Amy: today I wanna welcome Candy McVicar. I’m so excited to talk to you and excited for everyone to hear your story and what you’re doing to help couples and families after loss. So thank you for being here and. The first question I always ask my guests is, can you tell us a little bit about your babies and a memory you have of them and their life, and then maybe a lesson that they’ve taught you?

Candy: I have two on earth and two in heaven, and my firstborn is grace. And her birthday was December 20th, 2001. And I was super excited to be pregnant and hopeful that it would happen sooner than later. ’cause I had many friends who had gone through infertility, so I was a little worried that might be a situation we would encounter.

But we were very blessed that we got pregnant pretty quickly and The excitement was, just, overrun though by the extreme hyperemesis that set in immediately and I was violently sick and I lost over 20 pounds. ’cause I couldn’t hold anything down and it wasn’t the greatest weight loss program.

And I. It was just interesting because, you look back and think of things you say and you, oh, I just want this to be over. Of course not the pregnancy. I just wanna be not sick anymore. I wanna feel better. I wanna enjoy this pregnancy. And I. So in later pregnancies, I was very conscientious to never say anything like that.

I was just very thankful for what I had and however it would come and whatever I had to go through, I was like I’m willing and I’ll suffer whatever it has to be, I will do it to get my babies here safe. And so the first The first pregnancy with Grace was really hard and I also had spotting, so it was scary ’cause seeing red is never great and you just worry and but I was just so excited for the flutters to come and I just remember.

S elation at that sensation that, oh my gosh, that’s my baby and I feel this baby. And we didn’t know boy or girl until after birth. So I just said, baby. And I really wanted the big surprise.

And Yeah I would love to say I felt a ton with grace and tons of movement and whatnot, but she was very quiet. I didn’t, she was always very little taps, little kicks that were very gentle and I didn’t feel a lot. And in the end, in the last two weeks of her life, I didn’t feel much at all.

And it really worried me. And I went in seven times the last two weeks of her life asking, what? What could we do? Could we do an ultrasound or something to see why she’s not moving? Or if the baby wasn’t moving very much and they would do a Doppler check and say the fetal tones are there, we found it, and, they’re fine.

Nothing to worry about. We’re not gonna schedule an ultrasound. You don’t need that. And unfortunately that was not a good decision. And so she needed an early delivery. Had she been born by cesarean we’d still have her She had umbilical cord issues and they are something that where the umbilical cord is not connected in a very good way to the placenta.

And so it abrupts and tears away from the placenta usually during birth or before birth. And with Grace, I just. I look back and I’m just, I’m thankful, I prayed for her, I sang to her. I even when I was really sick, I just kept praying that, she wouldn’t be sick and she’d be healthy and she’d be okay.

And I blessed my belly. My husband would bless my belly. And, we just we really Wanted her to know how much we loved her, but we weren’t knowing at that point that this would end that way. But with my next pregnancy she was conceived with infertility meds ’cause I have polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis and blood clotting factor issue too.

And it was a high risk pregnancy and monitored with perinatologists and high risk obese and So we went into it so different. It was like we wanted to know right away as soon as we could, the gender, we wanted to name our baby right away. We wanted to be at, my husband wanted to be at every appointment.

And just in our mind, we don’t know what we have, nothing is guaranteed to us in life. And well, whatever time we have with this baby, we want to let them know we were fully present to all of it and that we were. Very invested early on to just love this child, embrace this child, and have as, as many special memories that we could, as long as we would have them.

And, I was on bedrest for six months on my side and in the hospital a month of that. It was a lot. And she had the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck two to three times at any given moment. And she wasn’t able to move because of that, so she was stuck in one position. Every ultrasound, she was in the same spot.

And I actually had ultrasounds weekly as so many high risk situations going on. So I lost my mucus plug at 20 weeks and and I was dilated to two at that point. And It was a, it notched me up to an even more high risk for my bedrest and whatnot. But she was definitely a kicker and a mover in the way that she could move and I felt her so much more.

