Grief Diaries: Poetry & Prose and More

By Lynda Cheldelin Fell, Mary Potter Kenyon and Marilyn Rollins

Part of the award-winning Grief Diaries book series, "Poetry & Prose and More" offers a heartfelt collection of expressive writing by 18 women as they journey through different struggles including loss, mental illness, and more.

Sharing our stories through different hardships touches the hearts of both reader and writer. It

• Language: English
• Publisher: AlyBlue Media
• Release date: Dec 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781944328580

Lynda Cheldelin Fell

LYNDA CHELDELIN FELL is an educator, speaker, author of over 30 books including the award-winning Grief Diaries, and founder of the International Grief Institute. Visit www.LyndaFell.com.

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POETRY & PROSE AND MORE

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CONTENTS

POETRY & PROSE AND MORE

GRIEF DIARIES

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

PREFACE

1. Dianna Vagianos Armentrout

2. Jessica Weyer Bentley

3. Maureen Bobo

4. Angela Ebanks

5. Nancy Edwards

6. Debra Elliott

7. Kass Harper

8. Barbara J. Hopkinson

9. Amelia Joubert

10. Robin Lezcano

11. Anna May

12. Christina Mouse Jennings

13. Maryann Mueller

14. Stacie Nelson

15. Virginia Pillars

16. Carmela Pollock

17. Mary Potter Kenyon

18. Denise Purcell

19. Marilyn Rollins

20. Carrie Worthington

MEET THE WRITERS

FROM LYNDA CHELDELIN FELL

ABOUT LYNDA CHELDELIN FELL

ABOUT THE SERIES

ALYBLUE MEDIA TITLES

Grief Diaries

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Poetry & Prose and More

A heartfelt collection

of expressive writing from

poets, journalers & bloggers

LYNDA CHELDELIN FELL

WITH

MARY POTTER KENYON

MARILYN ROLLINS

FOREWORD BY

POETRY THERAPY PRACTITIONER

DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT

A portion of proceeds from the sale of this book is donated to American Cancer Society, a nationwide voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer. For more information, visit www.cancer.org.

Grief Diaries

Poetry & Prose and More – 1st ed.

A heartfelt collection of expressive writing from poets, journalers & bloggers

Lynda Cheldelin Fell/Mary Potter Kenyon/Marilyn Rollins

Grief Diaries www.GriefDiaries.com

Cover Design by AlyBlue Media, LLC

Interior Design by AlyBlue Media LLC

Published by AlyBlue Media, LLC

Copyright © 2016 by AlyBlue Media All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-944328-55-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016919054

AlyBlue Media, LLC

Ferndale, WA 98248

www.AlyBlueMedia.com

This book is designed to provide informative narrations to readers. It is sold with the understanding that the writers, authors or publisher is not engaged to render any type of psychological, legal, or any other kind of professional advice. The content is the sole expression and opinion of the authors and writers. No warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied by the choice to include any of the content in this book. Neither the publisher nor the author or writers shall be liable for any physical, psychological, emotional, financial, or commercial damages including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential or other damages. Our views and rights are the same: You are responsible for your own choices, actions and results.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GRIEF DIARIES

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TESTIMONIALS

CRITICALLY IMPORTANT... I want to say to Lynda that what you are doing is so critically important. –DR. BERNICE A. KING, Daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King

INSPIRATIONAL... Grief Diaries is the result of heartfelt testimonials from a dedicated and loving group of people. By sharing their stories, the reader will find inspiration and a renewed sense of comfort as they move through their own journey. -CANDACE LIGHTNER, Founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving

DEEPLY INTIMATE... Grief Diaries is a deeply intimate, authentic collection of narratives that speak to the powerful, often ambiguous, and wide spectrum of emotions that arise from loss. I so appreciate the vulnerability and truth embedded in these stories, which honor and bear witness to the many forms of bereavement that arise in the aftermath of death. -DR. ERICA GOLDBLATT HYATT, Chair of Psychology, Bryn Athyn College

BRAVE... The brave individuals who share their truth in this book do it for the benefit of all. CAROLYN COSTIN - Founder, Monte Nido Treatment Centers

VITAL... Grief Diaries: Surviving Loss of a Pregnancy gives voice to the thousands of women who face this painful journey every day. Often alone in their time of need, these stories will play a vital role in surrounding each reader with warmth and comfort as they seek understanding and healing in the aftermath of their own loss. -JENNIFER CLARKE, obstetrical R.N., Perinatal Bereavement Committee at AMITA Health Adventist Medical Center

HOPE AND HEALING... You are a pioneer in this field and you are breaking the trail for others to find hope and healing.

