From the moment I said hello and goodbye all at once, I made a promise that I would honor her memory with everything I had.

I often say that the support I experienced and continue to experience from this community of loss moms has been a life raft. Without it, I may have drowned in a sea of my own sorrow and tears.

Ever since we lost her, purple flowers pop up in our path everywhere we go. We hold them as a symbol of her and our friends and family share purple flower photos and videos too.

I chose to do something different from my first encounter with pregnancy loss. I wouldn’t isolate, hide, bury, put up a front, smile. I would honor every single feeling that arose, as it did in real time… And in doing so, I was writing a new story. This was new for me.

I needed a way to say goodbye, not only to the life that had been growing in me, but also to the due date, the list of names, the future I had already started to paint.

"I was experiencing the grief of losing my mom and then I started experiencing the grief of losing my pregnancy.”