Welcome to the smooth stones podcast. I had a little hiccup. I pressed record and an airplane decided to like, fly right by my house so loud. So they’re gone now I’m excited to talk to you. I’m recording this on a bright morning and I was thinking I need to be an example here and Gratitude in our lives every day No matter how hard it is and gratitude just for the sake of gratitude not to make yourself feel better not to negate any of the hard things in your life, but just You Beginning a practice of gratitude.

So I gotta say that this morning, I am so thankful for the sun. There’s a little bit of clouds and the mountains where I live are just covered in colors. Mostly there’s like this awesome deep red and I think Think that my husband and I are going to go for a drive later and get to see the leaves. He’s been out of town, but he’s back and I’ve been waiting because we love to go for drives in the mountains.

So I’m really just grateful for that. And I’m grateful for the technology that lets me talk to you that I can sit in my office and share my thoughts and my stories and my advice and things that have helped me. with you. It’s incredible. It really is that you can have me in your pocket. So I’m grateful for you being here.

And I hope that you’re going to just love this episode. I wanted to talk about forgiving yourself. And a question that a lot of people have is how long does it take to forgive yourself? Now, first, the question is, can I ever. There can be points where you feel like I’m never going to forgive myself for what happened with my baby, or you could apply this to really anything.

So anything that’s happened in your life that you feel guilty or terrible about, um, please apply this. I’m going to share my stories though, of being able to forgive myself for what happened, because something that’s really common after a loss or a hard thing in our lives is that we tend to blame ourselves.

And especially as parents, especially if you are the mom, the person who is carrying this baby or brought this baby into the world, who’s caring for a child, and then they die, it’s really easy to turn it back around and blame yourself pretty immediately. And I would say this is pretty universal. So I want to really quickly share why we do that.

Um, I go more into this in my How to stop blaming yourself mini course. So go check that out. If you haven’t just go to my website. Um, there’s a link in the show notes, but what happens is we start blaming ourselves because this doesn’t make any sense. Our brain is trying to make sense of something that seems so out of control.

Like we have this belief that babies should not die. And so when they do die, we got to figure out a reason. Cause it actually, our brain thinks it’s. more comfortable to blame us because then we, it’s like we have somewhere to put that energy. It’s so much harder to just have it out floating everywhere.

, And just have this big why question. We like to have answers. We like to have certainty. Our brains really want certainty. And so blaming us is the easiest thing. So if that has happened to you, number one, know that it’s really normal. And number two, know that. It does not have to last forever. You don’t have to blame yourself forever.

I’m going to pause right here. I forgot to say something. Let me tell you something really exciting I’m doing for October. I am doing Remembrance Day. I’m calling them edits. What do you call them? I am going to make some really cool social media graphics for you. So if you’re listening and it’s any time in October 2024, um, or before, I am going to be making these, um, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day edits that are going to be so, so cute.

Um, they’re going to have little pumpkins on them and we’re going to put your baby’s name. You really need to go follow me on Instagram or check it out. I will be getting these out to you, uh, They’re going to be adorable and they’re going to be so cute to post on your social media this month to remind people of your babies and their names and everything, um, that they mean to you and that you’re remembering them extra special.

I also wanted to say, I started doing video podcasts. If you like that, I’m over on YouTube. So yay. And I’m just fixing my hair now because I’m on camera now.

So even though it’s just me, sometimes it’s interviews. , I am over on YouTube, so go check it out if you want to see me. Like I said, see the hand gestures and all of that. , Okay, let’s dive back in. I wanted to share, really kind of my raw, real story of my own losses, just as examples, because they were such different experiences , and as you listen, I want you to think about your experience.

I don’t know if you’ve had one loss. I don’t know if you’ve had 10 losses. I don’t know how much you blamed yourself, but I think there’s something you can learn always from someone. So as you listen to my story, I want you to think about your own story and What you really want as you move forward.

Because the thing is when Lauren died, I decided right away that I was not going to be sad forever, that I was going to figure out how to make the, you know, make the best out of this awful situation that I was going to take care of my kids and my other relationships, and I was going to live. for my daughter.

And it was not easy. Uh, I probably made lots of mistakes. I did it in a way that worked for me. It’s not going to work for everyone, but I was really, really committed to healing. And so the first thing I want you to think about as you’re listening is, what are you committed to? Like, do you believe it’s possible that you could forgive yourself?

Let’s start there. We always want to start there. Do you believe it’s possible? What do you think about yourself? What do you think about your capability to be able to forgive yourself or to let go of this blame? Because if we don’t believe that we can It’s going to be a lot harder to figure it out. Now, I, as someone who has been through this twice myself and has watched countless other parents go through this pain and this healing process, I do believe that you can forgive yourself whenever you are ready.

