by Tara Shafer posted in Parenting

When my second child was stillborn almost every last one of my friends inadvertently drifted from me. I have had years to think about this. I have had years to miss them.
The loss of my child is the saddest thing that has ever happened to me. But I mourn too the collateral damages in the form of the friendships I lost. Many parents of stillborn children report being shunned by friends.
I have new friends now but only one who knew me before. I don?t remember anymore who I used to be. And there is only one friend who remembers that about me.
Partly this was my fault. I could not reach back to those who tried to reach for me for a time. I did not mean to offend them but I was so encased in grief and trauma I could not see straight. I felt, literally, as though I was in a straight jacket. When you lose a child you lose your ability to trust the connective tissue of anything. And so we lost the thread. This was unnecessary, but so too was it true. The friendships unraveled and were gone. This post has been percolating for years and I have resisted writing it because I don?t want to come across as angry or as bitter. I'm sometimes a little bit of the former but never the latter. I've learned that all of it, this life, is too brief and too precious.
My only point in writing this blog is to tell the friends of parents whose children are stillborn to hang on.

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