The Comfort of Creativity When Your Baby Has Died

Pregnancy and birth, reproduction – these are basic things that it seems any human couple should be able to accomplish. And yet my pregnancy, that blissful time of growing and waiting and expecting the new person growing within me, failed. It did not bring about life. The only thing I birthed was death.

And so I wondered, and still wonder, am I a mother? Am I a woman? Am I even still human?

These are questions that I do not know the answers to. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

If a mother is someone who creates, what do you call a person whose only pregnancy ended with tears and sorrow and pain? With an empty crib and piles of little girl clothes that will never be worn by the baby they were bought for?

Creativity has helped me to survive this feeling of exclusion, of non-motherhood, non-humanity.

It began the day after we arrived home from the hospital. . . .

Today I am writing over at Still Standing Magazine!  

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