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“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

But no, that is not quite accurate. There is one place where her absence comes locally home to me, and it is a place I can't avoid. I mean my own body. It had such a different importance while it was the body of H.'s lover. Now it's like an empty house.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Some people say it is a shame. Others even imply that it would have been better if the baby had never been created. But the short time I had with my child is precious to me. It is painful to me, but I still wouldn't wish it away. I prayed that God would bless us with a baby. Each child is a gift, and I am proud that we cooperated with God in the creation of a new soul for all eternity. Although not with me, my baby lives.”
― Christine O'Keeffe Lafser, An Empty Cradle, a Full Heart: Reflections for Mothers and Fathers After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death

“I am not functioning very well. Living with the knowledge that the baby is dead is painful. I feel so far away from you, God. I can only try to believe that you are sustaining me and guiding me through this. Please continue to stand by my side.”
― Christine O'Keeffe Lafser, An Empty Cradle, a Full Heart: Reflections for Mothers and Fathers After Miscarriage, Stillbirth, or Infant Death

“Queen Katherine, whose boys have all died, takes it patiently: that is to say, she suffers.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Come to think of it, I could not even think of a movie or TV shows where they had a baby die, with the sole exception of a couple of episodes of “Little House on the Prairieâ€� and perhaps soaps. I was beginning to understand this was truly “theâ€� unspeakable loss, “theâ€� invisible loss, a loss so great nobody wanted to talk about it; a loss so inconceivable and so horrible that many people declared it as being the most overwhelmingly painful experience of their life; the death of which they were least prepared for. I was beginning to understand. My grief was colossal and all-encompassing. No loss is more difficult to accept and feels more unnatural and less understood”
― Silvia Corradin, Losing Alex: The Night I Held An Angel

“A Japanese woman friend whose infant son died seven days into his life - no detectable reason - just the small breathing becoming nothing until it disappeared, told me that in Japan, there is a two-term word - “mizugoâ€� - which translates loosely to “water children.â€� Children who did not live long enough to enter the world as we live in it. In Japan, there are rituals for mothers and families, practices and prayers for the water children. There are shrines where a person can visit and deliver words and love and offerings to the water children.”
― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water

“Look for the lessons. A still birth, or a 'close call' may inform the would-be-parent that s/he is just not ready. Wait, think, weigh and ponder â€� to have a child is a great responsibility, and some people are not up to it.”
― Stephen Poplin, Inner Journeys, Cosmic Sojourns: Life transforming stories, adventures and messages from a spiritual hypnotherapist's casebook

“She remembered her father's tears, her mother’s cold, white hand, and the perfect, tiny, porcelain face of her still-born baby brother.”
― Victoria Lynn, Once I Knew

“I hate to say this, but I am still holding somewhat of a grudge at the people that could have come to the funeral but didn't, especially when they came up with some lame excuse how it was too sad or how they were afraid of cemeteries or whatever. No justification in the world could make up for you not being there when someone needs you. Period.”
― Silvia Corradin, Losing Alex: The Night I Held An Angel

“At her words, words of forgiveness from Rose, an honest and just woman, something broke inside of Wince. His tears began to flow. Age seemed to drift from his face like misty ghosts from a morning field. Katie lifted his chin and, holding back her own tears, looked into his eyes. "Thank you, Wince."

Eve placed her free hand on his shoulder. "May we hold her now?"

Wince nodded and gently released the baby into the waiting arms of her sisters.

"You did the right thing, Wince." Rose gave Wince a hug. "And you can help us bury her after Wilson and the Tar Ponds City Police see if they can find anybody to lay charges against after all this time.”
― Beatrice Rose Roberts, Twin Loyalties: From The Chronicles Of Tar Ponds City

“Her mother’s quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline’s despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live.”
― Pamela Erens, Eleven Hours

“Once home where she could cry, no tears came. Only thoughts weighted with sorrow. Never to initiate life. Never to feel life moving inside her. Never to bring forth life and nourish it with sustenance from her own body.”
― Monica Starkman, The End of Miracles

“What my sister needed was not people urging her, as so many did, to get pregnant again as soon as possible, but acknowledgment of her loss and the violence that she experienced in that loss. She needed to know that this was not a failure or that she was a bad mother. She needed to be allowed to be not only sad but also, in her grief, to be angry. But as Gunther explained, "Society does not like to hear from us castaway mothers.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“A greater love was always with me. Guiding me and waiting for me to surrender myself so that the glory of grief could bring me back to joy, where it greeted me once again.â€� - Just Be”
― Lindsa Gibson

“What my sister needed was not people urging her, as so many did, to get pregnant again as soon as possible, but acknowledgment of her loss and the violence that she experienced in that loss. She needed to know that this was not a failure or that she was a bad mother. She needed to be allowed to be not only sad but also, in her grief, to be angry. But as Gunther explained, 'Society does not like to hear from us castaway mothers.”
― Soraya Chemaly, Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger

“When I first found out about Cerian’s deformity and made the choice to carry her to term, it felt like the destruction of my plans and hopes. It went against what I wanted. It limited me. But it was in this place of limitation that God showed me more of his love. Up until this point, the clamor of my desires and wishes had made me like a closed system centered in on myself, on my needs, flaws, and attributes. My life, even at times my religion, had revolved around achievement, reputation, and winning respect and approval from others.”
― Sarah C. Williams

“An interrupted pregnancy is something personal and private. There is always a story behind the loss of a child. Let us not dismiss that story but listen to it with love and compassion.”
― Adriana Vandelinde, English for Her: Everything You Always Wanted to Know But Were Afraid to Ask

“Grief doesn't ever really leave. It becomes a part of your story, but it doesn't have to define it.”
― Emma Hansen

“I never know when I'll sense Reid's presence. It isn't in a toothbrush left behind or a frequently worn item of clothing. It's in the absences that I feel him most. It's everywhere that I had imagined he'd one day be.
For me, he is more than a body. I knew the soul, not the flesh. When I look at photos of him, I miss him, but not in the same way I miss him when I look at photos of myself pregnant.
He is a feeling. He is a feeling more than anything because of the simple fact that he died before he was born. Because he was stillborn. He is not defined by this, but the definition matters. I was meant to be his portal, the one that would lead him from his world into ours, but he left for another world, one altogether foreign to me.”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“Though he died before anyone got to know him, he still made an impact, is still loved, and that many are grieving his death. We are not alone in this loss.”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“I always thought, somehow, that death would follow the rules. This was supposed to be a beginning; now we are at an end.”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“What happens when the order of birth and death are disrupted? Stillbirth goes against the way most people think about life and death, and the timeline in which they occur. It's unsettling.

When death takes a life before birth, is it a life? I don't know. I don't think there will ever be an answer that feels certain, or one that is right for everyone. But right here, right now, I wonder, is it really just a single breath of air that creates a life? And the absence of it that makes a death?”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“But I can't figure out how to keep Reid alive in my heart without the ache. Will it always be like this? I have to believe it will get better. But then, do I want it to? Because when it gets better, what will be lost in the process? Already, I know that it will come with a price.”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“When a baby dies before they have a chance to create their own story, I think one of the biggest fears parents have is that they will disappear, be forgotten. It's up to those who knew them to spread their legacy, should that be something that's in their hearts to do.”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“If this mother-child relationship, this identity, is ingrained in us at a genetic level, I just can't believe that death would simply sever it. Death wouldn't change anything at all. Except that one of us is here and the other there, and though the circumstances are altered, the connection will never be. The mother will always remain a mother; the child, her child.”
― Emma Hansen, Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood

“We live in a country where nothing makes any difference.”
― Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms