158. Answering Your Questions About Milestones | Q&A with Ashlee Proffitt

The Joyful Mourning - A Podcast for Women Who Have Experienced Pregnancy or Infant Loss

Listen in as I share my answers to your questions all about milestones. While I may not be an expert, I have experienced over a decade of milestones after the loss of my son and I’ve spent the last 5 years learning from other grieving moms about the unique ways they honor their babies – I’ve learned so much and I’m grateful to be able to share it with you today. The questions I’m answering were submitted from our Joyful Mourning Community Members or our friends over on instagram – we have some great questions and I’ll do my best to get through as many as possible. If you have a question about milestones or, advice that might benefit a grieving mom, come join our free online community where you can share those questions and encouragements with other moms – you can find all the details about how to join that free community at themorning.com/community.

Also we created a Milestones Workbook that you can download for free that will be practically helpful at navigating your milestones. The workbook includes a list of ideas for celebrating or honoring your baby, letter prompts for journaling on those special or difficult days, and so much more. And since we all have different days that feel special or important or difficult to navigate, this workbook can be used over and over again for any milestone that is important to you. To download that workbook, head to themorning.com/milestones.

QUESTIONS IN NO. 158

1. What are some ways to honor or celebrate my baby’s birthday in Heaven? I don’t know how to celebrate without them.
2. How do you acknowledge your baby on due dates, anniversary of their death, or other important days?
3. I struggle with feeling nervous that people will think it’s “over the top” or “extra” – how do I get past that? Or am I being over the top if I want to celebrate my baby?
4. Sometimes I feel the need to have everything perfectly planned out but nothing feels right or enough. Other times I don’t think I’ll have the energy but then I feel guilty that I’m not honoring my child. And then I want to forget it all together because of the pain. How do I find the right way to mark the day?
5. How do I find space to process the grief?
6. How do I know which ones will hit harder as I anticipate certain dates? Some feel like no big deal, but I never know ahead of time. And some milestones feel really hard and I don’t have the emotional capacity to do anything.
7. The build up to my baby’s birth and death anniversary feel harder sometimes than the actual day for some reason. But how do I cope with all of the memories and trauma that come flooding back that are hard to deal with?
8. My husband and I want to celebrate very differently. One of us wants to go all out and the other wants to do nothing to mark the date. What do I do about that?
9. How do you know when to keep it small or when to invite others in?
10. It feels like those days are not as important to our family & friends as they are to us. Will others be sensitive to the date? I feel like they’ve moved on.
11. There are so many, especially little ones in the immediate aftermath of loss. The first grocery trip, church service, shower, cleaning the house, everything feels like a marker confirming loss, making it sink in again. I remember even when others don’t. I’m having a rough day and then I realize in the late afternoon that today is when a milestone would’ve happened with our baby. How do I get through them?
12. Do you keep doing it every year? How do we know what to keep doing or not? It’s hard to figure out what to do, especially years after loss. I still want to honor my little ones and I’m afraid that they’re going to be forgotten.

SHOW NOTESwww.themorning.com/blog/episode157

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