And that was reassuring just to. No, she was there and And yeah, we had named her early on too. But we have a 17 year old, a 14 year old, and then we lost baby promise at 15 weeks gestation.

And we were totally shocked. Like we were not supposed to be able to get pregnant again. And it was a like a miracle baby. And so we were super stoked. They were gonna have another little one, and by we just were like This is definitely a God thing. ’cause there was no way it could have happened.

And so it was really like a, just as we’re like ramping up with excitement and getting prepared to tell everybody they were gone. We call that baby promise ’cause we don’t know the gender, but because we have three girls, we feel like it’s a girl maybe, but maybe it would’ve been her one boy.

But we referred to promised as a her often and. And we just know we have a promise in heaven. So I always say I have two unearth and two in heaven. And if I don’t say that, even my kids will correct me and say, ma, you have two chil, two other children. So it’s funny if people meet you, they’re like, how many kids do you have?

And if I don’t feel like telling them and I just, I have two and my kids correct me, then they’re looking at me like, where are you hiding the other two, yeah. Oh, they’re in heaven. Oh, okay.

Amy: Yeah. So cute. Yeah, and I think so interesting, like really similar to my story ’cause our Lauren is our daughter that was still born and her middle name’s Grace.

And then our one that we lost at 14 weeks is named River. ’cause we didn’t know the gender either. And we wanted a kinda like a neutral naturey name. And I had my thoughts of what I thought River was a boy. But then my son, one of my rainbow babies was like, no, it’s a girl. So I was like, oh, you’re probably right.

You were hanging out, so really sorry for your losses, but love what you’ve shared about them and it’s so obvious, like how much you love all your kiddos. So thank you for that. And I invited candy here today because she I just heard about this book and I think, did I see that?

Like it came out during c and like just li we all know that life has been just wild.

Candy: Yeah, it was crazy. It was April 7th, which is actually one of my daughter’s birthdays and. I was so stoked. I lived in Hawaii at the time and I had a whole book tour all set up and speaking engagements galore.

And my daughter was gonna come with me ’cause it was gonna be her birthday trip too, for a bunch of it. And, conferences and women’s events and all kinds of exciting things. And I was so excited to, I had a launch party for 400 people plan that was a big deal. And then all of a sudden it was just canceled.

And it’s interesting and. In light of all that, I was like, wow, this really felt like another form of a stillbirth. Like it was like this thing I worked on for all these years, and it’s like her story and it’s another baby of mine in a way, and it just, And it didn’t get the opportunity to launch out there into the world the way that I thought it would.

But it’s been a slow, steady, like it’s selling and people are appreciating it. We’re getting tons of awesome feedback and I love the letters that come through. I, one woman said, I ca I carried in my purse because when I get to a tough moment, I open to that chapter and I go, what did she say to do again?

What did they tell me? How should I do this? And, many couples sharing it was a game changer and it really helped their marriage. And so I’m very grateful. I know it was meant to be. It’s, there’s a plan and a purpose with all of it, and I just take it as it comes and I am grateful it’s out there and I got a chance to do it.

Amy: Yeah, so it is called the Five Love Languages for Grieving Parents Holding Onto Love after you’ve lost a baby. And I think most people are pretty familiar with the Five Love languages, but if they’re not, do you wanna give us just like a really quick kind of overview of the Love languages, which are by Gary Chapman and he’s been teaching those for a long time.

And then maybe just how you’ve Adapted them or incorporated them for grieving

Candy: parents. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. Dr. Chapman’s amazing. And I’m, I actually was turned onto the five level languages in an online support group, and my husband and I were starting to rub each other raw in our grief, just being.

Kind of short with each other, and we weren’t communicating as, as well as we had been, before the loss. And I just reached out and it was a Christian online support group and I said, Hey guys, any tips or tools that you would recommend for just helping with marriage and, in the grief journey and.

