Dear Mama,
I want you to know—you aren’t alone. Not even by a little bit. Not ever, but especially not today.
There are hearts like yours breaking all over the world today. Whether you are grieving one loss or multiple. Whether you already have a healthy family or this would have been your firstborn. Whether you were family planning the natural way or needed a little help from science. Planned, unplanned. Chemical pregnancy, missed miscarriage, late-term loss. Those details don’t matter today.
Today, all our hearts hurt the same. We are all part of the same club we never asked for membership in.
As someone who has had the recent misfortune of suffering back-to-back losses in just a few short months, there are a few things I feel like you should know this Mother’s Day.
It’s going to hurt. It’s going to sting a little extra today. That pain you may have thought finally managed to subside will find a way to rear its ugly head, whether your loss was five days, five weeks or five years ago. Days like today are a cold, hard reminder of the baby that isn’t there to celebrate with you. Days like today have a way of bringing you right back to that exact moment your entire world turned upside down. It’s one of those milestone moments that somehow manages to creep up on us, even though we see them staring back at us on our calendars.
You are going to experience an entire spectrum of emotions in a short period of time. There will be the obvious ones like sadness and hurt. There may even be joy if you are fortunate enough to be celebrating with another child or are pregnant again. But there will also be so many others. Jealousy every time you see another happy Instagram post. Anger your story didn’t turn out the way you planned. There may be moments when you are lucky enough to feel a sense of calm and peace, as this day forces you to come to terms with the realization that this is now your story, and nothing can change that.
And while you may have thought you successfully stumbled your way through the grieving process, days like today will force you to grieve all over again. Grieve the little life, or lives, you lost. Grieve the loss of what you thought was supposed to be. Grieve for all the other mamas with arms a little too empty today. Grief, in any form, is tricky like that. It hits us in waves just when we thought we finally had a grip on the stormy sea.
But here’s the thing: You always come out stronger on the other side. When that clock strikes and a new day comes, you will have successfully survived another one of your hardest days. Maybe it gave you closure. Maybe it brought you peace. Maybe it just flat-out hurt. Whether you felt all or none of these things, you made it through.
Above all, the most important thing to remember as a loss mom on Mother’s Day is this: you are a mother. Whatever that looks like and however your story turned out; whether your little miracle is earthside or an angel baby—you are a mama today and every day. You can’t let loss or grief or anything else take that away. Not for one single second. Especially not today.
With so much love,
A fellow mama who gets it
by Stacey Skrysak 
by Jenny Albers 
