It's going on right now: The Catholic Moms Summit is this weekend (and 25% off my book, After Miscarriage)

Join me anytime this weekend for my (prerecorded) talk:  

Coping After Miscarriage: 

Finding Healing and Hope After the Loss of Your Baby 

It's a completely free event that features 80+ women presenters over three days with pre-recorded talks as well as live "Main Events" each day. Enriching content for new moms, grandmothers, and all moms in-between.

Connect with other Catholic moms from around the world.

"All Access Pass" option that includes: lifetime access, exclusive LIVE Q&A's with presenters, and much more! (100% of the Summit proceeds go directly to supporting the presenters, ministries, and Catholic organizations during this difficult time.) 

Register for free at this link. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My publisher has generously offered a 25% discount on my book, 

After Miscarriage: A Catholic Woman's Companion to Healing and Hope. 

(You'll find it here, at Franciscan Media. 

Use the discount code CMSAfterMiscarriage.) 

This offer is open to everyone, whether you are able to attend the free summit or not. 

Thank you, Franciscan Media! 

~~~~~~~~~~

* Find my posts about miscarriage here. 

* Posts about After Miscarriage are here. 

* This post is about why families with zero, one, two, or three 

kids are still "good Catholic families." 

Talking about miscarriage on a new podcast

My friend, Demetrio, Aguila, has started a new podcast called How to Speak Catholic. The show is a mix of basic, solid apologetics, and a variety of interviews and conversations, such as the sharing of conversion stories. 

I recently sat down with Demetrio and we talked about miscarriage, and about my book, After Miscarriage. Demetrio and his wife, Jen, have suffered six miscarriages, and we talked about the challenges of dealing with multiple losses, how we all deal differently with grief, and about how our faith has helped us through that grief. (Jen and Demetrio are such a beautiful, faith-filled couple; they were also mentioned in a couple of the stories I told in You Can Share the Faith.) 

You can find How to Speak Catholic here, or at iTunes. It was a pleasure to share such heartfelt stories. I hope you find something encouraging there!

Advent Reading Recommendations from Nancy Piccione

Many thanks to the lovely Nancy Piccione* for her review in The Catholic Post and her recommendation of You Can Share the Faith for Advent reading.

I'm honored to be in such great company -- Nancy also recommends books from Emily Stimpson Chapman and Colleen Mitchell (and my Amazon list just grew.)

You can read Nancy's column here, at Reading Catholic.

~~~~~

*I did an interview with Nancy a few years back about After Miscarriage. You can read that interview here.

"How I Miss Them."

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.

Atticus and I, the couple who married with the firm belief we'd never want children, lost five of our children to miscarriage. Oh, how we wanted those children.

Miscarriage doesn't get easier with practice. I crumpled every time. I needed grace, a God who would let me weep and scream at Him. A God who would let me collapse, exhausted, into His arms and then grant me the grace to somehow keep moving forward. To get up again the next day.

I needed my husband. He was devastated too, but was also my miraculous rock. We needed to cry together, fall apart together, and pick ourselves up together.

I needed my friends. Friends who listened to me, helped me heal. Friends who were bearers of light and love.

And I needed, years later, the beauty of all the stories that came together to become After Miscarriage. In gathering my own stories and those of others who were generous enough to share their lives and the too-short lives of their children, I experienced a new level of love and healing.

Here are the words of a friend, a father who contributed to the book, and they say it all:

If any blessing has come as a result of all this, it is the intense desire to see my children. We Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. I hope that if I live my life as well as I can and come to know Him more each day in prayer, Our Lord may place me under His mercy, and after the resurrection of the dead, I will be able to embrace my children for the first time and forever. 

How I miss them. 

On Morning Air tomorrow, Talking About Miscarriage

I talked with John and Glenn, on Morning Air on Relevant Radio, last week about miscarriage.

We talked about my own experience with loss, about After Miscarriage, and then we had two callers who moved me deeply as they shared a father's perspective on losing children.