Actually, a whole bunch of people wrote back and said The love languages has been really helpful, the five love languages. And so I got the book and it has a quiz in it, and which is available online now, but back then it was on the book and. And so I did the quiz, my husband did the quiz, and to our surprise, we had different love languages, which is actually quite common.

But what the premise of this is Dr. Chapman, he’s a, he is been a counselor and many years he’s worked counseling and doing therapy for couples and individuals, and he began to, Take note of patterns and things that seem very consistent. And people come in there all the time and say, I give, so much love to my spouse and I do all these things for them and they don’t feel loved.

And the person sitting there on the couch says, you don’t love me. You don’t show me love. And he’s clearly he is. Doing all these things that show you love, but you’re obviously not feeling like you’re loved. So where, what’s the problem here? He realized that we tend to love people the way we want to be loved.

Often the message isn’t received very well because they don’t speak that type of love language as well as you do. And we tend to marry people that don’t have the exact same ones as us. For example, in my personal marriage I am an acts of service as my first, we all tend to have a primary, and then many people have a secondary, and all five of these are wonderful and they should all be sprinkled in there, especially with children.

They love all of them. But. We tend to, as we grow older, we tend to have kind of a driving force of one. That’s tends to be the thing we speak the most. And just like your native tongue, right? If you speak English and that’s your native tongue, but you can speak other languages it just, you’re gonna go to the one that’s easiest for you whenever you have conversation.

My acts of service is shown and expressed as I love people through serving them. And that is in every kind of way possible. Practically. If, if I have a friend who’s has a need, can I come clean? Can I do laundry? Do you want me to pick up the kids? Do you need me to help you with running an errand?

As a ministry, running the ministry, I’m serving families all day long. Listening to their stories, calling them, emailing them, visiting with them With my husband and my marriage, it’s I cleaned the house. I helped cook. I, I got all your laundry fold and put away.

I took care of all these things that were on our list together. I know you could have done them, but I did them to just, I know you’re busy. I took it off the list so you don’t have to. So that’s how I would serve him. And his top level language is words of affirmation and Words are very powerful and meaningful to him.

And so he, he would always say to me, all these messages, he’d leave me notes, he’d write me texts, he’d send me all these things, loving notes. And I would look at them and be like, yeah, so did you clean the house?  And I just didn’t have the same appreciation or value for words.

’cause in my upbringing and the kind of things I saw, words were used. Not really. Maybe with the right intention. They were used to manipulate or to control, or they were, you could say something, but you didn’t really mean it. And so I was like, words just didn’t have that kind of power for me.

Whether you complimented me or not, I didn’t need to have your compliment. Like it didn’t matter to me. You would, if you loved me, you’d show me with your actions, and so I was like, oh. And so he was literally Starved for words of love from me. Like I just did not give enough of them because I was thinking I was doing all this wonderful stuff for him.

And that would be loving. Isn’t that loving? That’s how I love, and he just wanted to hear. I think you’re amazing. I love you. I appreciate you. You’re precious to me. Now. See I could do that with my kids. ’cause that’s how you do. You raise kids, you tell them these loving words.

But with another adult, I didn’t have that understanding that he, my spouse needed that. So that was very eyeopening for me. Maybe it’s just somebody else that’s just common knowledge, but I, interestingly enough, a lot of people don’t have that figured out. And his second runner up is Physical touch.

And my second runner up is quality time. And then the fifth love language is gifts receiving gifts. And and there’s great detail about that in all of his books. And in our books we give a nice surmise of what that all means. It’s a summary in there and then it, it shows how to apply those love languages in our grief journey.

And for example, when we’re rubbing each other raw in the grief journey where we’re maybe just not as conscientious of being, more soft worded and being more gentle and caring in our. Our conversations and in our actions towards each other. When you’re grieving, you’re so hurt and everything can offend you and everything feels raw and you just need a lot of extra tenderness and love and it’s so emotional and you have hormones and you have all kinds of things at play when you’re, especially in the beginning.