And that’s the key thing. So when are we ready? How long does it take? Is there some magical thing? A lot of people think it’s a year that in a year you should feel better. That’s not always the case. So let me tell you my story. And then I want you to know that I’m going to be focusing on forgiving yourself in the next few episodes, because I think it’s just so, so important.

Let me tell you about Lauren. Lauren died at 39 and a half weeks out of the blue after a really normal pregnancy. I didn’t have a ton of Warning signs with her. I thought I had felt some contractions One evening when I was very obviously very close to my due date very ready to go I thought I felt some contractions, but they didn’t go anywhere and So I was just kind of stayed up walking in the night, hoping, you know, we’ll have a baby by morning and in the morning, the contractions kind of stopped and I realized then that I had not felt her kicking.

So I’d been focusing on feeling for contractions and being excited and just, you know, Getting ready for baby and doing what I needed to do and realize later like oh, I have not felt her cooking for a while so we went into the hospital and found out she had passed away and Immediately my thoughts went to my children.

Like how am I going to explain this to them? And also pretty quickly my thoughts and my husband also We’re thinking what happened? What did we do now? One of the main things we had done, um, just the day before was we had gone on some hikes, we went, we lived near a national park at the time and we went on a hike, hoping that would like get.

Labor and everything moving. We also went on a really bumpy four wheel drive road. And when I say bumpy, like extremely bumpy, probably should not have done it. Um, I was holding onto, we had like a grip bar in our, uh, vehicle and we had all the kids and we were just like bouncing around, um, trying to go to this overlook, but it was like.

I don’t know if there’s levels, but it was a high level technical four wheel drive road. And that was like, I remember just bracing myself and feeling my stomach like tighten and going over all those rocks. And that was the first thing that I thought, Oh my gosh, because it turned out that we had maybe had like a placental abruption, not a full one, but partial.

And so we just thought that must have been it. We must have done something wrong. And of course, the questions are, well, why didn’t I notice her kicking? Why didn’t I come in sooner? Even when I had called my clinic, they didn’t tell me to come in. They did drink the juice, wait, you know, try to do a kick count.

We’ll get you in later this afternoon. They didn’t even seem concerned at all. Cause I probably called it like 10 in the morning to do an appointment and they had me come in at like two 30. So they didn’t even seem alarmed, which looking back, that was probably not, not good. Um, it wouldn’t have changed anything, but really weird.

And so, yeah, I just. I mean, we had to get through the delivery. We had to get through the funeral. We had to get me, you know, heal up a little bit from all of that. But in that time, I really thought, you know, was it this, was it that, like, why wasn’t I paying attention? I was nesting. My mom was in town. You know, we, we just were in baby mode.

Everything was ready. The car seat was in the car. Like we were running around like crazy. I had four living children and I wanted to get so many things done since my mom was in town. And so I did try to figure out what happened. I did feel that blame go to, you know, the choices we had made, the things we had done that I wasn’t paying attention, you know, I wasn’t kick counting, I knew about kick counting, but I wasn’t doing it like my doctor didn’t tell me to do it really.

I, I didn’t have an app at the time. I don’t even know. I don’t think we had smartphones. This is way back in 2013. But. Yeah, I just, I’d had four perfect pregnancies. This pregnancy seemed normal and I just wasn’t paying attention. And again, I don’t know if it would have made a difference. Sometimes I think if I would have been kick counting, I might have noticed, um, if she was slowing down and we still had a chance to get her out.

I also had. Normally met with my doctor every Tuesday and we were down to the once a week thing and we had met every Tuesday Just this particular Tuesday. He had something else. So he moved my appointment to Thursday and So we had gone hiking and we had done all these things and so it was Wednesday when I realized baby wasn’t kicking That’s why I was like, well, should I wait till Thursday?

Should I go in today? Like, what should we do? And because we’d had other babies who had taken naps at the end, just, and we’d even gone in and checked, um, and everything was fine. So of course we just assume everything’s fine until you know differently. So I also had that question was like, Why did the, why did we change the appointment?

Like what, what are the odds if we could have seen her on Tuesday, if we could have seen that she was in distress, if we could have seen something with the placenta, because my doctor always did little ultrasounds in the office, every single appointment, you know, what would have happened. And so I didn’t blame my doctor necessarily, but I, I really was like, why didn’t we, you know, why did we change the appointment?

Why, what if, what if, what if? So I had a lot of that. But really quickly, I would say within weeks of my daughter’s death, I decided that it didn’t matter. And I think I’d probably seen some quotes or I had read something, you know, I was trying to find support groups and things online. And, um, I’d found something that said, you know, you do the best you did the best you can with what you knew at the time.

