Honestly Emma | Website
Honestly Emma
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25.01.2022 This man. This photo . He has been my rock the last 16 months. We have grieved very differently, but have been able to respect the need to feel our grief in our own way. ... I look at this photo and it sums it all up. Love, disbelief, sadness, pain, connection, intimacy, respect, grief, beauty. All wrapped up in one. Our new norm. Binding us closer than we have ever been. Elke’s gift to us
21.01.2022 Today is Say Their Name Day. It was started by @sandsaustralia and shared this year by @rednoseaustralia to break the taboo around baby loss. When a baby dies, too many people don't know what to say. Too many people are scared to mention the baby's name. ... I felt the silence surrounding stillbirth so deeply in the early days of loss. People just didn't know what to say. It added so much pain to my already aching heart. 4 weeks after Elke died, my frustration led me to start writing Elke's Entries. I shared them with a few people in my inner circle, and each entry helped me process the grief and devastation I was feeling. My very first entry was "Please Say Her Name". I have shared it on my website today, in honour of Say Their Name Day. The greatest and most beautiful thing you can do for a grieving parent, is to say their babies name. Here is an excerpt: "I feel without acknowledging her, without speaking her name, is pretending that she did not exist. And she did. She does. She existed for 36 weeks inside of me, completely connected to me, literally sharing life with me. I gave birth to her, we held her, kissed her, talked to her. She was perfect in every way. Her siblings and grandparents met her, held her and kissed her goodbye. She had the same cute button nose as her 2 brothers and her sister. She had little ears like me. She had long fingers and toes like her Dadda. Elke made us a family of six. She made me a mama of 4. She is and always will be our daughter, our fourth child. So please don’t pretend she didn’t exist. Don't be scared of saying the wrong thing, or that mentioning her might make me upset. I would rather you talk about Elke, than hear your silence. " I would love to hear your baby’s name in the comments You can head to my website to read the blog post in full, or click the link in my bio https://www.honestlyemma.com.au///3/25/please-say-her-name
20.01.2022 A friend scrolled back through my Instagram recently and she commented it was a strange experience. I felt like I was entering a house where the residents had departed in a hurry and everything was as they had left it. Such an apt description for my life. It feels very much like that. My old life was left behind in an instant. A clear delineation. A before. An after. ... For the last year, all I have been able to write about is grief, loss and my journey with Elke. The house I departed, my old life, seems so very foreign. But you scroll back and it is all there. The health advice, the positivity, the passion, the clear direction. It was all abandoned overnight. I haven’t been unable to go back there to that space. It’s too hard, and in some ways seems too hollow. So I will continue to share my journey as I make my way out of the shadows. As I integrate back into life. As I learn how to move forward, holding Elke, honouring Elke, AND living life again. Perhaps finding ways to integrate my old life with my new. I gave myself 12 full months to grieve. To feel it all. It has been strong, but it has been healing. Allowing myself to journey deeply through the underworld, and find my way back to the surface. I haven’t pushed away a single emotion. I have faced them all head on, and allowed them to come. Every uncomfortable moment. It’s been so hard to sit in that space. I have literally lived day to day. I haven’t being able to plan or think ahead. I’ve only been able to face what was here each day. I haven’t been social, I’ve needed to keep my energy in. I’ve spoken to very few people, I’ve kept my circle very small. (If you’ve called me and I haven’t called you back, I’m sorry. I haven’t been able to) It was what I needed. After making it through Elke’s 1st birthday, I have felt the shift. I can suddenly look ahead. I have a diary again, and can start to plan. I’m not living moment by moment anymore. I’m willing to see people, to open myself up and be social again. I find myself in my new norm. And so the rebuild begins.