If you'd like to hear that segment, it will be aired again tomorrow morning, at 7am ET (6am CT).

If you can't tune in then, but would like to hear the segment, you can find it in the audio archives on this page. Scroll to Hour 3, on September 8th.

Remembering My Lost Babies

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Month and I'm thinking about the babies Atticus and I lost through miscarriage.

Five losses, and each one shook my foundation ... it never got easier. Miscarriage isn't something one improves on with practice. I was devastated every time, crumpled every time, had to pull myself up and be pulled up every time. Who and what pulled me up? Grace, of course, yes. Prayer. A God who would let me scream at Him, then collapse in His arms, weeping, asking for comfort and for the grace to start over, to try again. My husband, of course, yes. He was devastated, too, but he was also somehow my rock.

And so many good friends. Friends who pulled me up, sustained me, helped me heal. Loving, supportive women, bearers of light and love.

The memories of things that weren't helpful are dimmer, thankfully. Everyone means well, and I always knew that, but we all hear our share of the unhelpful stuff, too, don't we? Words that hurt or seem to blame or that lack all understanding. Part of an imperfect world. I have said my share of stupid and insensitive things over the years, and I can only hope that those on the receiving end of my mistakes forgive me.

If I could offer just a few words about the main things that really helped me heal, and the things that really didn't, I'd say this:

What didn't help: 

1. "It was God's will."

Of course it was, in its way. Everything that happens is either because of God's active will (He made it happen) or His passive will (He allowed it to happen, allowed the problems of a fallen world to unfold.) But in the immediate aftermath of the death of my child, I didn't want to hear that God had chosen this for me. Maybe He did, maybe He didn't -- but I was in a state of shock and grief; I needed to absorb the pain before I could do anything else. Over time, I would slowly come to accept the ways in which God can work all things for my good, but in the first moments, the first hours, the first days, it was too hard. I just needed to cry.

2. "You'll have another baby."

That may or may not have been true. It felt presumptuous to me when people said that. No one really knew, after any of my five losses, whether I'd be able to have another baby in the future. And -- this is the most important part -- even if one could see perfectly into the future and tell me with complete certainty that there was another baby a year, or two, or five years down the road, what mattered most in the moments following my loss was this: no other baby is this baby.

No other baby is this baby. If Atticus died, no one would say, "You'll find another husband." Lost babies are not forgotten objects, easily replaced. Yes, I knew that if I had another baby down the road, I would love it, cherish it. But right now? I wanted this baby, this unique human being, at this moment in history. No other baby would ever be that baby.

3. "At least it happened early, before you really got attached."

I loved my babies fiercely from the moment I knew I was carrying them. Even before that moment, really. I loved the idea of them, the hope for them, the beauty of them, the knowledge that they were the embodiment of the love Atticus and I have for each other. Whether a miscarriage happens on the day of the pregnancy test, or at nine weeks, or at three months, or later, it's hard. Heartbreaking. Awful and confusing.

I was no less attached to my babies when I'd carried them two days than when I'd carried them for nine months. We can't quantify the level of grief a mother should feel based on how old her child was. (As pro-life people, we don't want to go down that road, right? Human beings are not worthwhile by degrees -- human beings are worthwhile, period.) My baby was a baby. I was attached.

On the flip side of the difficult things people said were the things that helped tremendously:

1. "I'm so sorry. I'm praying for you. I love you."

Simple, perfect words. Thank you for saying them. Hugs were welcome, too, as was understanding when I started crying unexpectedly or in public.

2. Listening

Friends who simply let me talk (endlessly, sometimes) about my babies were a treasured gift. Listening to my stories as I sifted through my grief, handing me another Kleenex, asking about my babies' names, listening to my fears and my future plans (or lack of them).... This kind of acknowledgement -- that I had experienced a loss worth grieving -- was so healing. It helped me feel sane and whole again.

