To be continued on our conversation from the previous episode with Hails. 

We have this crazy expectation of human beings - especially women - that we need to be amazing in all aspects. On how we describe ourselves to be the glass half-empty or the glass half-full.

In building the Hey Loss Mama community, Hailey’s goal is to help moms to feel their emotions. After Hayden died, there’s a realization of needing to have a friend - someone who knows her struggle and who doesn't need to explain herself. She created the community with the intent to gather 100 moms and like connect to 5 people personally. Hails have been humbled and honored to grow as a community - feeling that connection to over a thousand moms.

Join me and Hails as we talk about her journey towards grief and how she evolved from being an “I don’t want a child” woman to deciding with his husband to conceive over Covid to experiencing a stillbirth for her first pregnancy.

The trauma that you have to experience in delivering your baby knowing that you can never have her, nothing can prepare you for that silence.  

In today’s episode, I want to talk about self-care. A little about self-care and why it’s important to take care of yourself, but that self-care is not just what feels good at first. Self-care for us is like eating chocolate, going to get a massage, having time alone, and time to do whatever you want, which is always amazing and feels good, but is it truly taking care of yourself? Tune in as I talked about how to truly take care of yourself.

I’m not one for big announcements and it feels kind of weird for me to share this way, but we are expecting our 8th child! It’s weird having to share this special moment and having the opposite thoughts about it - thus the episode title. 

I have not talked about it a ton, but I had a miscarriage after my first boy. It hasn’t affected me a lot in my life however I didn’t realize that this is how it was for me - having to experience a new pregnancy - and how it is different for me than it is for others.

We talked about Jen Burgard's story and how she came to know about grief. Jen opened up and shared her first grief experience in her younger years. The grief she had experienced in the year 2017 when she was pregnant with her second child. Tune in, as she shares her experience on the day her water broke and was suddenly rushed to have an emergency C-section and the aftermath of that event.

Depression can be scary for those who are wanting to help you, and they might worry if you don’t get help soon, or don’t do anything that you will just stay there forever. And it’s definitely possible that you will stay there if you don’t allow yourself to move through the depression and to be in it when it’s there, but then to take steps to get out of it if it doesn’t lift for you when you allow yourself to be there.

The key to this is fully allowing yourself to be there without judgment. Allowing yourself to feel apathy. Feeling the disinterest, that you just don’t care anymore. And be there, knowing that this doesn’t last forever and that this is a part of grief.

I want to encourage you to search for joy in the ways you can.

Often, when a mom feels joy, she can immediately feel guilty that how she is having any joy because her child died. How can she laugh when your baby is dead? She’s a horrible mother for laughing, does this mean she is forgetting?

So many thoughts can race through your brain if you find any sort of joy.
And yet, joy, laughter, and lightness can be the things that fill you up so that you can ride the next waves of grief. If you don’t allow any joy in, it just gets heavier and heavier and you can start to wonder what’s the point and purpose. Well, you can wonder that no matter why.

In today’s episode, we are joined by my friend, Marisa Koivisto. Join us as Marisa tells her story of her experience with grief and loss. The time when she was alone without support from people - being isolated from friends, family, and church - as she and her family lived far while her husband was serving in the US Navy. She shared her thoughts on realizing what really matters in life, how to move forward, and how self-care can be so meaningful.