Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sacredness in Tears

I accidentally had a typo in the first one that I sent out.  Sorry, I should have checked it better.  Let me know if I've missed something on this one.  Enjoy.


Feel free to share, all I ask is a link back to Honoring Our Angels.  Thanks

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Angel Art

Stephanie from Beyond Words Design, recently added the Petite Ensemble to her website.  You must see these petite and cute additions!  They are small, adorable and affordable.  What could be better?  Honoring Our Angels spotlighted Stephanie a few months ago with this blog post.  Stephanie is such an amazing individual, it's hard to not be inspired after you have read her story and visited her blogs.  I just fell in love with her little angels and had to share them with you!  They are beyond cute, and I can't think of a better gift for your angel or for someone else, than a custom work of art commissioned in their honor.




Stop by Beyond Words Design and see Stephanie's beautiful work.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Great Video About NILMDTS

I love Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep!  This organization has touched so many lives and I know that the pictures of my daughter that they provided for me are priceless.  I love when I see great news stories about this organization.  There cannot be enough good said about these earthy angels.  Thank you!

Friday, May 20, 2011

Playing Hide and Seek With Grief

I loved this article about how grief "hides" and can show up at unexpected times catching us off guard.  I know I have had these experiences, and probably will throughout my life.  It's beautifully written....


Playing Hide and Seek With Grief

This article is from Grief Digest Magazine and is written by Harriet Hodgson


The church service had just begun and the congregation and guests were greeting one another. A friend, who knew four of my family members died in 2007, approached me and asked, "How are you?"
"I'm good," I replied. "How are you?"
Widowed a year ago, my friend replied, "Oh, I've found that grief hides. When you think it's gone you find yourself crying."
I understood her comment. After losing my daughter, father-in-law, brother, and former son-in-law, there have been many times when grief reached out and grabbed me. These moments happen without warning and take me by surprise.
I expect to grieve on my deceased daughter's birthday and I do. I expect to grieve on the 23rd of the month, the day she died, and I do. I expect to grieve on the anniversary of my father-in-law's death, and brother's death, and I do. But I didn't expect to play hide and seek with grief.
The unpredictable moments of sorrow make me seek the causes. What triggered my grief? Could I have prevented it? Is there more grief work to do? "Grief hides," as my friend put it so clearly, and I've found that it hides in the nooks and crannies of life.
Sometimes, when my granddaughter speaks just like her mother used to, I feel renewed grief. I feel joy as well. When I see someone using a walker, I'm reminded of my father-in law, and I grieve. My brother loved books and I volunteer at the library in his memory. Last week, without any warning, I felt a wave of sadness at his passing.
For someone like me, who has suffered multiple losses, there are many games of hide and seek. Some mourners have a different approach to the game and try to hide or suppress their emotions. But hiding from emotions only prolongs grief. Thankfully, I've always been honest with my feelings.
If I'm grouchy or feel down, give me an hour, and I can tell you why. As I grow older, I appreciate this personality trait more and more. I also appreciate my ability to identify gut feelings.
Daniel Goleman writes about gut feelings in his book, "Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter More than IQ." According to Goleman, being able to identify gut feelings has advantages. This ability gives us the chance to "immediately drop or pursue" different paths with confidence and "pare down our choices."
Nearly four years have passed since my daughter died. Of the four deaths, hers was the most painful. Despite the pain, I have learned from it and one of the things I learned was to accept the hide and seek nature of grief. I accept my feelings and move on. You see, I'm a lucky woman.
My multiple losses reminded me of the miracle of life. So I'm putting hide and seek nature of grief on notice: You may surprise me, but you will not defeat me. Happiness is mine, to savor each day and to share.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Prayer

I wanted to share a great printable with you all.  I saw on the blog craftaholics anonymous.  I believe prayer is so powerful in the healing process.  It was the only way I found peace on some of my darkest days.  
Enjoy!


Monday, May 16, 2011

Carla's Angels

I am always on the lookout for great resources and I wanted to share another one with you, Carla's Angels. This website has an amazing amount of personalize angel pins you can purchase, or you can have her design one specifically for you.  Below are a few of my favorite angel pins from her collection. Make sure to read the story behind the pins taken from the website too!

Morgan

Morgan's Dad is a Police Officer.  In this design, the police officer is carrying his baby angel, wrapped in a golden blanket, close to his heart. 

This Angel was a custom design by a friend of the family.
This is truly a sad, sad story for me.  2 of my very close friends, lost twin babies to a miscarriage in September 03.  But much to everyone's joy, they conceived again and we were all anxiously waiting the birth of Morgan Elizabeth who was due on September 4, 2004.  Mom had a perfect pregnancy and did everything right,  but on her appointment to the doctor on August 25 they couldn't find the baby's heartbeat ~ only 10 days from her due date.  Morgan Elizabeth was stillborn on August 27th, due to a knot in her umbilical cord.  This was the most beautiful baby I've ever laid eyes on, perfect in every way.  Its such a terrible and sad thing that she didn't even get to meet her parents, two of the sweetest and loving people in the world.  Dad is a police officer and can carry his in his patrol car.

