A few weeks ago I watched my nine-year-old daughter stand up in front of a huge church congregation and share her experience of the night that her baby brother died. It was incredible to watch her confidence and poise as she stood in front of all these people and told the story of the hardest night of her life. I watched her with tears rolling down my cheeks and my heart overflowing with pride. How did she get so brave? How was she doing this and doing it so well? Then I looked around at other people in the congregation and saw the tears and the expressions on their faces. These people were learning so much from my sweet little girl telling her story. Her story was changing them and they were feeling things. I have thought about this a lot the last few weeks and decided it was time to follow my daughter’s example. (It’s a good thing she is mine?because this girl has taught me so much in my life! Someone knew that I was really going to need her!)

It’s time for me to get brave and share our story…the good, the bad and the ugly! Losing a child is unimaginable and the grief that comes after you lose a child is tough territory to navigate through for the rest of your life. Everyone does it differently and there is no right way to do it. I pretty much shut down completely and got scared to share or write very often. I didn’t feel like I had anything positive to share and who wants to read about the struggle to breathe every day after your baby dies. But, I am not the only person out there who has lost a child and if I can help another grieving parent out there by sharing some of our story I want to try. I want to help other people if I can, but there are selfish reasons for writing again too…it’s cheaper than therapy for me and maybe it will help me work through my grief a little bit too.

Tate is stuck with us forever and I want to make sure my little family never forgets that. I want my children to be able to read about the memories we made with Tate and I want this to be a place for Tate to be remembered. When you lose a child, your worst fear is that somehow those precious memories will fade and that your child will not be remembered by everyone. I won’t let that happen to our Tate, he is stuck with us!

So, this is me trying to brave like Tate! I’m excited to share our stories from the past, present and our future adventures too!