Mid-Month Challenge: April

April's Community Poem was an exploration in fortune telling and divination through bibliomancy. Essentially, we took someone else's words out of context and divined wisdom from them. For people who have suffered through stillbirth, miscarriage, infertility and neonatal loss, we constantly face platitudes, words spoken without thinking, social gaffes and a whole host of other hurtful comments. They sting us at our most vulnerable times and linger for a very long time. For April's Mid-month Challenge, contributors were asked to purposely take things out of context and make something meaningful from some else's hurtful or strained words or platitudes. Contributors were given freedom to choose any medium they were interested in. Each contributor used a visual medium.

I wasn't sure what was going to arise out of this project, but when they started rolling in, I thought each one was brilliant. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

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about the piece.
In Carly's words, "Here's a digital scrapbooking piece I did for the April Mid Month Challenge. The comment I used is one of the many comments I've heard. This one stuck with me. I know most people mean well but when you put it into a context like this or see it how it replays in my mind, it's not so helpful to hear. I put it with one of my favourite photos of our daughter Yuna, taken on the day she died. The only day we saw sunshine and breathed fresh air. We only have one or two with both myself and my partner. So you can see how looking at such a raw and powerful image filled with such emotion you can see that nothing like this is ever simply 'meant to be.' I chose the watercolour background because I wanted something beautiful too. It's sad, yes, but so often we have to turn our grief into that of beauty. It's not always beautiful but when we can make it beautiful it's all the more special. You can read more about me at Soul Blossoming."

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about the piece.
In Emily's words, "This is a picture I took of a flooded alley near my house. The words are something my dear mother said while I was laid up on bed-rest for severe late-postpartum hemorrhage 8 weeks after my son was born dead. I guess she was trying to be sympathetic, but she knows quite well that my husband had a vasectomy and my uterus will never be 'full' again. It breaks my heart.

about the contributor.
"My name is Emily, I have bad odds. Two living children, out of five pregnancies. Two were early miscarriages. Juniper was still born on February 3, 2010. He took a whole lot of my heart with him. My blog is The Nature of Balloons."

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about the piece.
In Angie's words, "I am a huge fan of what I like to call 'guerilla art' which takes familiar images and flips them on their head. There is already a line of ironic motivational posters called demotivational posters, which never fail to make my inner curmudgeon happy. I used the familiar image of these corporate mindless speak points to write something that I heard over and over again as a way to apologize for people who didn't even say they were sorry my daughter died. I actually did a screen shot of the google search result of 'what to say after stillbirth'. In this age of instant information, there is no reason that a competent adult friend should have nothing to say after your child dies."

about the contributor.
Angie is the editor of this still life 365. Her second daughter was stillborn at 38 weeks. You can read more about me in the about the editor section.

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about the contributor.
Rachel lives in Kansas with her husband of four years and a gray cat. They lost their first child, Lyra, at 30 weeks due to a cord accident on December 18, 2009. Rachel maintains a blog called Curls O Fred.


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about the piece.
Audrey explains the piece: "This is a jacked up moving announcement. We moved last year and I struggled mightily with the whole thing, in particular the tiny prints moving announcement templates, that each included the names of the members of the family."


about the contributor.
Audrey is the mother of three, including a set of monoamniotic twins, twins who shared an amniotic sac, which is very rare, which earned her eleven weeks of inpatient monitoring and, sadly, hospital food. Her daughter, Eva, was diagnosed with a heart defect (hypoplastic left heart syndrome) in utero and died from post-surgical complications when she and her twin were 29 days old. As she approaches her personal "Lent" for the third time, Audrey is working to reconcile herself to life's dualities. Audrey writes at Glutton Button.

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about the contributor.
Franchesca's firstborn daughter, Jenna Belle, passed away after 13 days of fighting for her life in the NICU. No diagnosis was ever confirmed, although a genetic disorder was suspected. It is Franchesca's hope that Jenna's short visit to our world will make a difference in someone else's life forever. Franchesca maintains a blog about her experience at Handprints from Heaven. She also helps bereaved families by creating a Hope Collage of their child's name.

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about the piece.
In Jill's words, "I saw someone I know who works at a grocery store and shortly after I lost my twins she came up to me, hugged me, and told me not to worry and that I was still young enough to have kids. Needless to say, this comment crushed me. I don’t care how old I am. My twins died and my heart was broken. Another child would never replace them. I have had quite a few people say this to me in one way or another.

"I chose this picture because of the blue mountains and pink sky. It reminds me of my Emma and Chase. It was taken from a friends house in Massachusetts. "

about the contributor.
Jill is the mother of twins, Emma and Chase, who were born to early in August, 2009. She writes about her journey at Footprints on our Heart.