Dear Family Member/ Friend,
I want to start off by letting you know that if you are reading this, there is no hostility behind my words. I have done a lot of healing and therapy, and quite frankly, taken quite a few SSRIs to be able to finally articulate how I feel about your chosen silence. I am finally ready to put into words how your silence made me feel after my baby died. It is also important to note that at this point, I have chosen forgiveness. Forgiveness to me means I am no longer harboring anger and letting this silence control my life. I don’t deserve that. But, I will never forget and things will never be the same.
Prior to my baby dying, I really valued our relationship. We had been through a lot and created a lot of amazing memories over the years. Trips, family gatherings, late night laughs, and so much more. There was a lot of love.
When my baby died, I fully expected to have your support. Friends and family reached out to you to let you know what happened. Our child had died. Over the first week the texts started flooding in. Sometimes so many at a time, we couldn’t keep up. But yours never came.
Initially, I was distraught. Are we sure they even know? Were they somehow missed in hearing the news? No.
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and before I knew it, it had been a year and you never even mentioned my baby. Do you even know my baby’s name? Do you know their birthday? Do you remember what happened? Do you even remember I was pregnant?
I honestly couldn’t believe it. Many nights were spent crying over your absence. My baby had died and while I was learning to want to live again, I was realizing it wasn’t just my baby I would have to live without.
We may have even reached out to you and expressed our heartbreak in your absence. But realistically, we were met with more disappointment. The damage is done. You weren’t there. You thought you were giving us needed space and then so much time had passed you realized you didn’t know what to say so you continued to say nothing.
I realize in the moment you probably thought you were somehow doing the right thing. When people make posts on social media about deaths it usually includes something along the lines of “the family asks for space”. But there is a thing as too much space. All I can hope is that if you are reading this after being silent, you realize how much your silence wrecked me and if you’re ever faced with a situation like this again, you will choose a different path.
The months following the death of my baby were the loneliest months of my life. I felt like you looked at me like I was broken. I was a victim of some terrible circumstance that I needed to grieve and get through to the other side. It felt like you were waiting until the old me, the me that didn’t know the heartbreak of their child dying, came back. That if you just waited six months or a year that we could go on like it was a thing of the past. You’d swoop back into my life like nothing ever happened and I hopefully never even noticed your silence.
The grief of my baby dying will never be a thing of the past and it will never be something I get over. The old me died when my baby did and unfortunately so did our relationship. People will say things like “you’re better off without someone that doesn’t care” and while that might be true, it doesn’t erase the pain of losing you. I wish this weren’t the case. I wish I could agree with people that I am better off, and rationally, maybe I am. But, I would have chosen a different outcome. I would have chosen you to be there.
And now that more time has passed, I likely have spoken to you in some capacity, probably have seen you, and you may have noticed a change in me. Or maybe you haven’t and you never really knew me at all. But I can assure you that every time I look into your eyes, hear your voice, or see your posts on social media, I am taken back to the time where I was abandoned by you. And it will never be the same.
The truth is I would have done everything differently if it was the other way around. I would have been at your doorstep with snacks, meals, a hug, and a shoulder to cry on. I would have texted you everyday things like “no pressure to answer, I just love you”. I would have continued to invite you places but told you I completely understood if you weren’t ready. I would have said your baby’s name every chance I could. I would have asked what I could do to help you in your mission to keep your baby’s name alive and I would have recruited the help of others to show my unending support and love.
These are all things I wish I had gotten from you.
But all I got was silence.
It absolutely broke me.
In a time where my focus should have been how can I make it through another day without my baby turned into how could you do this to me after my baby died? How could you abandon me? How could you just expect me to be okay? After the lifetime of love and memories we shared, my baby dying was too much for you. And it ruined me.
I had countless therapy sessions focused on how do I move on after you haven’t spoken to me? Do I bring it up? Do I meet your silence with my own? Honestly, I’m still not sure what the right answer would have been. But I do know I shouldn’t have had to spend time on you when I couldn’t even get out of bed or feed myself. And I’m finally at the point where you don’t control all of my thoughts. I no longer wake up everyday and ask why?
As I bring this letter to an end, I want you to know how much I loved you. You hurt me beyond repair and I hope you never hurt another person the way you hurt me. You were wrong and I deserved better.
Signed,
A grieving mom
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