3. A Concrete Gesture

Just a card or a note meant so much, even an email (I printed out and saved many of those.) There are so few physical keepsakes of a baby after a miscarriage -- a loving message becomes one of them. I treasured every one I received. My sister gave me a potted mum, something beautiful and alive and growing, an ongoing remembrance. Other friends nurtured my soul through the body: One friend brought an enormous meal, complete with chocolate cake. Another friend brought a bottle of wine. A new friend (someone I hadn't planned to tell, but I spilled after tearing up as we chatted about something else) dropped off a basket of teas and cookies. I didn't expect any of these things, but every one of them touched me deeply.

~~~~~

I remember my babies every day, especially when I ask them to pray for me. Anyone who's ever lost a child knows that we don't need a month officially set aside to remember our children, but the fact that there is one is a beautiful thing. Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Month says, "This was real. This was terrible. I'm so sorry." It says, "You're not alone." 

And as terrible as every loss was, I can honestly say now that I'm grateful for everything I've been through. The children I lost were -- just as my husband and my friends were -- bearers of light and love to me. My babies taught me, and continue to teach me, about surrender, sacrifice, and hope. Each of them taught me a different lesson. They have changed me forever. 

And my lost children, who are not lost to the Lord, are every bit as much a part of our family as Anne-with-an-e, Betsy, and Ramona are. I have a whole family in heaven that I -- God willing -- will see one day. I know they're praying for me. I feel it. They want me to keep slogging through, with the goal of meeting them face to face. And on that day, when I meet God and my children, I will know in fullness and for eternity the thing I cling to in this life, the thing that makes everything else make sense: He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, and He will wipe away every tear. 

~~~~~

(Photo courtesy of FreeImages.com.)

Catholic Exchange Podcast with Michael Lichens: After Miscarriage

It was a pleasure to talk recently with Michael Lichens, editor at Catholic Exchange, about my book, After Miscarriage: A Catholic Woman's Companion to Healing and Hope.

Michael and I talked about dealing with the grief of miscarriage, how to offer help to friends who are grieving, where and how to find helpful resources, how to start a ministry in your own parish, the power of a baby's prayers, and more.

The podcast is here.