First, I would say first year but certainly the first six months. And if your spouse is I know that it really helps if I serve them what does that look like with grief? And so like when my husband began to say I’ll serve in ministry with you. I’ll support you in this.

I’ll help you, I’ll do this work behind the scenes. I’ll help you, lift and schlep stuff that you need to, to events. I’ll be your, your guy to just help. And as he honored Grace with me serving in ministry, it was like, So attractive to me and so appealing you. I was like, Haba there’s gonna be a good night tonight.

Like it was just like, I am so excited that you’re doing this with me. And then conversely, for me, I had to be conscientious to go. Oh my word. I am so proud of you. You’re such a good dad to grace, and you have done an amazing job today, and you’ve been so mindful and thoughtful about these things, and you really have a knack with people and you’re so good at, organizing and just really recognizing, not just saying stuff.

It’s not. And a person who has a love language of words, of affirmation also knows when You’re just doing it just to say it, but you don’t mean it. And he, they, they need it to be authentic. They need it to be sincere. And that, that would just bring tears to his eyes when he knew I’m sincerely meaning that, and that I’m making an effort to actually, I might think those things, but I wasn’t letting them exit my lips, and so he is wow, she said that to me. And then like physical touch is some people just think physical touch must mean the sexual part of the marriage, but it’s not just sex it’s the walking past them in the kitchen and your hand goes across their back and standing there next to them with your hand on their shoulder or just reaching out and holding their hand when you’re driving and, it’s a lot of different kinds of touch.

It’s massages, it’s, it’s just intentional touch that is, is really meant to make connection and I get so busy doing stuff I would just forget that, and so I’m very mindful of that now and, it can send shivers up his spine. Just I come by and just, gently touch him as I walk past or, squeeze his butt cheek, whatever, it’s it’s stuff like that where we stay playful and fun together and we, we’re very much.

Pursuing continual connection and grief can be a disconnect. Grief can be the place of disconnect where we just, your mind is hurt from trauma, it severs itself from things that, might be a place of pain and so to self-protect or to guard oneself or, because it’s a very internal journey.

Many people disconnect. And they that’s why we have such high numbers for divorce rate amongst, families who’ve had a loss. They just start seeing things differently. They disconnect from one another as they’re licking their own wounds and they’re trying to do what their own pain, they process it differently and all of a sudden they’re just like, we’re just not.

We’re not seeing eye to eye anymore. We don’t have anything in common anymore. We’re just, we’re two different people now. And maybe some of that could be true. But if you come back to why did we first get here? Why, how did we get to the point we said, you’re my favorite and I wanna be with you for the rest of my life.

And I love you more than anyone else, and you’re the one that I’m committing to. And when you started it, you didn’t start it thinking until you bugged me. I. Until you irritate me, until you didn’t say the right thing. I didn’t like what you just said. No. You were committed for life.

And all of a sudden, somehow that became okay to say, I guess no. Obviously I’m not talking about the relationships where there’s abuse and lack of faithfulness. I’m talking good relationships, and you’re like, why did they not work out? What happened? And that’s what Dr. Chapman saw, is he could help these couples that were still having salvageable marriages.

They just weren’t seeing how to love each other properly anymore. And they needed new tools and they needed new ways to do things and a new way to build connection. So that’s my hope with the book is helping families stay connected, helping families learn how to grow together and how to love each other well and differently maybe than they did before, but it augments it and it improves it, and it brings more color in life to the way that they love each other.

Amy: Yeah, I love that. And thank you for sharing. I love your personal examples ’cause they really illustrate how this can work. And, but I have a question that I think I’ve seen and might come up for people is, so you learn about the love languages, you wanna implement them, but what do you do if say your partner isn’t reciprocating, isn’t interested, or sometimes can these.

We get in our head like I told him that I really like acts of service and now he’s not doing it. So then it almost disconnects you more. So what would you say to someone who’s maybe trying to implement this but finding it a little bit frustrating? Do you know what I mean? Have you seen that too?

