This very week, stillbirthday has been here for 2 years.  And, this very week, we have reached over 1,000,000 families.

We are growing and reaching in more ways than I’ve ever fathomed.

Which makes this message a painful one, an embarrassing one, but one I must share.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in the Heidi’s Pieces section of stories, you’ve come to know that I had a very painful childhood, one filled with trauma, abuse and neglect.

And you’ll quickly come to know that I became a Christian in my adult life.

And then my baby was born in the first trimester.

My baby, who is not alive.

Who was called debris.

And we were denied services by a prominent bereavement organization I won’t even mention.

And my baby still doesn’t have a headstone.  Two years later.  Because stillbirthday is where I come to mourn, and because it is an honor to share this place with others who are hurting.  And because all funds generated through stillbirthday get poured back into stillbirthday.

My husband and I began stillbirthday, as a way to give a glimpse of hope to those enduring the darkness we have been.

And Christians, who wouldn’t ask me about my own personal experience, told me to make stillbirthday extremely pro-life.

And non-Christians, who likewise, never bothered to know about my heartbreak, demanded stillbirthday portray elective abortion as something light or easy.

I have done nor will do neither.

I have had the most slanderous and maliciously cruel things said about me, I’ve had my work stolen, I’ve had my grief journey insulted.

Christians, who didn’t ask me where my source of hope has come from, spoke with judgment and discrimination and told me condescendingly that the Bible needs to be the only source of encouragement for bereavement.

Non-Christians, who likewise, failed to be curious about the individual of me, accused me of being judgmental and discriminatory.

I have never done nor will I ever do either.

However,

In the darkness through which stillbirthday was born, I was panicked in my own faith.

I was terrified that God was not at all who I thought He was.

And in that panic, I did saturate evangelistic approaches in some of the thoughts I had early in my grief.

In a moment of pure transparency, two years later, 1 million people later, I desperately cry in embarrassment,

I am so sorry.

I am so sorry for the shame or condemnation or judgment I might have inadvertently cast upon you in your darkest of days.

I never, ever meant to bring any more pain.

I have grown and matured in this impossible darkness and terrible but beautiful journey, and I have since those earliest days revised the things that stung my heart as I found my old words through new eyes.

I am Christian.

I always will be.

But pregnancy and infant loss, it isn’t.

It knows no boundaries.

It touches every continent, every culture and every community.

I desire stillbirthday to do the same.

And, I realize that in order to truly do that, I need you to know this:

I am a 30-something, Caucasian, American, Christian mother.  This is the lens I come from.

But I want your help to learn about you.

And I beg your forgiveness as I stumble on the journey.

I have been through a lot, and I trust you have too.

I have learned,

That God isn’t who I thought He was.

I am Christian,

And it is not what I thought it was.

And while the lessons have been terribly painful ones,

I am thankful for them.

I am Christian,

And it’s probably not what you thought it was, either.

Whoever you are, wherever you are,

I just want to bring you love, but I am hurting too, and I ask you, to please find it within yourself, to bring love too.