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My Thoughts on Therapy and How I Survived The Loss Of Remedi

I personally believe therapy saved my broken heart after Remedi passed. Therapy gave me the ability to grieve in a healthy and safe environment. It helped me learn how to work through my trauma and connect with my emotions.

I am very thankful for one on one therapy sessions with MUSC Behavioral Health Department in Downtown Charleston. I started talking to a therapist within this group a month after Remedi passed. We met virtually once a week and talked about anything and everything. She gave me a listening ear, comforting words and good advice.

Every week we talked about my feelings, what issues I was having and found ways to maneuver through them. After losing a child, the pain is indescribable, traumatic, painful and just unfair. I wouldn’t wish this on my worse enemy. I found myself angry, confused, questioning everything about what happened and why. For months I had issues with going to a grocery store. I didn’t want to face the familiar faces asking “how is your baby or where is your baby?” or even seeing other moms with their babies. The pain of having to tell people what happened makes me relive it over and over again. I didn’t want to put myself through that. Therapy also helped me discover the roots of my issues and work through them.

We set weekly goals that would help with the heavy grief. I had issues sleeping and she suggested a meditation app that really helped called CALM. I found listening to a soft gentle voice helped me sleep. It took some time to realize that I was feeling better, mentally and physically. I did a lot of self love and self care, I set up priorities and boundaries. After time I realized I was doing a lot of the work. It was hard but I knew I needed to do this for myself.

I’ve made a lot of strides in my grief journey, learning how to grow with it and allowing the emotions to come out when it arises. I have learned I am a lot stronger than I think I am and I can get through difficult times.

I would highly recommend reaching out to MUSC Womens Behavioral Health for any therapy needs. I promise it will make a difference in your life and help your grieving heart.

MUSC Womens Grief and Loss Support

Tyed To Grace Support Group at Seacoast Church

Once a month I attend a support group with other bereaved moms at Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant called Tyed to Grace. I found it very important to talk to other moms who know where your heart is and how you’re feeling. This special group of moms made me feel welcome and safe. I felt comfortable with sharing my story and able to feel all the emotions that come with retelling my horrific situation. The best thing about this group was everyone had each others back, we were unified by losing our babies but able to gather and share our experiences. I learned a lot about myself in this group setting. I could attend and just listen, or I could talk, or cry and these women were there for me the entire time. They have been there for me from the beginning and I am so blessed to have them in my corner.

If you would like more information you can check out Seacoast Grief Share.

You can also contact the group leaders Nina and Julie at tyedtograce@gmail.com

MUSC Pilot Program for Families Who Have Lost Children

About 3 months after Remedi passed I was offered an opportunity to participate in a pilot program for grieving parents through MUSC. This group met virtually for 6 weeks with a professional trauma therapist and a Musc palliative care representative.

This program was designed to help us navigate grief and how to work through it. I felt comfortable talking about my experience and being open to hear other mom’s traumatic experiences. This was eye opening to say the least. Every parent had a different experience but we all had one thing in common and that unfortunately was losing our children.

Each week was designed around the stages of grief and how we can maneuver through it. We could talk about how we were feeling that day, what challenges we ran into, what we needed from our family and friends to make us feel less numb. The program introduced us to an art therapist with Musc. During one of our sessions we learned about Labyrinths and what it meant. “A Labyrinths is a walking path of prayer and meditation for those who have lost loved ones in the year.” It’s a spiritual tool for integrating mind, body and the spirit and is a metaphor for our lives journey. The Grief process is the journey between how things were and how they will be. Grief is an interior journey like a labyrinth, which is moving toward central issues of meaning. The grief we feel at the death of someone important to us is the consequence of living and loving without them by our side and of our meaningful connections with them. During this session we were going to make our own labyrinths, we given 2 sheets of paper, filled with 50 words or phrases, a wooden circle with spirals in it. We choose words that describe how we are feeling, how people could help us, describing our pain, sadness, and how we will overcome this traumatic loss.

At first it didn’t really click as to how it was going to help me but I had faith it would show me in the end. By the time we finished the project, we were asked to glue the words to the wood in the places we felt they belonged, as well as a picture of our babies that passed on the back side. It was pretty powerful to me because I wasn’t exactly placing the words in order, or at least I didn’t think I was, however after it was complete, we were to take this tool, more so like a pointer and go around the spirals to each word or phrase. Then we would talk about each word or phase and what it meant to us. It was a pretty powerful project, still unsure how it would help my grieving process. However to say the least I was pretty impressed with how I could relay my feelings of grief, how I planned to support myself and what I needed from others so I could move forward.

I was very thankful for this opportunity to join such strong women who all were lost, but in the end we started to find ourselves. I hope they continue this program for the future so others can benefit as much as I did from it.