October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. So decided in 1988 by Ronald Reagan, who said this: “When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world.”

Reading this, I wonder: who is this really for? Who is in need of “awareness”: the parents? Who carry the ache inside every day of every month? Is it a time we allow them to mourn, to tell their stories–because the other months we don’t want to think about it? Or is it really for those of us who have never lost a child, never experienced a miscarriage all alone, never hidden a pregnancy until it was “safe” to tell people? Isn’t is really for us to remember the children, and mourn with their mothers?

I have been blessed (maybe “graced” is a better word) with two pregnancies, and two healthy children. I have never had a miscarriage (a word that implies error and blame). Or three. Or eight. Or had to go through the agony of childbirth knowing there was no hope, holding a baby who would never breathe, or have to watch my baby be lowered into the ground. But I have many, many friends who have. I have thought about their experiences, and what it must feel like–especially having to either tell people you’re not pregnant anymore, or not having to tell anyone, and suffer alone. I have ached for the weeks they suffered before deciding to tell someone, wishing I could have done more. And I have wondered how many other women I know are going through it right then, and nobody knows.

I wrote this a few weeks ago, thinking of my good friend who just went through this:

Inside a melon, I find
a crevasse, its ovules and locule
curled up into pink.
It has a name: hollow heart
as if it has lost something.
If I sliced you open,
I would find a canyon of grief.

This, I think, is what we need awareness of: How to ask about someone’s heart. How to truly mourn with someone (without platitudes). How to empathize. How to listen.

This month we share poems from the archive and new prose that pay tribute to mothers who have lost, and mothers who still hope, who hold on to their faith moment by moment.

Poems:
“Give” by Rynell Lewis
“Hearthbeat (for my sometime baby)” by Cindy Baldwin

Prose:
“Intensive” by Sarah Plummer

“Everbeen” by featured author Meg Conley

We are also pleased to feature an interview with Lynne Millar, the artist whose work readers are enjoying in the journal and on the blog this fall.

We hope you enjoy the journal this month!

Liz Garcia
Poetry Editor