-KRISTI SMITH, Bestselling Author & International Speaker

A FORCE...The writers of this project, the Grief Diaries anthology series, are a force to be reckoned with. I’m betting we will be agents of great change.

-MARY LEE ROBINSON, Author and Founder of Set an Extra Plate initiative

MOVING... In Grief Diaries, the stories are not only moving but often provide a rich background for any mourner to find a gem of insight that can be used in coping with loss. Reread each story with pen in hand and you will find many that are just right for you. -DR. LOUIS LAGRAND, Author of Healing Grief, Finding Peace

HEALING... Grief Diaries gives voice to a grief so private, most women bear it alone. These diaries can heal hearts and begin to build community and acceptance to speak the unspeakable. Share this book with your sisters, mothers, grandmothers and friends who have faced grief. Pour a cup of tea together and know that you are no longer alone. -DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT, poetry therapy practitioner & Author of Walking the Labyrinth of My Heart: A Journey of Pregnancy, Grief and Infant Death

INCREDIBLE...Thank you so much for doing this project, it’s absolutely incredible!-JULIE MJELVE, Founder, Grieving Together

STUNNING... Grief Diaries treats the reader to a rare combination of candor and fragility through the eyes of the bereaved. Delving into the deepest recesses of the heartbroken, the reader easily identifies with the diverse collection of stories and richly colored threads of profound love that create a stunning read full of comfort and hope. -DR. GLORIA HORSLEY, President, Open to Hope Foundation

WONDERFUL...Grief Diaries is a wonderful computation of stories written by the best of experts, the bereaved themselves. Thank you for building awareness about a topic so near and dear to my heart.

-DR. HEIDI HORSLEY, Adjunct Professor, School of Social Work, Columbia University, Author, Co-Founder of Open to Hope Organization

GLOBAL...One of The Five Facets of Healing mantras is together we can heal a world of hurt. This anthology series is testimony to the power we have as global neighbors to do just that. -ANNAH ELIZABETH, Founder of The Five Facets of Healing

POETRY & PROSE AND MORE

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DEDICATION

In loving memory

Mary Rose Armentrout

Martin Bobo

Ashley Burdeaux

Dorothy Cohea

Norman F. Cohea

Baby DeLibero

Brent DeLibero

Robbie DeLibero

Jordan Anthony Ebanks

Joe Griffiths

Hanna Jenike — Babcia J

Michael G. Less

Amber Lezcano

Mark Thomas Mueller

David Kenyon

Randy Robert Rollins

Sharon Davis Uribe

Megan Lynn Serrao Wellington

Robert Weyer

Robin Worthington

Jennifer-Leigh Edwards Zartman

BY DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT

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FOREWORD

Stories and poems began with the first humans. Before there was a written language, we painted on the walls of caves and told stories around fires under the night sky. Some of this artwork survives to this day. We still read the earliest Sumerian hymns to Inanna, written circa 2300 B.C.E. We sing ancient hymns in our temples. We pray the same words people have been praying for centuries, because words can transcend a lifetime.

The contributors of this book find hope in writing. After facing tragic losses, they turned to the blank page to process trauma, remember loved ones and offer their words to comfort others. Writing memorializes our ancestors. Words help others going through similar challenges. Poems become a healing balm for our own souls as we remember the ones whom we can never forget. As time passes, our words change. We never get over our grief, yet we transform our grief into the art of poetry and prose. We create a story about the lives of our daughters and fathers, even as we tell stories about our moments together, about death, about who we now are. We speak stories of our own illnesses, and the illnesses of those around us, and these stories become a light we offer to others. These stories say We survive. You can too.

