Babylost Holidays

There are many emotions spurred during the holiday season, and for the woman who has lost a baby, holidays can be a tender, emotion-filled, and difficult time.

Have you, or has someone dear to you, lost a baby to miscarriage, stillbirth, or within the first year of life? Were you the midwife or doula to someone who lost a baby?

If so, consider this lovely journal for yourself or this babylost Mama: Mending Invisible Wings – a healing journal for mothers who have lost a baby.

Within its pages are writings from others: mothers, doulas, a midwife, a father… each of whom have traveled this path. There are gently guided Healing Expressions, encouraging the reader to acknowledge, honor, and release her emotions surrounding this loss, plus an entire section of healing ceremonies. Poetry is woven throughout, like a golden thread. There are many illustrations on thick paper – to color, paint, write in, scribble on, decorate… illustrations that speak to a grieving woman’s heart. There are lots of blank spaces and room to think and write and draw and cry on and dream. There are visualizations and affirmations and suggestions for honoring the woman’s body, that she may so deeply feel has let her down.

There is no more difficult journey than to lose one’s child.

It is hard to find the words to say.

A gift of Mending Invisible Wings is a lovely place to start.

with love, m.

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Remembrance, Oct 15, Mother of All

October 15 is the National Infant Loss Awareness Night, and the world-wide candle vigil, Wave of Light, happens this night, everywhere at 7pm local time. Those who want to honor, acknowledge, and remember babies lost are invited to light a candle, or candles. Here are mine for tonight:

7pm, Oct 15, Candles

Candles, Oct 15, 7pm

w/ Mother of All painting

These candles were placed beneath the Mother of All, a painting created by Shiloh. Do you know the story behind this painting? If not, here is an excerpt from Mending Invisible Wings…

ABOUT THE COVER PAINTING – A NOTE FROM SHILOH

The painting is entitled: Mother of All, Send Your Angels to Protect This Holy Soul, and she has an amazing story…

While being painted, somehow the painting got punctured. The canvas actually tore through, in the area just below her right breast. I was devastated. I had no idea what to do.

My mentor and family matriarch, Sue Hoya Sellars, used the painting to demonstrate the technique of mending a painting.  You cut a piece of canvas and from another canvas, and gesso underneath and many layers over the back. The whole process takes some time, and while I was doing it, I felt the healing journey in myself as well.

You cannot see the tear on the front anymore, although there is a slight dimple.  She has healed, but on the back is this wonderful little band aid, created with so much care, which taught me to do a technique of curing paintings that I have had to do many times since.  I feel a sense of affection for that spot on the painting now – and the whole painting took on another layer of energy.

My husband was on a trip when I was working on healing it and finishing it, and as soon as he got home, he said he had to have that special painting in our home. It hung in our house for over five years.  I made prints of it, which became bestsellers,
with the caption, Protection for this Woman.

When Mary and I were working this book, Mending Invisible Wings, this painting came to mind as WHO needed to be cover. Mary agreed and so I designed the whole theme around her opalescent blue and purple palette. Then after the cover was completed, I spontaneously asked my husband if I could have the painting back – and he agreed, reticently. I said that I thought she had another life to live, where others could see her. I hung her up in my studio.  Now, she belongs to Mary Burgess, the Author of this book, and it was through sharing with her the story of the painting, that this little writing got included as one of the last pieces in the book.
Mary and I both see the deeper meaning everywhere, and are always and ever eager to share the medicine just beneath the surface.

She has always been a guardian for women. She is very rich… her colors are opalescent and have lots of shimmer. She is totally at peace, and she is not the one wounded, but the one protecting, whom the Mother of All sent for us. She is a Guardian, a Protector. The painting is a prayer, and the prayer itself is written in the lower left hand corner.

She did take that one wound, but I feel, for our sakes, she endured it and healed to show us all how to heal our wounds. She is a sign of protection and of healing.

Mother of All, Send Your Angels to Protect This Holy Soul

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From Penny Simkin: Accolades from a reader

Ahh… I am soaring! My greatest hope is that this journal would fly into the arms of this mama… And others… Please enjoy this note from Penny Simkin…

Hi, Mary,

I may have told you that the same day my order for “Mending Wings” arrived, I was seeing a pregnant client who had experienced two earlier pregnancy losses. I loaned the book to her. Below is her assessment of your book:

“I haven’t had the chance to thank you for lending me your book, Mending Invisible Wings, it is outstanding, and I am so grateful to you. I worked through the early sections before Sebastian’s birth, and I’m going to buy a copy of my own so that I can see it to completion. I was surprised that I was familiar with some of the contributors to the book from my online reading, and tidbits of helpful advice that I had gleaned from bulletin boards here and there, but there was so much more, beautiful ways to honor lost babies…. so many resources rolled into one… when I think of all the searching I did for support… and here it is all in one book!”

I wrote back and asked if she’d be willing to have me show you the comments and let her use them for promotion, and this is her reply:

“I wouldn’t mind at all if you were to forward what I said over to Mary Burgess, it is a wonderful book. I’m looking forward to sharing it with others… I know it will be a great help.. it will spark many tears… but in a way that helps healing.”

I thought this would warm your heart. The names of the couple are Laura and Cliff Simpkins. I am cc-ing her with this message. You two should know each other. She recently had a natural birth that exceeded her expectations, but I’ll let her tell you about that.

Anyway, Mary, I am so glad you wrote and produced this lovely book, and am so glad that it has been helpful to Laura and Cliff in their healing.

All the best,

Penny Simkin

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