Candy: There is some of that. I would just say cons, consistency and intentional love will never fail. A lot of people don’t necessarily believe that you actually mean it. If you have a long history of hurting each other and not being very kind to one another or, dissing each other, or not putting each other in a favorable light, or just really disregarding one another’s feelings, it’s gonna take a long time.

Aside from grief, it would’ve taken if we hadn’t lost the baby, but if you’d been busy taking care of a baby, that would’ve been stressful too. A colicky baby, a baby with health issues, a baby that’s super needy or has whatever, you would’ve, who didn’t, you didn’t get sleep at night whether the baby was here or not.

If you already had a diff difficult marriage, it, it wouldn’t. Get much better just because of whichever way things went. But now when you lose the baby and you add grief and sorrow and heartache and whatever that’s triggering in your life, if you’ve had other losses and other hurts and pains and other vulnerable places in your life, it’s gonna make it even harder.

So that the marriage, that was really good, I think will. Will really, it’s like a quick chiropractic adjustment, if you will. It’ll get you right back on track, but if it was already suffering, then it’s really going to take a long haul mindset that you’re in this for the long haul and you’re committed and you just keep trying to do it, and you keep trying to love them.

But maybe you sprinkle in all five and you’re just more intentional about, what you say and how you say it. What you do and how you do it, and asking them, what do you need from me? What can I do to help you? Help you thrive, help you feel safe, help you feel secure, help you know that you’re truly loved to help heal the hurts that I’ve caused in your life.

What are things that I could do differently? Don’t give me 20, I can’t do 20, but could you give me, gimme two things today that if I worked on them and I changed those things in me, it would help you feel closer to me. And we have to be willing to work on ourselves and not just, it tends to be a marriage.

You always point the finger at someone else and go, but they do this and it’s them. And if they wouldn’t do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But of course that saying, if you point your finger at someone, you got three pointing back at you. We don’t see the log in our eye. We see, this speck in somebody else’s and we always have stuff we could work on.

None of us are perfect. None of us have relationships all figured out in the world of things. We all are shortsighted. To our own faults and failings and the way we need to, maybe improve. That’s why it’s great to have a coach like yourself and someone who can, say, have you considered this and have you thought about that?

Or, I know somebody else who worked in a coaching field too. He actually worked with CEOs and CFOs who. Wanted to be the best and be better, or they were going to be fired. And the company hired him to say, if you can make him figure this out, or her figure this out and figure out why they’re not doing what they should be doing and being more successful.

So they would take him on a retreat and it was a grueling, painful situation for these people because they had to look in the mirror and face their faults. You know that they’re a type A personality or whatever, and they’d bulldoze people. That, that they’re not very considerate with their words or that they’re, just too aggressive with maybe the way that they take on projects, and and they would have to look at these things and they would interview the families and fill out evaluations and hear from the family. If you could change something in them, if you, if something could be, what would it be? What causes you guys to have issues in your relationships?

Everybody that you can name, there’s not a person immune from this that doesn’t benefit from some self-evaluation as well as external evaluation to help us figure out how we can improve. And in some relationships in marriage,

if we’re in a good symbiotic relationship where we feel safe, we feel secure, and we’re willing to be vulnerable with this person.

’cause when you’re married, of course you see each other’s stuff. Not always is it brought to the forefront to be talked about. It’s like the elephant in the room and you both know each other has these issues, but maybe just because you think you’re being honoring or because you’re afraid to tell the truth, you never say it’s really hurtful when you do that, or that’s not very you.

And, when you have a good relationship, your spouse should be able to say, honey, could you in the future, Word that differently or say that differently. Or could you try to do X, Y, Z? Because that would really be helpful. And if you’re. Willing to be honest with yourself. Oh, I’m sorry.