I'm grateful to Michael for helping to spread the word about the book, and for tackling this subject!

~~~~~

A partial list of helpful resources:

Apostolate of Hannah’s Tears

Elizabeth Ministry International

Shrine of the Holy Innocents

Pope Paul VI Institute

The Fountains of Carrots Podcast is Up

My chat with Haley and Christy is up on the Fountains of Carrots podcast page. (It's actually been up since last Tuesday, but I, as usual, am late for my own party!)

They were so great to talk to -- 90 minutes, and we still didn't exhaust every subject. Hope you enjoy it -- I sure did, even though we all cried. :)

A Beautiful Article About Miscarriage, Grief, and Burial

Yesterday, Catholic Stand ran a touching piece called "The Forgotten Corporal Work of Mercy."

Perinatal Bereavement Nurse, Tammy Ruiz, shares her experience of helping grieving parents. She had kind words to say about my book, After Miscarriage, which I greatly appreciate, but I'm sending you over there for Tammy's words, not for mine:

In Turkey, I visited Mary’s House and the tomb of St. John in Ephesus as well as ancient Churches in Istanbul. But as I mentioned in my column about visiting Rome I feel closest to God when I am caring for precious little ones and their parents — even closer than standing in an amphitheater where Paul preached — for our vocations are precious individual gifts to us from God.

I'm so grateful for amazing women like Tammy who do the vital work of supporting and assisting grieving parents.

More about Tammy Ruiz can be found on her blog, Life and Loss. And here's a wonderful post from her about helping others through the daze and the fog that is grief.

Poetry Friday: An Autumn Reverie

Today's poem is a sad, lyrical, beautiful one by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It's about grief and loss, and these things are especially on my mind today -- tonight I'll be appearing with Donna-Marie Cooper O'Boyle on her new EWTN show, talking about miscarriage. We filmed this episode of Catholic Mom's Cafe months and months ago, but the topic is timeless.

Donna and I talked about miscarriage, grief, loss, and healing. We talked, too, about "a peace too wonderful to understand" (the last line of Wilcox's poem).

I think my favorite lines from the poem are:

And I have waited for these autumn days,
Thinking the cooling winds would bring relief.
For I remembered how I loved them once,
When all my life was full of melody.

For more details from Donna about the show, which airs tonight at 6:30 Eastern time, see her blog.

An Autumn Reverie
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Through all the weary, hot midsummer time,
My heart has struggled with its awful grief.
And I have waited for these autumn days,
Thinking the cooling winds would bring relief.
For I remembered how I loved them once,
When all my life was full of melody.
And I have looked and longed for their return,
Nor thought but they would seem the same, to me.

The fiery summer burned itself away,
And from the hills, the golden autumn time
Looks down and smiles. The fields are tinged with brown—
The birds are talking of another clime.
The forest trees are dyed in gorgeous hues,
And weary ones have sought an earthy tomb.
But still the pain tugs fiercely at my heart—
And still my life is wrapped in awful gloom.

The winds I thought would cool my fevered brow,
Are bleak, and dreary; and they bear no balm.
The sounds I thought would soothe my throbbing brain,
Are grating discords; and they can not calm
This inward tempest. Still it rages on.
My soul is tost upon a troubled sea,
I find no pleasure in the olden joys—
The autumn is not as it used to be.

I hear the children shouting at their play!
Their hearts are happy, and they know not pain.
To them the day brings sunlight, and no shade.
And yet I would not be a child again.
For surely as the night succeeds the day,
So surely will their mirth turn into tears.
And I would not return to happy hours,
If I must live again these weary years.

I would walk on, and leave it all behind:
will walk on; and when my feet grow sore,
The boatman waits—his sails are all unfurled—
He waits to row me to a fairer shore.
My tired limbs shall rest on beds of down,
My tears shall all be wiped by Jesus’ hand;
My soul shall know the peace it long hath sought --
A peace too wonderful to understand.

("An Autumn Reverie" is in the public domain.)

~~~~~

The Poetry Friday round up is at Random Noodling this week.

More Resources For Healing After a Miscarriage (aka, This Is What I Love About the Internet)

Since I've been posting over the last week about giving away a copy of After Miscarriage, a couple of things have come up that I want to share:

Cecilia's lovely site, Magnolia Sweet Healing, offers women in need a free copy of my book. I'm so touched that this ministry is generously funded personally by Cecilia, and I am immensely grateful for her help in getting the book to women who need it.

Conceiving Hope has a resource page that is huge and helpful. Check it out here.

Giveaway Details: After Miscarriage: A Catholic Woman's Companion to Healing and Hope

Elizabeth Petrucelli, author of All That is Seen and Unseen, has been hosting a contest this month and After Miscarriage will be her final giveaway.

To enter to win After Miscarriage, you can simply leave a comment below, on this post (as simple as, "Pick me!") Your comment can be anything, but please be sure to leave some contact information (Facebook page, Twitter, Google +, a blog, your email address -- anything that will allow us to get in touch with you if you win!)

Comments on this post will be accepted until October 31st at midnight. A winner will be drawn at random from the comments on November 1st.

I hope that you never have a need to read After Miscarriage, but if you have experienced the loss of a baby, please know that you have my fervent prayers. If you have never suffered a miscarriage, you might consider entering the contest in order to win the book and give it away to a friend who may be in need.

Thanks for your interest in and support for After Miscarriage, and thank you, Elizabeth, for hosting the giveaway in this Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.

A Response From a Priest to My Post, "Dear Father, Deacon, and Anyone Else Who Has Ever..."

I got some wonderful comments on Wednesday's post and today a priest friend of ours left a comment, too. His comment deserves its own post. 