Anna



Anna wears a flowing, loosely pleated, silver skirt.  She has wire lacey, filigree wings.  She is holding a lily and wears a twisted halo on her head.
A birthstone can be added to the center of the lily, just let me know the birth month in the comments section of the order form.

My husband and I recently lost our eight month old daughter, Anna, and I would like to have a pin designed in memory of her.
We used to call Anna "itty-bitty".  One thing that I always remember whenever I think of Anna is how she was always moving, even before she was born.  Anna had so much spirit and joy that I don't think she could hold still! 
I would like it if she could be holding a lily, they were her favorite flower to watch in our yard and we used them at her funeral.
Can you include a lacey, filigree, or scrolled pattern on the skirt either at the hem or all over, I loved to dress Anna in frills, you've done such a beautiful job with all of your pins that I trust your judgment.  A place for the birthstone would also be nice. 


Jessica

"Jessica" has a butterfly on her shoulder.  They say if a butterfly lights on you, you have been touched by an angel.  She is holding a pretty purple flower, wearing a simple gown and a crystal halo.

This angel was designed in memory of Jessica.
Jessica was a good friend of my daughters.  She was involved in a one car accident, just a few blocks from her home.  Jessica loved butterflies and the color purple.
Engraving is not available on this design.


There are so many beautiful angels on this site to choose from, or make one custom for your angel.  Stop by Carla's Angels to see more.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Stillborn, Still Living

I found this great article from Grief Digest Magazine and thought I'd share......