Gosh, I didn’t realize that I was creating an issue or that was hurtful. Thank you for telling me. I’ll work on that. Even though it’s hard, will you be patient with me? And so we can learn better ways to communicate in the relationship and in grief, this is a foreign thing, so we didn’t have.

Education. Okay. When you lose a baby in the future, this is how you handle it. No. Nobody’s taught about the future of grief and loss. In fact, many people, what they are taught is what happened with aunties, uncles, and grandparents, and, many of them in their generation would just ignore it, shove it under the rug, act like it didn’t happen.

Their idea was if you don’t see it doesn’t exist or it doesn’t hurt you and, like the same thing, I grew up with grandparents and generations of people that you were to be seen and not heard. There. There was a value for quiet, silent children and, you didn’t have as much of a voice.

And Then how does that come out throughout your adulthood? Either you really try hard to be seen and heard, or you just are really quiet and you keep your opinions to yourself and you don’t really share even when you could share something valuable, but you stay silent. In this same regard, in, in the grief experience when you’re now in this shock and you’re feeling all these big feels and all these big emotions, and you feel scared and vulnerable and anxious and you have, dread and you have worry and you’re, you’ve got all this stuff and then you’re trying to manage all this big, huge cloud of emotions.

While still being a very present and loving good wife and a good mother, if you have other children, it’s quite complicated. So one, I would say give yourself some grace and, don’t be so hard on yourselves. I’m constantly seeing moms and dads just. Beat themselves up over not being good enough or perfect enough.

And it’s like you, you weren’t created for this. Like it happens, but there wasn’t a design or a programming into you of how to handle the surprise things that happen in life. We just go through them as best as we can. Navigate it as best as we can, and then we reach out for tools and for help when we’re not doing very good.

And that’s what this book is. That’s what you are as a coach. That’s we realize we need each other. We need others. We were created for community. We were created for unity. We were created to be able to augment and help and nurture one another in the journey. And. It’s really important to when you, like you’re saying what if it’s not working?

Maybe that person also needs to talk to a counselor or coach or their pastor and say, Would you pray for me? I’m really struggling. I’m trying, but maybe I’m not trying well enough or maybe I’m missing something and maybe get some feedback.

Amy: Yeah, I love that. And I love what you said about community too, like that is what we’re designed to do and that’s something I see a lot with couples is just like expecting your person to be everything for you.

And it’s just so much pressure to put on the relationship. I love what you shared. And I did wanna to ask you a little bit as you had just brought it up, when there is a lot of things going on, there’s that when it rains, it pours situation. And you talked about in your book, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I wrote it down, when you’re in high school, you lost your grandmother.

Your friend’s mother died by suicide and then that friend’s brother’s girlfriend was murdered when she was pregnant, all in a short period of time. And then when Grace passed away, it brought up a whole lot of that. So I feel like a lot of people do feel like when you’re maybe struggling in your relationship and trying to find your footing in grief, And it just like the hits keep on coming.

How do you navigate that? What advice do you have for people who are feeling like they’re in that situation?

Candy: Yeah. Reoccurring loss is like double, triple, quadruple whammy. It’s just, I let a support group here last night at Missing Grace. The foundation we run and. There were people here who had, were on their seventh loss.

It’s tragic, super painful to go through that. And, you can’t underestimate how much that affects every aspect. We are created mind, body, and spirit and, you are all of those and all of those are affected and you your brain can just really Get stuck and frozen and unhealthy patterns because we all have to figure out how to cope.

And our coping methods may not all be the best because you just tend to do what comes to you naturally and what feels safest. You might have generational things that kind of make you lean towards something like if there’s alcoholism or drug addiction. In this day and age, unfortunately, it’s things like porn addiction or gaming addiction.

Retail therapy feels really great until you’ve maxed out multiple credit cards and you’re in major debt. Sexual stuff can feel really great, but if it’s extramarital affairs and you’re, you’re hurting your spouse and you’re doing something that’s hurting you and somebody else, like a lot of people start going down the path of destructive behavior because, They’re trying to numb a pain.

