Dear parents, grandparents, siblings, godparents and friends,
Your child may have been stillborn or may have had to leave this world early because of illness. Perhaps you have just received a diagnosis. There are many of you, and yet so often you find no safe space in your surroundings for your pain and grief.
When a child dies or receives a diagnosis, the world stands still - not only for a brief moment, but for a long time, perhaps forever. Whole family systems freeze and somehow try to survive. The feeling of wanting to guard and protect the situation like a precious crystal, while at the same time not knowing where to put the grief, is familiar to those affected.
When a child dies, men and women often take different paths through grief. Misunderstandings arise because one person does not understand the other. Marriages and entire families can break under precisely these misunderstandings. We feel alone in our pain, unseen in our grief. Often we no longer know ourselves what we want or need.
In this phase - from the moment of diagnosis through birth, farewell, burial and subsequent grief work - placing oneself in the protective hands of mindful people can be a gift. My team and I would like to offer that gift.
Questions that suddenly fill the room
- How do we deal with siblings?
- How do we explain that their brother or sister has to leave this earth again?
- Do we take our deceased child home once more in order to say goodbye within the protected family circle?
- Which form of burial do we choose as a family for our child?
After stillbirths, deeply traumatized women are often left behind, unable to live themselves and their womanhood as before. In Germany, accompanying stillbirths cannot be financed under section 39a, because technically this is not end-of-life care but grief support. Unfortunately, grief support is still not covered by health insurers. Grief is not an illness, but when grief is given no space, it can make people ill.
In grief, the ability to feel oneself is lost. We try somehow to survive and endure the pain so that it does not break us. Yet precisely this strategy catches up with us at some point and the grief breaks open. Life wants to be felt in all its facets and emotions: day and night, light and dark, happiness and pain. One cannot exist without the other.
Helping institutions understand how healing and supportive mindful accompaniment can be for families affected by stillbirth is an important step toward change. Change is frightening at first. But I believe we must learn that, in accompanying affected families, we should never be lone fighters. We must always move within a network.
This is not about giving other professions the feeling that their work is not enough. It is about working together, also in the field of stillbirth, in a network of many professional groups - for the good of families and to achieve the greatest possible peace for everyone involved.
Accompanying families in perhaps the worst moments of their lives requires great sensitivity and the ability to read between the lines without a word being spoken. It presupposes that the companion can feel herself, look at her own pain and grief, and perceive and respect the blurred boundaries between herself and the families she accompanies.
Again and again I experience in nursing schools that mindful treatment of patients is supposed to be taught, yet when it comes to the grief of the nursing students themselves, entire institutional systems retreat. One student once said: "I don't know why you keep talking about our own grief. You are here to teach us how to deal with relatives."
This statement shows how we deal with dying, death and grief in everyday life and how we bring these subjects closer to our children. Engaging with death and grief requires us to turn inward. It is not the outside that must be examined, but our innermost being.
If we do not learn to be mindful with ourselves, our soul will one day signal to our body: apply the brakes. Many people remain in survival mode, but often the protective armor eventually breaks open and all the pain appears. Then ancient tears may be wept and the pain of an entire life becomes visible.
Being allowed to accompany parents, families and people on their individual path of dying and grief repeatedly calls forth great gratitude and humility in me. And do you know what? When I myself am grieving, as a professional I am just like everyone else - I need accompaniment. It is good to know where I can find it.
Warmly,
Helga Schmidtke