Stillborn, Still Living


Grief—the bitter fruit of death—has always been one of the greatest challenges to faith. Even though the piercing sorrow of loss is the painful call faith alone can best answer, in some cases it poses such ferocious questions that it threatens to annihilate the very capacity to believe. This is particularly the case with stillbirth, a crushingly sad phenomenon affecting more than 30,000 babies (and their parents) each year in the United States. That amounts to about seventy couples every day. One in every 116 births experience this disorienting tragedy, so cruel in its ambush of paradox: death before life, the ending before the beginning, a funeral instead of a christening, the stale pall of death over the young body of new life, a first hello as a final goodbye. 
Even now, some nineteen years after my encounter with stillbirth, it seems so odd, so unfair and so out of order. All my wife and I did was go to our obstetrician for a final prenatal check in the 38th week of pregnancy. There had been no gunshots, no terrible car accident, no horrible fall. We were fine when we walked into the doctor’s office, but when we left an hour later, our lives had been shattered. Our precious baby boy, our treasured first child, had inexplicably died in the womb.    
Stillbirth sentences the lost child’s parents to a lifetime of mystery. Who would he have become, what would he have done, how would our lives have been different? There is something inherently haunting about a lifeless baby’s body. He represents the archetype of promise and innocence, yet he has no destiny, he will never be able to realize himself, to tell his own story, to express the humanity he embodies. Hopes for him and for all his life are condemned to curiosity. In never knowing who he is or who he might have become, we also lose a bit of self-knowledge, we never find out who he might have become, how his life would have affected us or  caused us to grow and change. A baby was lost, and a measure of self-knowledge, as well as intimacy between spouses who will not share the precious moments of parenthood together. And there is the subtle fear that he may somehow represent a judgment on you, a rejection by God of your humanity. 
He becomes a silent witness to your sorrow, and in his muteness depicts your 
utter inability to answer the urgent and recurring question “Why?”  In the peculiarity of stillbirth, Mark Twain’s observation of grief is most true, “Losing a loved one,” he said, “is like having your house burn down; it takes years to realize all that you’ve lost.”    
While the death of an infant is often irrationally considered by our society to be more of a “mother’s issue” than a father’s grief, it is a haunting, silent partner in many men’s lives, affecting their psyches and relationships in subtle and mysterious ways. Abe Lincoln lost two young children, one during the Civil War; John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan both had their already complex selves enduringly altered by neonatal death. Still today, former President George H. W. Bush cannot discuss the death of his three-year-old daughter, which occurred about sixty years ago, without a tearful, inarticulate stammering.    
Yes, those who grieve child loss form a secret society of psycho-emotional vertigo. The fact is the terrain of the psyche is not as well-charted as we like to  believe. The dawn of the twenty-first century sees us mapping the brain and reading DNA, yet the dark tunnels of psychic trauma into which the vortex of great loss conducts us remain largely unexplored.     
The tendrils of grief can creep into the psyche, influencing one’s personal and political manner: the melancholia and fatalism of Lincoln, the reckless hedonism of Kennedy, the strange familial detachment of Reagan, the emotional aphasia of George H. W. Bush     
But even amid psychic ravaging, a paradox of loss emerges: by being reduced we grow. It represents a strange point of contact with the ultimate purposes of life, with the true nature of life and the reality of life hereafter. I never felt closer to God than I did after my son died. Ironically, the end of a life can bring to those around it a new fullness of life. In grief, faith becomes both a refuge and puzzle. It preserves meaning to life and the universe, but it also seeks an explanation, and it searches for answers.     
After we lost our baby, I found we thought more carefully about life; we sensed in a clearer way its value, and we were more sensitive to the pain and suffering of others. Our acquaintance with deep sorrow had sensitized us to the sufferings of other people. Our ability to be compassionate grew. Frequently, we would see on the news that some child had been killed in an accident or murdered, and my wife and I would send a sympathy card to the grieving family. Or we would pray together for people who had been victimized in some horrible way.    
Certainly these were not earth-shaking acts of humanitarianism on our part, but they were things we never would have done before. It never would have crossed our minds. The deaths of strangers and the sufferings of their families had new meaning to us. Our souls had grown, and we could now perceive the agonies felt by other people, whereas before our unwanted encounter with personal devastation we would not have been capable of such empathy.    
Our souls, which had been sites of  such complete, scorching devastation, in time began to sprout new buds of  life. The emotional ground of our lives, which had been plowed under by sorrow, in time started to be fertile again, and to an extent that far surpassed its previous capacity. Our pain had begun to change us for the better. Indeed, it seems that sorrow, the pit of grief, is perhaps, one of the more under-recognized proofs of God, the plausibility of his existence, that at our lowest moments we either turn to him, or rage against him. After all, why should our experience of pain turn us into his prosecutors, unless we had a natural, prior moral knowledge and expectation that matters ought to have been different. 
“Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness,” Dostoevsky said. And it may well be that in the pitch darkness of our greatest losses we are best able to see the still steady light of God’s reality and presence.
By bstetson@chapman.edu is a writer, chaplain and lecturer in Southern California. He's written widely on religious and social subjects, including The Silent Subject: Reflections on the Unborn in American Culture (Praeger, 1996), Tender Fingerprints: A True Story of Loss and Resolution (Zondervan, 1999), and Living Victims, Stolen Lives: Parents of Murdered Children Speak to America (Baywood, 2003). His essays and reviews have appeared in various periodicals, including The Orange County Register, The San Diego Union & Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and Christianity Today magazine. He teaches in the Religious Studies and Communication Studies Departments at Cal State Long Beach and Chapman University, respectively. As a chaplain, Dr. Stetson frequently works as a funeral officiate, including historic Fairhaven Memorial Park, soon to celebrate its centenary. He is active in the Greater Orange County Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, and he leads The New Normal, a bi-monthly grief support group at Grace Church of Orange, in Orange County. He and his wife Nina have three teenage children.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Happy Mother's Day!



Happy Mothers Day! 

 Whether your children are here with you or in Heaven, you are still a mother!

Friday, May 6, 2011

Calvin's Cupcakes



I'm excited to spotlight today Crystal's from Calvin's Cupcakes.  I am always so touched by how much kindness and love is out there.  Crystal is just another beautiful example of giving to others to honor her babies.

This is what Crystal wrote about why she started Calvin's Cupcakes.......

Our names are Louie and Crystal, and we created Calvin’s Cupcakes in honor of our first baby, Calvin Phoenix.
Calvin died before he was born at 18 weeks on March 5, 2009 due to amniotic band sequence. On December 10, 2009, he was joined by his sister, Rainbow. Although their lives on earth were short, we are so grateful for the time we did have with them. Yes, we ache for our children. Yes, we miss them. But we feel so blessed to be their mommy and daddy, and we will continue to find ways to honor their lives and our love for them.
Calvin’s Cupcakes are sweet remembrances for parents whose children now celebrate their birthdays in Heaven. We understand the importance of having our babies recognized and the need to know they won’t be forgotten. Although they are no longer with us physically, we continue to carry them in our hearts. We hope that these cupcakes will bring you comfort and would be honored to remember your children with you on their special day.
Example of the cute birthday cupcakes
If you'd like to read more about Calvin or Crystal you can visit her other blogs listed below.

To learn more about us please visit the following:
Stop by Calvin's Cupcakes and leave Crystal a comment and order a cupcake for your angel!

Thank you Crystal for sharing your time, talent and your sweet angels!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Letting Go

I wanted to share another great inspirational quote.  Enjoy.


Honoring Our Angels Service Project

Honoring Our Angels Service Project
Click on the card to read more about the project.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...