When I was married to a mentally ill man who had a psychotic breakdown, I studied poetry therapy and bibliotherapy with Dr. Sherry Reiter in New York City. I drove downtown from Connecticut one Sunday each month and listened to this inspiring mentor teach us about archetypes, therapeutic devices, symbols, metaphors, poetry, stories, but mostly about life and how to cope with its constant changes. Her own husband had suffered a stroke at a young age. When she looked into my eyes and told me that I could survive my husband’s unemployment and illness, she spoke from her own experience.

Twelve people gathered in a circle at Dr. Reiter’s Creative Righting Center. Throughout the training, I volunteered to bring this therapeutic work to people in nursing homes, underserved communities and HIV-positive women in a public health clinic. When participants told me that they could not write poetry, I promised them a poem at the end of our time together. I especially loved watching senior citizens write their first poem.

One woman in a nursing home was blind. She told me that she would like to write, but couldn’t see. I invited her to stay, and when I gave the class their writing prompt from the poem that we had read, I wrote her words down for her. She clutched her paper afterwards. I can’t wait to show my daughter my poem, she said.

The beauty of writing is that it is an opportunity to transmute our pain into something beautiful. There is a turn in every good poem that first surprises the writer. We are led somewhere unexpected. Writing therapeutically gives us a cognitive, spiritual and emotional modality to turn our grief, pain and suffering into something else. We release some of our pain through catharsis. Our writing is often accompanied by weeping, which allows us to change, grow and heal. As that sweet woman in the nursing home did, we too can show our work to others, if we so choose.

When I was twenty-one weeks pregnant I found out that my unborn daughter would likely die soon after birth, if she was born alive. I wrote in my journal to process my deep emotional journey. I wrote to save my life. I wrote to be the best mother I could be for Mary Rose.

After 9/11, Americans shared poetry and stories. We wrote. We dug out a poem by Auden that resonated with the time period in American history. We write and we read poetry and stories, especially at tragic crossroads, because it is a part of the human condition. We are born with poems in our souls. If we allow ourselves the space to release these words, they often become prayers.

In poetry therapy, as in homeopathy, like cures like. For a grieving client we offer a poem on grief. After reading and discussing the poem, the facilitator will take a line or image from the poem and have the client write her own poem from there. Whether we write a journal entry, a story or poem, words heal.

This book offers the stories and poems of its writers to you, Reader, as medicine. I would like to invite each of you to join us in this healing journey. Choose a line from a poem or an essay or blog post and write your own work. Honor your ancestors. Honor your own journey through illness and grief. You can do it. We did. You can too.

DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT, MA

Poetry Therapy Practitioner & Author, Walking the Labyrinth of

My Heart: A Journey of Pregnancy, Grief and Newborn Death

www.diannavagianos.com

BY LYNDA CHELDELIN FELL

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PREFACE

One night in 2007, I had one of those dreams, the vivid kind you can’t shake. In the dream, I was the front seat passenger in a car and my daughter Aly was sitting behind the driver. Suddenly, the car missed a curve in the road and sailed into a lake. The driver and I escaped the sinking car, but Aly did not. My beloved daughter was gone. The only evidence left behind was a book floating in the water where she disappeared.

Two years later, on August 5, 2009, that horrible nightmare became reality when Aly died as a back seat passenger in a car accident. Returning home from a swim meet, the car carrying Aly and two of her teammates was T-boned by a father coming home from work. My beautiful fifteen-year-old daughter took the brunt of the impact, and died instantly. She was the only fatality.

Just when I thought life couldn’t get any worse, it did. My dear sweet hubby buried his head—and grief—in the sand. He escaped into eighty-hour work weeks, more wine, more food, and less talking. His blood pressure shot up, his cholesterol went off the chart, and the perfect storm arrived on June 4, 2012. In an instant, my husband began drooling, and couldn’t speak.

