Silent Grief

Silent Grief: Miscarriage – Child Loss Finding Your Way through the Darkness 
by Clara Hinton
(http://www.silentgrief.com/store/silentgrief/)

The book is less than 200 pages long and it took me about three years to read it.  It will always be on the top of the pile for me because it was my first steps toward dealing with the loss of my son.

Although this book is not adoption related at all, it hit the very core of my experience.  

The reason I bought the book was because I remember the (biased) “counselor” at Bethany Christian Services (aka: Bethany NONChristian Disservices, or BS for short) made the comment along the lines that giving up a child is similar to losing a child to death.  At the time I was pregnant I did not know of anyone who had experienced such a thing and had no way of knowing what that experience was like. 

So, almost ten years into knowing what it was like living with adoption loss I purchased this book to find out if the “counselor” was right.  Was adoption loss similar to the loss of a child to death?  This was obviously before I found out personally what it is like to lose a child to death.

My analysis of the book is that it is very well written and I highly recommend it!

I was hesitant about it at first because it is written by a Christian woman and I anticipated her telling people that “all things work together for good” and for her to whitewash any pain and say how happy and full of joy we should be – as I’ve often heard in churches growing up.   

But I was completely wrong!  The author skillfully and sensitively talked about the struggles, the pain, and the emotions.  I have learned that there can be no healing unless one is willing to deal with the underlying pain.   

Dealing with the underlying pain, that is what the author did.

I purchased this book before I experienced my second child-loss (back stories can be found here Our Little Flower Bud, Our Babies,  Celebrate?, and Healing - Death). Having the information from this little book as a foundation when we lost our Little Flowerbud was very helpful in me dealing the aftermath of a miscarriage too.

One of the topics in her book had to do with other people.  It is sad, but true that at a time of such crushing loss and incredible pain, friends and family seem to withdraw.  It adds to the pain because a person finds themselves trying to navigate their new world of hurt alone.  Hinton addresses the reasons this often happens.  She is not excusing it, but it does help a little bit to understand “where the heck did everyone go?!?!” 

After our Little Flowerbud was gone, I personally, found it to be a time of sifting.  After all the dust settled I was able to see who my true and reliable friends were.  A year later, there were some people that dropped off the list.  Five years later it has even prompted me to begin searching for a different church.

From the book (and now through personal experience) the comparison between losing a child to adoption and losing a child to death are parallel.  There are only two areas I found to be opposites instead of parallel – hope and closure. 

With adoption, there is no closure.  The child has not died and there is no way to really grieve the incredible loss.  When a child dies there is closure which allows the parents to eventually go through all the grieving cycles.  That is not to say they ever reach a point where it never hurts again, but it eventually is not as crippling as in the beginning.

With death, there is no hope.  The child is gone, the relationship cannot continue and there is no hope to see them again, to talk to them again, or to watch them in any activity.  Death is permanent and final.  With adoption, there is hope.  Hope that perhaps there may be a reconnection with the lost child someday.

My final analysis in a nutshell – that “counselor” is right.  The gut-wrenching pain of living life without my son lost to adoption was so undeniably parallel to the tremendous loss of losing a child to death. 

Why on earth would any human being knowingly and intentionally put another person through such a horrendous experience unnecessarily????  It is one thing for a counselor to help a person recover from such a horrific thing as the death of a child – but to willfully and intentionally push a woman into such a chasm of despair is deplorable and inexcusable!

Silent Grief

Parallel

Pain

And

Suffering