18.01.2022 My life has been incredibly charmed. Nothing, and I mean nothing, bad has happened to me. Until it did. Because my life was charmed and beautiful and magical, when my world came crashing down around me I became so confused. ... Life suddenly was VERY hard. I wanted it fixed, I wanted it better. I wanted to go back to my magical, beautiful life. Except I couldn’t. How could I? The very thing that could make it beautiful was gone. My baby girl was gone. Life was fucked and I wanted it less fucked. And once again, @glennondoyle came to my rescue. This quote. It’s everything. It reminded me life is MEANT to be hard. Being human is hard. Here was my hardness. Thrown at me. I had to find a way to accept it. I had to stop wanting it all to go away, wishing for things to be different. Life isn’t meant to be charmed. Here was my initiation into being human. Into LIFE. This is life, we love and we lose, and it was my turn to experience it. And it is completely fucked, but this is being human. Thank you Glennon for hitting me right between the eyes with this one
16.01.2022 Look at these stats. We are educated about listeria and whooping cough, but we don’t truly know the risk factors for stillbirth. It’s time to change the conversation. ... Women need to know the risks. Women need to know that kicks count. Women need to know that movements matter. Women need to know to trust their instinct. Almost every loss mama I speak to, had a KNOWING that something wasn’t right. We need to be told to NEVER push that knowing aside. Always trust that little voice, no matter how silly it seems. Our instinct is always right. We are our baby’s voice. In the few days before Elke died, I pushed my knowing aside, because I didn’t fully understand the risks. We need to be taught the risks. It’s about making this so deeply ingrained in our psyche that we don’t second guess. The SIDS message got through loud and clear. We need to be telling a better story around stillbirth. We need to be using different language when we speak to pregnant women. It’s about awareness. It’s about education. It’s about communication. It’s time to change the conversation. In Australia, 2200 babies lives depend on it every year. *Statistics from @still_aware
15.01.2022 This little firecracker turned 5 today So much love and so much sass wrapped up in one little human
07.01.2022 Sharing this quote here because, as always, @glennondoyle just nails it. The brutal reality that living life means losing those we love It is our one certainty in this lifetime. ... We will live. We will love. We will lose.
04.01.2022 The most beautiful book written by another loss mama @mybabysvoice in memory of her beautiful boy Xavier. You could have been..... A book about all of the incredible things our babies could have grown up to be
04.01.2022 This is what grief looks like. The paradox of grief. A smile hiding a broken heart, broken dreams and a woman trying to piece herself back together. ... The ability to participate in life again, while being weighed down with a heaviness people can not see. People see the smile and assume all is ok. Phew! She is better!, they think to themselves. They exclaim with relief, "It's so good to see you looking so well!!!" It's as if they expected to see me rocking in a corner. I am not rocking in a corner, but still I struggle often. They see the smile and they can rest their minds and tell themselves that everything is ok. But it's not. I am fragile. Everyday I have a flurry of conversations and dialogue going on in my head. Memories pop up at random times dragging me back to the day. There is a constant battle in my head. I continually have to reframe situations. I have to pull myself back to the present to stop myself entering the vortex. It is consuming and it is exhausting. In the early days, when I heard people say "It's so good to see you looking so good!", I wanted to scream I’m not good! It made me feel completely misunderstood. It still makes me feel completely misunderstood. Another beautiful loss mama @biancakeenan wrote to me the other day and said: "There is no greater comfort than being seen." I have never read truer words. When you focus on how a grieving person looks, they don't feel seen at all. Because underneath the smile is a world of hurt. So rather than assuming and commenting that they "look so good", maybe ask: "How are you today?", and be ready to listen to the real answer. See more
02.01.2022 Mother. The last 5 years for me have been focused on undoing old programming of striving and achieving releasing ambition... releasing the addiction to being busy finding meaning and unashamedly accepting my role as Mother. It’s been a journey, and I thought I was doing quite well. But Elke has helped me take this to a whole new level. She has shown me just how fragile life is, how sacred mothering is, and right now, I am finding little moments of joy, when I am able to be completely present with my kids. I’m finding purpose and meaning in being their mother. Mother. Fullstop. No need to be Mother AND..... Which I have spent the last 9 years of motherhood being. Always a new iteration, but always an AND... Mother AND Pharmacist Mother AND Pharmacy Business owner. Mother AND Integrative Pharmacist. Mother AND Functional Medicine Practitioner. Mother AND NLP Practitioner. There was comfort in the AND. It was as if being a mother wasn’t enough. Right now, I am a Mother. It’s where my heart needs to be. It’s where I need to be. And it’s where my family need me to be. I’ve realised my children are miracles. Life is a gift. Tomorrow is not promised. For the first time, I give myself permission to be a Mother. Fullstop. Nothing else needed right now. Just. Mother.