They’re trying to not feel what all of this was and to not have to face the reality of what they’re experiencing. I see that too often. And so I know it’s a reality and it’s a problem. So I would say be aware that we all need to cope somehow. It’s just how are you gonna cope? And if you are, mentally taking note, I don’t wanna do this in unhealthy ways, you can actually avoid a lot of pain.

You could also invite accountability into your life, I think is very important. I am struggling, I need help, I am not doing well. I need more support. Verbalize this text it, email, whatever you have to do, call somebody and. Find a person who will have your back, who will call you, check on you just journey with you, it could be your best friend.

It could be a parent that you can lean back on. It can be your spouse, it can be Your counselor, therapist, somebody in the church that you trust or your ministry or your organization that you’re involved in. There’s somebody out there who could be a good friend to you in this journey.

And you probably need multiple layers of those friends, not just one. ’cause if you put everything like you’re saying on your spouse, it can feel like overwhelming. Like they’re already dealing with it too. And then to have to be your sole support. Is actually can be crushing to them. It can make them run away or make them feel, too burdened.

So you wanna share that burden. That’s why like a support group forum is so nice. You’ve got all these other people to talk to. You can do online support groups, in-person support groups. There’s a lot of other methods of help too E M D R and brain spotting therapies. They are something that helps recalibrate the brain at the point of trauma.

So they’re able to see, based on where you look and it all has to do with the eyes and the brain, and you’re able to then basically, Desensitize. Something that triggers you continually and causes you to regress. And so those things are very effective. Also, equine therapy, nature therapy, just getting out in nature.

I’ve seen people completely reverse a trajectory of. Depression, anxiety, fear, and just being stuck by just taking a sabbatical and a time off and just taking a trip around the world or just going on a, a vacation and being gone for two weeks to reset. Spend time putting their feet in the sand and swimming in the ocean, climbing up a mountain.

There’s things like that are just, they’re gonna help. Sometimes you just have to also change, have a change of scenery. You’re stuck in this rutt what can you do? Just alter that. Change. Change where all this happened and what, some people just need a fresh move and a fresh start.

There’s a lot of different suggestions, but I think it’s important to also journal and to just process that. ’cause a lot of it gets stuck and we perseverate in our minds and we will get stuck. We have delta waves and beta waves in our brain and. The Delta wave is a higher thinking, and so people who are persevering type of personalities like you take a Navy seal, they can get shot down and have terrible torture and all these things, and they’re still wanting to survive and figure out how to find a way out and how to improve themselves and how to get better.

They’re thinking on delta wave patterns. And if you’re in a beta wave pattern where you’re just at low level thinking, where you’re just stuck in the muck, if you will, and you just keep saying the same things to yourself, the same self-talk, the same negative patterns you can break out of a, a beta wave mindset through these different methods that I’m mentioning, so you can get yourself to higher level thinking to say.

I can be an overcomer and I can get through this, and other people have survived even worse than I have. And that was one of the things I did too, is I read books about people who had gone through terrible things and I wanted to know how did they survive? What is in that person’s brain and psyche and the way that they.

Conduct themselves that help them go through so much tragedy, but they still made it through. And I was intrigued by those personalities and you would be surprised how many people as our forefathers of this nation of people that we look up to, and they’ve gone to, gone through terrible tragedies, many terrible losses, and they came through and became people we are, amazed at and appreciate for their accomplishments.

Also find somebody who is a. Just a really strong person in the value of hope where they don’t deviate from that. They stay always hopeful and they’re a very positive person. Try to place in your life and attract to yourself those that are positive people and who really are just a bright light, ’cause they will literally, the light will press, press through the darkness that’s in you and you will find yourself coming into a better place. Yeah,

Amy: I love that. And I could just talk to you all day, but I just wanted to read one little quote that ties right in with what you said as we finish up.