My forty-six-years-young soulmate was having a major stroke.

My husband survived the stroke but couldn’t speak, read, or write, and his right side was paralyzed. He needed assistance just to sit up in bed. He needed full-time care. Still reeling from the loss of our daughter, I found myself again thrust into a fog of grief so thick I couldn’t see through the storm. Adrenaline and autopilot resumed their familiar place at the helm.

In the aftermath of losing Aly and my husband’s stroke, I eventually discovered that helping others was a powerful way to heal my own heart. The Grief Diaries series was born and built on this belief. By writing books narrating our journeys through life’s challenges and hardships, our written words become a portable support group for others. When we swap stories, we feel less alone. It is comforting to know someone else understands the shoes we walk in, and the challenges we face along the way.

Which brings us to this book, Grief Diaries: Poetry & Prose and More. Expressive writing is simply putting pen to paper to capture our thoughts and express them in words. It allows us to process deep emotions, clarify our feelings, and provide an outlet for some of the anguish we carry in our hearts. As a useful healing modality, its benefits are many.

The writers of Poetry & Prose and More have all experienced trauma and use expressive writing to help heal the wounds. The results of their efforts are contained in this book. Poetry and prose are considered proprietary writing and are left unabridged. We hope you enjoy the collection of original works, and if you share our path may you find comfort in the poetry, prose and more, and understand that you aren’t truly alone on the journey. For we walk ahead, behind, and right beside you.

Wishing you healing, and hope from the Grief Diaries village.

Warm regards,

Lynda Cheldelin Fell

Creator, Grief Diaries

CHAPTER ONE

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Dianna Vagianos Armentrout

Dianna lost her newborn baby

Mary Rose to trisomy 18 in 2014.

My baby is dead. For five months of my second pregnancy I knew that my daughter, Mary Rose, was going to die, though I did not know when. Those months of pregnancy with the knowledge that our baby had trisomy 18, a random genetic illness described as incompatible with life, felt like a million years of sadness. From the moment of the mid-pregnancy ultrasound, I entered a medical world that most pregnant women do not know exists. I learned the language of trisomy 18 and fatal diagnoses. I stopped answering my phone, and I looked around in sadness. My two-year-old son kissed my swelling belly, and I wept. My eyes were perpetually brimming with tears. My husband and I chose to carry our daughter to term. The life that God gave her would have to be enough for us.

We negotiated our reality the best we could. We planned a funeral while pregnant, and tried to prepare for the grief that would come later, while we mourned our pregnancy outcomes. There were not enough therapy hours to prepare me for the death of my baby. I was shocked when the pregnancy was over, when my daughter, who had barely breathed, died. In the months that followed I had to find my footing in the thick molasses of grief. As I attempted to re-enter normal life, I went to church and faced pregnant women and living newborns. I walked slowly in grocery stores while people rushed around me. It took me months to be able to speak to friends on the phone without weeping.

As a trained poetry therapist and writer, I know the therapeutic value of writing through grief and life’s challenges. I kept a journal from the time of Mary Rose’s diagnosis, and continue writing to this day. It is important to discuss the healing benefits of working through grief by making art, whether that art is a poem, essay, painting or a dance. I worked through my initial grief by creating poems and artwork. In order to heal, I sat in the muck of my grief and hormones and chose to feel and process the chaotic refrains of guilt, anger, sadness, loneliness, hope, confusion and everything else that came up so that I could transmute them into light. The blank page and the pencil in my fingers on the warm autumn days following Mary Rose’s birth gave me a way to draw my grief out instead of keeping it inside.

But the death of my daughter is not where my grief begins. I was forty-two that fateful summer, and certainly my moments with Mary Rose were a turning point in my life. There had ben many losses before then. My beloved aunt, Matina, suffered from atypical meningioma for years and died after being bedridden for over eighteen months. My friend, Jeanette, took her young life at twenty-seven years of age. My first marriage to a psychotic man was a long journey of many losses and ended after fifteen years of childlessness and moments of near poverty. My friend, Connie, died of brain tumors, leaving behind two young children. Hannah died of brain tumors at eighteen months old. Ginger. Nadia and Danillo. Mary. Masha. Pappou. Yiayia. Laura. Pauline. Cubby. I had two miscarriages after my pregnancy with Mary Rose. This life is a dance between the sweet joys of yellow butterflies and my son’s laughter and the heartbreaking reality of life. People get sick and die, or suddenly vanish from our physical world. We love them still.

