I live in Guadalajara, Mexico. I have a 7 year old boy named Iker, an angel in heaven named Madeleine who would have turned 2 last May. I am 32 wks pregnant with our rainbow baby, a boy named Giovanni. Lately I have been feeling hormonal and more anxious as the date gets closer. Everyone says everything will be ok, and sometimes I believe that. I want to believe that. Other days I am not so sure.
I have lost 2 children in the last 8 years…it has been an incredible journey filled with sorrow and amazing growth and peace…i would love to be interviewed…thanks!
Looking forward to reading the rolling blog.
I lost my daughter, my only child, and her unborn daughter just this past October. She was 28 and the baby was her third child. I am raising her oldest (4 yrs) daughter Kylie and her son was adopted by a family member. Fortunately, the two older children were in place before Stephanie was killed. She was shot in the heart, there was no chance to save her and the Chaplin from the hospital told me she did not suffer, that her wound was instantly fatal. I think he was trying to comfort me, but I have found no comfort in that at all. I believe I am having some trouble grieving. I feel it inside, but I am not letting it “out”. I just believe my grieving to be very, very personal. I don’t feel that there is anyone close to me that truly understands what my daughter was and is to me. It look 6 months for me to tell Kylie that her Mommy died. In some ways being interviewed may be therapeutic for me, however; please do not feel you have to interview me. Regards and Best Wishes in your endeavors, Donna Dixon
I’m a mummy to an angel. My son Harry grew his wings 9 days over his due date. He was my second loss after having a missed miscarriage one year prior. Harry was 6 pound 12.5 oz and perfect. We spent 3 days with him before we left the hospital. I have hundreds if photos if him with my daughter then 7. My mum and family. Will be 3 years on 9th June. Happy to talk non sugar coated x
This is a blog post I wrote on Mothers Day. The second after my Beloved Kimmie died.. I am still at it one breath at a time.. Moment by moment knowing that I am not alone in this (although I would NOT wish this on any mom.. anyone really) knowing that we carry each others hearts helps me through the darkest of dark moments.
Mothers Day Miracles
Albert Einstein said,
“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle”.
A “new normal”, my new normal is duality. I am navigating my way around this reality of having two parts often opposed..life and loss..hope and despair..that nothing is a miracle or it is all miraculous.
Mother’s Day 2014. I just looked at what I wrote last year today… Where my thoughts, where life has brought me..
There are many days or to be more accurate.. the days leading up to the holidays that I can be spun. I trip myself up on what was, what is, and what it to come. (This may not be everyone’s process through grief, and where I can get stuck… bear with me and my thoughts).
I had a job interview several weeks ago (bunches of interviews actually but that is another story for another time), and the interviewer asked me this question, a standard interview question I am sure but one that has the power to spin me and where I know I have been also been stuck.
“What is your greatest weakness”?
In that split second..Spun.. How do I answer this? How did I answer this?
This is the duality. My duality. Sharing who I am and how I am arriving how much life means to me.. how much breaking open of my heart happens in the span of one inhale and one exhale. (There is an intensity to me to be sure…needless to say, I did not get that job).
What is my greatest weakness?
The ability to trust and believe in myself..the ability to see what I have accomplished and to see how far I have come… the knowledge that this is a process for me… to see the miracles sometimes right in front of me..
One year ago today. I can see… I can feel the pain in those words. A grieving daughter abandoned by her mother… a mother who lost a daughter… it was so heavy and full in that same moment… duality. There was the miraculous too… I would have missed it if I had not gone back.. It was in a yoga/writing workshop just days before with the most amazing Jennifer Pastiloff.. one in which I can still see and feel, one that inspires me still.. Middles spoke to me.. such a profound truth.. she SPOKE TO ME (through writing of course).. Middles gave me a gift that day.. one I had lost in the chasm of self doubt .. in the year that followed, making changes, making choices, starting over,.. Ground ZERO starting over.. questioning every bloody second of every bloody day since… MIDDLES SPOKE TO ME! and she gave me the most incredible gift that Mothers Day.. one I missed one.. I have allowed to be buried under the weight of stuff and crap.. I lost the miracle of that moment by only feeling the loss of her.. instead of feeling.. of seeing the gift of her. The gift of her love. The gift of her life.
