A Giveaway!

Of the entire year, the climactic days of  raising awareness of pregnancy & infant loss are upon us.

So I want to challenge you, I want to stretch you, to share about the aspects of your experience that are perhaps the most divisive.

We are all in this together, and we all have a right to healing.

During this week, we’ll be sharing perspectives, photos and stories, both here at the website and at our facebook page.  And four random people will be drawn from all stories and photos to receive one of the four giveaway items.

In honor of last week’s Day of the Girl, October 11, a day to recognize justice issues that girls face, I’ll be giving away three tee shirts from Project Rescue, and one copy of their book, “Beyond the Shame”.

Project Rescue serves in India, voted the worst country in the world for women.  They rescue women and children from the sexual trafficking of the red light district.

These young women become pregnant, endure miscarriage, stillbirth, give birth and endure forced abortion and all in the most horrendous of conditions.

I share this with you, because there are many differences among our experiences of pregnancy and infant loss: miscarriage, stillbirth, and so on.

These differences can be celebrated, but are too often divisive – becoming dark walls that trap us in and bind us to shame and unworthiness.

Here are a couple of examples:

• A mother gives birth on the cusp of miscarriage and stillbirth.  Her baby is called a miscarriage, although she defines her experience as a stillbirth.
• A mother contemplates elective abortion, but then has a miscarriage.  Now she feels she is to blame.
• A mother gives birth via elective abortion, but she tells you she had a miscarriage.

There are many, many aspects of our experiences that can seem isolating and even shaming.  And it can seem like the furthest thing we want to do is to share these things, but I want to stretch you, I want to invite you, to consider the freeing opportunity there is in speaking into our shame.  Daring to share what others may not yet be able to, holding your hand out to them that they can be released from the bondage of isolation, that they can believe in healing, that they can trust in hope.

If there is an aspect to your experience that you say, “That part is just too painful, others will not understand, I am all alone” I want to reach out and take your hand.  I want to whisper to your hurting heart that you are not alone, that your dignity is intact, that there is support for exactly that very part of your experience.  And I want to ask you, if you’d consider, sharing this part with others.  You can even do it anonymously.  Our sharing page gives you my email to do so (Heidi.faith@stillbirthday.com).

Please share your story by using our sharing page, and all stories will be entered into our giveaway, which will close and names will be drawn on Sunday, October 20th.  This opportunity is open to every share made as a comment below, made in individual stories through our sharing page, and the stories and comments shared through our facebook page.  It is also open internationally.

And, if you do not feel there is a specific element of shame hidden in your experience, please, I implore you, stay near to stillbirthday, here and at our facebook page, over the next several days, as the stillbirthday community dares to break free from bondage holding us in darkness.  Please, be ready, with a warm heart, with lots of validation, with lots of love.  Your encouraging words enter you into the giveaway as well.

Come, let us cast out shame.  Speak your dialect.

Let us heal, together.

About the giveaway items:

I purchased the book and 3 tee shirts from Project Rescue.  Entire proceeds of these shirts go toward the needs of girls and women in brothels in India.  The shirts are red, and are in one of each size: small, medium and large.  The sizing is similar to (but in my opinion just a smidgen smaller than) men’s sizes.  The first name selected will have first choice, and so on.  If a name is selected and the tee shirt sizing does not match, arrangements will be made to get the right sizing, although the color may be different.

If you have already shared a stillbirthday story that includes this element of darkness we are shining light into, you can simply comment below with the link to your story to be entered into the giveaway.