Project Heal Capture Your Grief: Glow in the Woods

In an effort to ease my hurting heart this Fall, I'm participating in Project Heal: Capture Your Grief . It's a photography/storytelling project to honor the babies we've lost.

Day 11: Glow in the Woods 

Glow in the Woods  is a site that parents who have suffered the loss of a child can go and talk to one another and share their stories without being judged.
But, Glow in the Woods can also refer to a person who is there for you when no one else is. The beautiful red-haired lady in the picture with me is Amy.
Amy was one of the first people I reached out to after my loss, because I knew that she had a loss as well.
But...at the time I reached out, Amy was a total stranger. I found Amy on myspace (remember myspace?) through a friend of a friend...or something like that. I gathered from her profile picture that she had also lost a daughter and I think my first message to her went something like this, "I don't know you, and I am so sorry for your loss. I've also lost my daughter."
 I was at work when I wrote the message, and honestly, I expected my friend request to go unanswered, and possibly blocked. Instead, a beautiful friendship blossomed, despite the distance: I was in Chicago and Amy was in California.
Amy ended up coming out to Chicago and we got to see one another. Amy met my living daughter, then two,  and to this day, Ella refers to her as "Auntie Amy with the beautiful red hair."
Because of Amy, I felt brave enough to open up about my loss. I felt brave enough to name her. Amy was and is my glow in the woods of baby loss. I am forever in her debt.