Healing Your Grieving Heart After Miscarriage by Alan D. Wolfelt

Author:Alan D. Wolfelt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Companion Press
Published: 2015-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CARPE DIEM

Write your own definition of grief and mourning. Perhaps you can even put a picture or drawing to each word or definition. This will help you to actually see how your grief is different from your mourning.

47.

TURN TO CEREMONY

“Ceremony helps you know what to do when you don’t know what to do.”

— Unknown

• One of the reasons miscarriage can be so hard is that to others, it is an invisible loss. Even your close friends and family may not have known about the pregnancy, and those who did never “saw” the pregnancy. There may have been no baby to bury, no grave to visit, no photographs to cherish.

• When someone we love dies, we have a funeral to give shape and structure to the experience. The ritual of the funeral helps us acknowledge and embrace our loss and invites the community to join together in grief.

• You can still honor this baby and this loss with ceremony. Ceremony can be healing because it helps us embrace the reality of the loss. It gives us space to recall and share parts of our story. It is a forum for giving and receiving needed support.

• Ceremonies don’t have to be extravagant. They can include a small circle of your friends or just your immediate family or a community of parents who have also experienced miscarriage. Candle lighting, tree planting, drumming, or gatherings where you create a memorial piece (like a scrapbook or art piece) can all be forms of ceremony. Your ceremony may also include an affirmation of your faith or spiritual values. In many bodies of faith there are remembering practices or remembering prayers that can also be incorporated into your ceremony.

• Invite your close friends and family to gather. You could hold the ceremony at a place of worship, a park, or a home. Consider including prayers, music, candle-lighting, and a meal afterward. Ask a clergyperson or someone you know who’s a good public speaker to help plan and lead the ceremony.

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