Disclaimer:

I know and love Fr. Scott but there is no bias in my recommendation that you read his comment. It's just that he's a wonderful priest with valuable insights. His thoughts are always worth reading.

Second disclaimer:

We never deliberately plied him with pie. We just like pie.

In response to the post, Fr. Scott said this:

A great post, as always! This one’s stuck with me for a few days. 

Speaking only for priests, I wonder if I can offer a suggestion to those who have posted comments. Priests are guys. We’re almost always unmarried and almost always have no experience with fertility beyond what we read or from the people we encounter. We are pro-life, pro-family people. Think, though, what most unmarried non-fathers know about fertility—almost nothing. Think about how couples are different the second time that they are pregnant from the first time. Experience gives perspective and understanding. We don’t generally have either. In particular, young priests are zealous and excited about being priests, but they've got a lot to learn and in a lot of areas. Most of their friends are their age, too, and with couples often putting off even the desire for children later and later, young priests often don’t know many people who have lost children or struggled to get pregnant. If they do, this subject is only recently something people seem to talk about, and often not something people bring up to us. What we rely on is experience gathered from people around us. It doesn’t take long, I don’t think, to see how so many people struggle with fertility and pregnancy, but we need time and experience to see this. So, here’s my suggestion. Just tell us. But, don’t do it right after Mass or in passing. Like everyone else, we receive criticism better when we trust the people giving it. Invite us over for dinner, ply us with coffee and pie, and then bring it up. We become priests because we want to be involved in the lives of the people around us, so involve us (and I reemphasize the pie...).  

In my own experience, the early friendships I made as a priest were incredibly formative. Luckily—and gratefully—people had the goodness to do exactly what I’ve suggested. As a result, I treasure those friendships, in general, and the trust they give, in particular. In short, my friends who have been willing to share their struggles with me and let me share my struggles with them, have helped me to learn how to be a better priest.  

As it turns out, Atticus makes a killer coconut cream pie. 

Thanks, Fr. Scott, as always. For everything.

On Relevant Radio In a Few Minutes

We'll be talking about miscarriage, support, and healing on Morning Air at 7 a.m. central time.

Dear Father, and Deacon, and Anyone Else Who Has Ever...

... made an assumption.

First of all, the Ginormous Disclaimer:

I know that 99-Point-A-Gigantic-Decimal-Value-That-Means-Almost-One-Hundred-Percent of priests and deacons are sensitive men of God who do not make hurtful assumptions, and even if they occasionally do, they do not make them to demolish anyone. They do it because they are human, as the rest of us are. And we've all made assumptions that could be hurtful to someone we don't know well. So, we're all guilty of this in one way or another. I've been on both sides of this hurt.

But recently I received a comment on my post, A Good Catholic Family, and it broke my heart.

The commenter (who has had nine miscarriages) said:

We were leaving the chapel and walking behind a mom and her six kids. The deacon saw them and said, "Oh how wonderful, what a blessing your children are!" He looked at me and my two kids, turned away and said nothing. 

"Ouch" doesn't begin to describe what happened here. I had something similar happen after my fifth miscarriage, and it took everything in me to hold myself together in the moment and get through it. I told myself that the person reacting to me didn't know me, and didn't mean to be hurtful but I was living with some intense grief, and grief magnifies everything.

The commenter went on to say:

I sometimes feel that the clergy and the Church treat large families as being more holy or blessed than small families. It can be very lonely, especially as a homeschooling mom where the more kids you have the more you seem to be valued in the group and within the Church. 

I know this whole thing gets tricky to even talk about because this stuff leads to defensiveness on both "sides." But there are no "sides" when it comes to large families and small families. There are merely realities.