So you said it is a small victories and breakthroughs for which you are striving moment by moment. Then day by day, before you know it, you’ll notice it was a fairly good week. Things will get better. Hold on to hope so. How do you hold on to hope for yourself and the people that you help? What’s like a message of hope that we can wrap up on?

Candy: That’s a great question. I. For me, it’s my faith. If I didn’t have faith, I’d be really lost. Like I’d be in a dark place. I work with so much hurt and pain in running a ministry for grieving families. I, I just really, I have, I. An eternal kind of mindset. This is not my home I’m passing through.

It’s a blink of an eye. We get this precious little bit of time to do something significant here and to love people. My, my favorite verse is love God, love others. Just be a kind human and I can’t do it without God though. ’cause we fail as individuals, right? And we fall short.

But I have hope I’m going to heaven. I got babies in heaven. There’s a whole lot of other babies. I can’t wait to meet that I know their parents and I love them. And I know that his mercies are new every morning and greatest is faithfulness. And I see so often things that look like. Death and destruction, and they look hopeless and they seem wow.

How is how are we recovering from that? And even think, like with Covid, so many people are like, oh my gosh, it’s all coming to an end. This is and yet we’ve survived and we’ve gone on and, we’ve made it through that. And I’ve, I see a lot of success stories, so I also keep those at the forefront of my mind of people that have come through so much and they’re just, They’re so beautiful and they’re so enriched, like their personality and who they are is so precious.

And you can just see that through the fire, if you will, through the trials, through the pain. There’s something beautiful that’s come forth. And a verse that I love is God gives us beauty for ashes, strength for fear and joy for mourning.

Amy: Yeah. I love it. Thank you. And thank you for sharing like your testimony and all the things that you do.

So will you tell us just a little bit about, the book is everywhere. I got it on Amazon. You have tell us about, you have a website, you have a ministry where people

Candy: can find you. Thank you. Yeah, so Candy Mc Vicar, c a n d y m c v i c a r. I’m sure you’ll have it in the show notes, but there’s all the different online stores.

There’s many more than what I have listed on my site, but you can click on any of those and get the book. Sometimes there’s sales going on, which are fabulous you can keep a watch out for that. And And then missing grace.org, and it’s my daughter’s name, grace, but it stands for Grieve, restore, arise, commemorate, and Educate.

And so missing grace.org is our foundation. We started it just a few months after Grace was still born, and that was December 20 2001 that she was born. But we started missing Grace in 2002. And a lot of years doing what we do. So it’s morphed and grown throughout the years, but we have support groups.

We have care packages for grieving families that we give to hospitals and clinics. And we also have care packages for after the baby is in heaven. And now parents are on their grief journey. And then we put on lots of different memorial events and things where people can gather and realize they’re part of a larger community of people.

And my heart is really for connection, just connecting people, being a vessel and a, conduit for that and helping People just know that we’re here for them. That just means so much. When I couldn’t find anybody, like I kept reaching out after we lost Grace and all these different organizations and people I wrote to, nobody wrote back.

And it was so sad. I was like, oh my gosh, I’m like hurting so badly here. I just need a friend. Somebody help me. Just, and that was like the impetus for. I guess we need to start this. We need to do something because it’s not okay. People need to know that somebody’s gonna answer the phone and somebody’s gonna reply to their email and they will reach out and they will be there for them.

And that’s what we try to do. So I’m honored to do it. I’m thankful. And I’d love if people who are here listening, get the book, share the book and come and join us with Missing Grace if they feel that, or they wanna get involved.

Amy: Yeah, it’s beautiful all that you’re doing.

And I love the book. I just finished reading it myself. And I would say it’s it talks about the love languages. It talks about relationships like marriage, relationships, but also so many other things that you touched on. Other relationships, other circumstances that we find ourselves right as we’re grieving.

And so it’s like about relationships, but also all encompassing. So many good. Little nuggets to take and so thank you. I think it’s amazing as a resource, and thank you for being here and sharing your heart with us.

Candy: I appreciate it so much. Thank you.