I remember the day I heard their heartbeat. I also remember the day when I didn’t. My heart shattered into a million pieces and it felt like everything in my world turned upside down. I felt the profound loss of something so beautiful that had been taken away so suddenly. A feeling that left me with so many unanswered questions and no idea how to move on.
Why did this happen to me?
What could have it been?
Could I have done differently?
How do I move on from here?
In trying to mend my heart, I searched for a way to heal myself and put my Mama Heart back together. I felt like I was still a Mom but no one on the outside knew. So I searched for something that could help heal me and show that I too grew a mother’s heart. I searched for some type of special piece that a mom would buy to represent her children, and I found dozens of sweet mementos and keepsakes of children born but nothing to represent the children wished for, hoped for, prayed for, and lost. I felt unseen, unrepresented, discarded – like my mama heart wasn’t real. That inside of me was a heart for my child that no longer existed. It was heartbreaking.
While still broken, I decided that I wanted to create something to help put the pieces of my own heart back together. I wanted that special momento to still represent that I too – had a Mama’s heart. This led me to draw what I imagined the heart inside my own chest looked like. It was a small missing heart within my own heart because that small heart – it once beat, it once beat a beat so strong that it lit up my whole world.
The piece that I created became the ultimate sentimental expression of every Mama Heart out there. Something that says, “I too have a Mama Heart that beats inside me”. Every Mom that wishes to be, every mom that once was, every mom that is in a way they never expected, every mom that holds their little’s dear and close to them. This piece is for you. You’ve been a mom from the first beat of your own Mama Heart, and I see you, and I hear it too.