And since, when we are faced with the visible reality of many kids vs. few-or-no kids, we cannot possibly know what the invisible reality is, we also cannot possibly make a judgment about what's going on in a family, and why would we? It's really none of our business. As I pointed out in "A Good Catholic Family" there are struggles (and losses and pain) in all families -- large, small, and everything in between. Large families have to put up with rude comments about their visible fruitfulness, and their openness to life has often led to miscarriage and other loss in their families, just as it has in the families that have remained small. And there are struggles for those who are single, struggles for those widowed, or divorced, or .... you get the picture. Life is a struggle. For all of us. Let's look for the places where we can build each other up, not judge each other down.

The final hurt this commenter recounted was this:

Another homeschooling mom of six pointed to my children and said,"These aren't your only two?"

Again, I can only sputter that, having been on the receiving end of such things, it, it, it ... hurts when someone assumes she knows why I have the children I have. Please don't assume. Dear Father, Dear Deacon, Dear Acquaintance, Dear Homeschooler, Dear Fellow Catholic, Dear Me (as I always need my own advice) ... don't assume.

Instead, befriend. Listen. Understand. Be Kind. We're all fighting great battles. Do we really need to fight each other?

**********

Updated 10/13/14: 

Here's a follow-up post highlighting a comment from a priest. 

A touching review of After Miscarriage

Therese Heckenkamp posted a review on her blog -- find it here.

After Miscarriage mentions

A couple recent mentions of the book:

Leticia Velasquez wrote a lovely review of After Miscarriage -- it ran as a recent National Catholic Register Saturday Book Pick.

Q & A with Nancy Piccione at The Catholic Book Post Book Group, and a beautiful guest post at Nancy's blog.

Recent appearance on Catholic TV's This Is The Day. 

On the radio

Today, at about 10:10 a.m. central time, with Dina Marie Hale, at KBVM.fm.

I added a Radio/Appearances page to the blog -- I'll add direct links to mp3s of the interviews as I can.

The Blog That Went Shockingly AWOL

That would be this blog.

The top three reasons I was absent without leave:

1. Life
2. Life
3. Life

Let's unpack that a little bit, shall we?

1. Life = research and writing recently. The project? Still under wraps and will be announced down the road, but let's just say that it's different from my other books. I hope I can do the topic justice.

2. Life = some lovely opportunities to talk with people about After Miscarriage. 

And this Friday, the 11th, I'll be live (via phone) at 9:30 a.m. central time on Catholic TV's This Is the Day. See this link for the rebroadcast dates and times, too.

3. Life = wrapping up school with a senior, a sophomore and a fourth grader.

Anne is a SenioR.(Discombobulated fonts meant to convey Discombobulated Mom.) We're getting ready to celebrate, and I think the house will be clean before the party, but I'm not making any guarantees. (I believe cobwebs add a certain casual, jaunty touch to the atmosphere -- one that says, "I hate to clean and never look in my own corners.") There will be food and merriment and a conspicuous absence of math, and that's all that really counts.

Anne and Betsy are still reading Macbeth with their dad, and they plan to take a CPR class.  Betsy still has some critters to dissect, too.

Ramona and I finished her anatomy project:

Except that we put her bladder on upside down. Anne-with-an-e smirkily asked if we meant to demonstrate a prolapsed bladder. Yeah, that's it, Anne. Go be smart somewhere else.

So Ramona's technically done with any schoolish stuff this year but of course she's still busy. We released the butterflies we recently raised:

We've been reading Lissa's Charlotte Tucker books and Ramona was recently spied tucking in little Will and Anna: 

And of course, she's never done with art. She's been carving soap

and doing lots of painting.

Last night, I asked if she was finished painting so that she could get ready for bed. She waved me off as she left the room, calling over her shoulder, "You can't rush art, lady!"

~~~~~~~~~~

I am finished being AWOL and will now return to my regularly scheduled duties. 

My Two Giveaways: *After Miscarriage* and *The Infertility Companion for Catholics*

Don't forget to leave comments on the two posts to enter to win:

Leave a comment here for a chance to win After Miscarriage.

Leave a comment here for a chance to win The Infertility Companion for Catholics.

Names will be drawn at random first thing the morning of May 2nd.