Guest Author - Michelle McVaney
Our dream as parents is to have children that are born completely perfect. When we are blessed with a different reality, we often times aren’t sure we can endure it. Losing a baby or child is probably the most difficult thing for a person to go through. Scrapbooking and journaling can be considered a form of narrative therapy. Those who have experienced the fear, loss and grief of a death or serious illness can use writing, drawing and photography in a scrapbook as a safe place to express their emotions and record events through both words and images, accelerating the process of emotional healing.
Always remember that you are not alone in losing a child. “Who better to so softly bind up the wound of another, than he who has suffered the wound himself?” -Thomas Jefferson
There are many websites online to help you through your grieving process. One such site is Just A Cloud Away Grieving Ideas to Cradle Your Pain. Diana Gardner-Williams founded Just A Cloud Away after her sweet little son Tanner was stillborn in 2003. She is the mother to three little angel babies. Creating this company and the scrapbook kits for other parents helped her with her own journey of healing.
Just A Cloud Away offers online support for early pregnancy and infant loss. Diana has created healing rememberance kits for parents who have lost a baby. The kits allow families to work together to create beautiful pages of rememberance for loved ones. Creating a tribute for a child that left to soon can aid in the healing journey and provide a “place” to put your grief. Diana’s intention was to make this kit very easy to use for those that do not scrapbok already.
Photographs of stillborns and newborns who don’t make it home from the hospital are usually very difficult to look at, and are usually the only image that the parents have of their child. I have found a free service, with skilled digital artists that work with a digital copy of your original photo, eliminating medical equipment, removing marks and bruising, even replacing the background if desired. Visit the Angel Picssite to get information on having your photos touched up. If you do not have pictures of your baby do not let that stop you. These kits were created to work with or without photos.
The Just A Cloud Away website offers so many wonderful ideas for grieving families. One of the ideas that I fell in love with on their site is the Memory Garden. I now plan to create a memory garden for my grandma. I spend alot of time thinking of grandma when I garden but for some reason I have never thought to plant a garden in memory of her. I just LOVE the idea so much.
You can survive whatever you are going through. God has promised to never leave you nor forsake you. You are not alone. May God richly bless you and bring you comfort and healing in all your struggles as you draw near to Him.