It is a choice to open our cracked hearts again. The light in others draws me to them. I can’t resist another day, a new friend, a mother weeping over the loss of her child. With each opportunity to love another, I open my heart to the chance of its being broken again. I cannot build a fortress around my heart. As Marie Howe writes in her beautiful poem What the Living Do, I am living. I remember you (90).

I remember Mary Rose and all the other ancestors of light. I continue to breathe, and I write one more word. I send one more sympathy card, one more book of angel prayers. I take a walk and plant a cucumber seed. Watch my peony bloom. Bake cookies. I remember my daughter every day, every hour... I offer my own broken heart to this world of juxtapositions, of life and death. I whisper, Mercy, and continue on.

Excerpts from this essay are adapted from Walking the Labyrinth of My Heart: A Journey of Pregnancy, Grief & Infant Death published by White Flowers Press.

she is transformed

BY DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT

FOR MARY ROSE, AUGUST 2014

i walk to my daughter’s grave

the day after her birth

(she isn’t suffering)

my milk her milk isn’t leaking yet

it will demand the newborn’s open mouth

my breasts will ask where is my baby?

again and again

i pick up a gray feather from the grass

her soul soared out of her broken body

heal me now

my angel, mother me

Published in Walking the Labyrinth of My Heart: A Journey of Pregnancy, Grief and Newborn Death. White flowers Press. May 2016.

The Blessingway

BY DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT

After the blessingway

roses fall from my hair

white and pink – in each room of the house.

We dreamt of this as girls:

flowers braided into our hair.

The artist paints with henna

on my swollen belly:

roses and dragonfly

my skin loose this second time.

My daughter is dying inside me

her heartbeat strong inside me

where she is safe until labor

my womb the sacred space

between worlds: dark and light

contracting for 21 days.

All that, to hold her for a moment,

her broken heart and defects

body limp in my embrace, her blue eyes

and me in this pool as it fills with blood.

I hold her to me and whisper We love you

We love you, We’ll always love you.

Go, I say, do your work, Sweet Baby.

The placenta is birthed and she slips away

so quietly I can’t know the exact moment.

I carry her body wrapped in a blanket with pink roses

for hours, hungry and exhausted, I don’t leave her

until that moment, the coffin on my bed.

Mother and I dress her in her christening gown

and lay her down, arms stiffening

body cooling...

The Master asks What now, Strong Woman?

Then answers Your milk will come in. You will awaken

for weeks listening for cries never made.

And the child? I reply The daughter?

The one I longed for for decades?

–She does not desire one drop of your milk.

With the angels I still weep and cry

Holy, Holy...

Published in Walking the Labyrinth of My Heart: A Journey of Pregnancy,

Grief and Newborn Death. White flowers Press. May 2016.

I Miss My Baby

BY DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT

AUGUST 2014

I wake up the day after labor without you,

Mary Rose.

I miss my baby.

Your milk fills me

the day after your burial.

I miss my baby.

One month goes by, then two.

I miss my baby.

I make an excavator costume for my boy.

Thanksgiving, Christmas cards, cookies and presents.

It’s time to order the headstone, Tim says.

I miss my baby.

Almost six months.

First time in Outer Banks, Kitty Hawk, Manteo.

I miss my baby.

Krissy births a healthy baby, then Melania, Mikey, now Nick, Stephen.

Two newborns baptized in church.

I miss my baby.

The priest comes to bless the house.

Your brother will turn three.

La linea negra fades…

I miss my baby.

Should we try again?

You’ll be 43 and I’ll be 49.

I miss my baby.

Do willows really weep?

I miss my baby.

