Changed – Living with Stillbirth

My world changed the instant that we found out that our first child was going to be stillborn. Everything fell apart. Very little seemed to help me cope except the love and support of my family and friends and writing.

I had always kept journals/diaries and found that writing helped me to cope with my grief. Getting the thoughts out of my head and on to paper allowed me to start dealing with my emotions. I wrote and wrote in the early days after our daughter’s stillbirth and continued to write throughout our subsequent pregnancy. But, with the birth of our son, life got busy and I didn’t feel the ‘need’ to write as much. It wasn’t until I became involved with SIDS and Kids SA as a volunteer parent support worker for the bereavement service, that I decided to start writing again. It became obvious to me that many of the thoughts, questions and feelings expressed by the bereaved mothers I came into contact with, were similar to those I had experienced. The women that I supported found it extremely comforting to know that they weren’t alone. So, with the encouragement of the counsellor, I entertained the idea of turning my writing into a manuscript. I knew that it could be really helpful and could give comfort and hope to bereaved mothers to know that they weren’t alone on their grief journey. I wanted to give them hope for the future. I wanted them to know that life does get better and the pain will ease, as in the early stages of my grief journey I had desperately wanted to know if life would get better and would the sense of emptiness and hopelessness go away? I found that by talking to or reading about people further along their grief journey, it gave me hope for my future and I hoped that my book would do the same for anyone that read it.

Red Nose is committed to supporting families navigating the complexities of the loss of a baby or child. To access our specialised bereavement support including: counselling, peer support programs, support groups, and resources tailored to individual needs, click here.