URBANA, Ill. (WCIA) — Parents say losing a child is something that follows them every day, but what makes grieving easier is having a support system that understands it.
On Sunday, Carle Health in Urbana took the time to remember the babies lost and support the families in the process. The event was in honor of Pregnancy Loss Awareness Day.
“I want to invite people to give themselves permission to grieve however they need to grieve in this moment right now,” said Rachel Campbell, Carle’s Grief and Bereavement Liaison.
Cassie Roberts knows the feeling all too well. She is still grieving four of her children from miscarriages.
“Nothing is better than somebody coming up to you and saying, ‘Hey, I was thinking about Dylan the other day,'” Roberts said. “That just immediately will bring me to tears. But they’re happy tears.”
That’s why Carle Health hosts an event in honor of families still going through the process.
“We feel that it’s important to host this every year, to remind people that we get to talk about this,” Campbell said. “We get to get together and hold space for ourselves, for our own healing and for the babies that we’ve had to bury and that we didn’t get to take home.”
Roberts said this is why she makes sure to share her stories whenever she can.
“I just find it so important that we don’t stay silent in it. Keeping that to yourself is really hard,” she said. “If you have a network of people to kind of love on you as you’re going through this terrible grieving process, it’s it makes things a little easier.”
Campbell said it’s not only important for the parents, but for the siblings as well.
“One of the ways that we make this better for the people who come after us is to teach our kids that it’s OK to talk about it,” Campbell said.
Both Roberts and Campbell use moments like this as opportunity to show other women that they are not alone.
“It’s not quite the sex ed from 30 years ago and it’s important to know the reality of one in four people miscarry,” Roberts said. “And I am one of those people.”