Published in Walking the Labyrinth of My Heart: A Journey of Pregnancy,

Grief and Newborn Death. White flowers Press. May 2016.

A Mother’s Grief Reaches into the Belly of the Earth

BY DIANNA VAGIANOS ARMENTROUT

I am thinking of Demeter again. I see an image of her roaming the earth searching for her daughter, Persephone. I am pregnant. My unborn daughter will die sometime after birth if I’m lucky enough to meet her alive. My pregnant body swells. My daughter moves for a few weeks and then I barely feel her.

I remember studying Greek mythology in school. I was in the seventh grade at St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox School in Astoria, New York, when we were assigned Edith Hamilton’s book by Ms. Cathro, the teacher who taught me how to diagram sentences. I remember Persephone and Hades, the pomegranate, the red succulent seeds. Now as an adult with my hormones raging, I think of Demeter, the grieving mother.

I cannot nest. There will be no nursery. I change toilet seats instead, and weep over the toilet bowls. How is this my fate? When strangers congratulate me, I stare at them blankly. And there in my mind is Demeter. She rages. She wears loose robes that flow around her form like a strong wind. I feel her keening in my body. Grief wells up inside of me, and I sob. I know what it is like to lose a child, though I have not lost her yet. Demeter roams the earth looking for her daughter. Her grief stops the blooming of the earth. It is a force. I rage with her.

Only I have no place to run. I can barely walk from my grief and sciatic pain by the end of the pregnancy. I sit in pain. I limp. My form is crooked. My baby shudders inside me and I imagine that she is having seizures. People tell me to have faith, that she will be healed, that she could be born healthy. Everything I do for her is accompanied by weeping.

In Rachel Zucker’s poetry book Eating in the Underworld, Persephone says...the body of my mother is everywhere (5). Persephone is looking to leave her mother by entering the underworld. Demeter is everywhere looking and searching but not finding her daughter. There is power in this grief, but there is also madness. I start to intuit more, to see more. My eyes see prisms of light before a terrible migraine. I see my ancestors surrounding me. Matina. Yiayia. Mother Mary. They tell me that I can do this. I can face my biggest fear, because my child will die.

I birth my daughter two weeks late after 21 days of contractions. I hold her in my arms and look at her weak form and know that we don’t have time. Get my mother now, I tell one midwife, Bring my son. The other midwife looks at Mary Rose and says, Baby Girl, open your eyes and look at your mama. Mary Rose, whose limbs are splayed from no muscle tone opens her eyes and finds my face with her eyes. They are blue. I continue having contractions and then soon after I birth the placenta, she slips away and I nestle my still baby wrapped in a blanket in my arms.

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés tells the story of Demeter and another Greek goddess, Baubo. Dr. Estés tells us...she flew out over the land like a great bird, searching, calling for her daughter (337).

We bury Mary Rose the next day. My milk comes in the day after that. Your whole body is weeping, says the midwife. Mary Rose is a phantom limb. I wake up at night looking for my baby. My body asks, Where is my baby? My body yearns for its offspring.

Dr. Estés writes Demeter raged, she wept, she screamed, she asked after, searched every land formation underneath, inside, and atop, begged mercy, begged death, but she could not find her heart-child (337-338). After I bury my daughter, I want to die. My heart feels shattered like bone. I am weighed down with heaviness. My grief reaches into the belly of the earth. I want the earth to take me into her so that I can be with my baby.

In speaking of Baubo, the goddess who appears to Demeter when she is completely spent from exhaustion and grief, who laughs and ignites Demeter’s fire to continue her search, Dr. Estés says we only need one shard in order to reconstruct the whole (337). I am shards of shattered heart. How do I reconstruct myself?

It is Autumn and the earth is changing. Demeter must say goodbye soon and so she starts to withdraw her energy from the earth. Soon the plants and trees will be resting from their work. Soon winter will come and we will feel the naked truth: that life and death are irrevocably woven together, that to live on this planet we must let go again and again. We give our babies and our parents and our friends over to the spirit world, into the depths of the earth.

We weep like Demeter, but we won’t have them back for a few months out of