Let me wrap my brain around what I just wrote..
So it was that I visited what I wrote one year ago and if I should happen to have the privilege of coming back to this space one year from today.. What would I want to tell myself? What would I want to share with you who might be reading this?
One year ago.. my tears were hot and full of pain and loss.. Today, my tears are still hot and full but now there is joy in them..and not just sadness.. They are full of hope. They are full of expectant miracles. They are full of the knowledge that there is a good and kind and loving God.. and God is at work that GOD has it all worked out! there is light and even though I miss her with every breath.. every day of my life for the rest of my life I am the mom to 3 incredible daughters! They are and continue to be my inspiration.. I am grateful to my mother for the life she gave me even if she is not a part of my present story.. she is in my heart and I love her for choosing to give me life. Finally.. my story is not about my weakness.. it is fuller than that.. it is richer than that. It is perhaps time to embrace my duality and give it all that I have… perhaps there is a miracle waiting in the wings…
I lost my son Gabriel Anthony Vito when he was only 3 months 2 days old , he passed jan 27, 2014. I’m a shell of my former self and everyday , every second , every min of every hour is a constant struggle. I tell anyone who will listen about my son Gabriel. I feel a sense of responsibility to let people know he existed. I will always be the mother of my forever baby.
I wrote 2014 but I meant 2013.
Hi Angela,
My name is Helen Gomez . I lost my beautiful little boy May 5th 1988. That’s when my world turned gray. He was 2 and1/2 years old.. People say it gets easier with time, it doesn’t really, its always there. Everyday I wonder how different it would have been. Everyday I wonder what he would look like now. Maybe like his little sister, his cousin who he favored? Everyday I wonder if he would have been married and had children . Would he have made an impact on this world as he did on mine the short time he was here ? Meningitis. I never even knew what that was, never heard of it. But now when I do its like a dirty evil word I can barely say. Its like a knife going into my soul. I do have happy memories that I hold close and dear to me. We have a lot of family videos that took me years before I could even watch them. I think ive seen them once, its just too painful. But I hold them close, its all I have. I would so love to tell you about my little boy named Jordan Michael.
There is so much to tell you about my son Jordan. Such a beautiful little boy with a twinkle in his eye. He was all boy, fun, full of life. laughing all the time. He loved to cuddle with me and when I would carry him to bed at night I would smell him and breathe him in cause I kept thinking he is not going to stay little forever. He was fascinated with the moon, trains and the Disney movie, “Lady and the Tramp.” At night he would look up at the sky and say, “moon in the sky mamma !!” with this wonder in his voice like how did that big thing get up there ?!?!. He is/was my everything. He passed away when he was 2 1/2 years old from meningitis, a thief in the night. My older son at the time was 14 when Jordan was taken from us. I felt like I lost two sons. Josh’s heart was shattered and the reality of all the terrible things that could come crashing down on a 14 year old did. I felt like I had betrayed them both, I couldn’t save either. I had let one die and couldn’t comfort the other enough. Josh kept crying and asking why didn’t god take him and leave Jordan and I died more inside each day. Two days later was Mothers day at that point I knew god hated me. I am crying while typing this, even though this happened in 1988 it feels just like yesterday. Those were the darkest days of my life I literally climbed out of a hole. My husband and friends were my rock and of course we had to be there for Josh though I know he still carries the scars from that day forward. There is not one single day that goes by that I don’t think of Jordan. I had another child, Jayda in 1989. I have to tell you how relieved and happy that it was a girl. When people ask me how many children I have even to this day I say 3 but one passed away. Since this has happened I think I have said only 2 children twice because I just didn’t want to go through it all and have people look at me with pity. But I always felt like I was letting Jordan down and spoke like he never existed and I just couldn’t do it. I have 3 children and love them all. I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone. No one else knows how this feels or what you go though to survive this except another mom. Thank you Angela for letting me share my story with you.
My name is Sommer and I had my beautiful baby girl on November 13th 2014. She passed 3 days shy of 3 months old. She was a true miracle since I was not supposed to be able to have kids. She passed on February 10th 2015. The extra about my story and just the cusp is in less than 24 hours I lost my whole little family. My daughter from her passing, my spouse and I split, and with him I lost my ever so wonderful stepson. All that I loved in my life was lost and over in less than 24 hours.