And it’s like, yeah, I did. We are an outdoorsy family. We do a lot of bumpy rides in the mountains, even some of my. other babies. Uh, we had purposely gone on like bumpy rides and four wheeler rides and all kinds of things trying to bounce the baby out. And it had never been a problem. And even now I think it could have, like, maybe we did.

Maybe we damaged the placenta, maybe all the clenching and the bouncing, if the placenta wasn’t 100 percent could have contributed to it. But I made a choice. I remember really clearly making a choice. And this was 11 years ago now. But I remember making that choice. I am not going to blame myself. It doesn’t change anything.

It doesn’t bring her back. I really was able to say, like, as much as I hate this, This was her story. Um, and lean on my faith that like, this was all she needed. All she needed was a body and to be born. And she wasn’t ever going to stay because with the doctor’s appointment, I thought, well, what if, you know, we could have saved her or if I would have noticed earlier.

Um, but then I thought, you know, if we would have, could have saved her, maybe she would have had other struggles. Maybe she would have been alive, but if she hadn’t had oxygen for a long time or she could have had permanent damage, um, it would have been a different life for her and a different life for us, not a worse or better, but different.

And so I really remember deciding and thinking we weren’t supposed to save her. Because I had a choice, I could look at all the things that happened, all the things we did, all this like, one thing after another, like the appointment being cancelled, and, and the going on the drive, and this and that, and like being really busy, all the things I could think about.

We made so many mistakes. We made a million mistakes that led to her death and I could just pile on the blame. It was really easy. It was really easy or I could make the choice to say all of those things happen exactly as they were supposed to because we weren’t supposed to save her because I would have if I could have, if I knew, if I would have caught it sooner, if the doctor Like, if we would have had the appointment on Tuesday, then we would have saved her.

Maybe we would have saved her because we know that she had just barely passed, um, when she was born. They said it was probably less than 24 hours. So I think she passed during that night when I thought I was in labor, but it was probably something happening with the placenta. So I just really clearly remember saying we weren’t supposed to save her.

It doesn’t matter. Like. If the bumpy road did it, if it was something else, like if we miss something, whatever happened, that was what was supposed to happen. And I really was able to find peace. Now, I don’t know that that’s common. I don’t think I did anything extraordinary. I just, I think that was a gift, you know, and it was a choice.

And at the time I didn’t know that I was coaching myself and choosing my thoughts on purpose and all the things I teach you here, but that’s what I was doing. I chose deliberately to stop blaming myself and to believe that what happened was what was supposed to happen. And I know that when someone tells you that about your story, it hurts.

So I will never do that, but I’m telling you my experience. My experience was I chose to believe that this was what was supposed to happen. And as much as it hurt, as much as I knew it was a long road to healing, as much as we miss her every day, I had a lot of peace around that. Okay. So in that case, Long story short.

It took me a couple of weeks to forgive myself. Let’s jump to River. River was our baby. Our second baby we lost at 14 weeks. Pregnancy was going good. We saw the baby at 11 weeks, bouncing around like a little gummy bear. Everything looked great. My husband went out of state for work. He actually flew to like the whole other side of the country.

I went in for my 14 week appointment. Well, and we had just told our kids at 12 weeks. Um, usually I wait as long as I can, but I was so, so sick that I was like, they’re going to figure it out. I better just tell them. So we told them at 12 weeks, they were super excited. And at 14 weeks, I went in to my appointment and found out there wasn’t a heartbeat and I was devastated again.

I couldn’t believe this was happening again. I didn’t think it was fair. I was very angry. I was very upset. I was very alone. Um, so. That was really frustrating because I made it through the first trimester and I know that’s not a guarantee. Obviously I knew that wasn’t a guarantee, but I kind of thought, you know, I mean, statistically it does.

You feel like you can breathe a little bit. And I had just stopped feeling symptoms, which I, again, had been incredibly sick, was going to the bathroom like every two minutes. Um, and I remember we went to a friend’s funeral. Um, there’s kind of this really tragic accident that happened to one of our friends.

And I went to the funeral and we had to drive. And I remember being like, Oh my gosh, I don’t have to pee every two seconds. Not realizing probably meant that river had passed at some point there. Um, but yeah, when I found out I had another loss, I was super upset. , at that point I didn’t really blame myself because I know that this happens, but I had a lot of questions.

I knew I hadn’t done anything. You know, I didn’t like eat sushi or like do any bungee jumping or anything, but. There was still a lot of questions, but what happened was I ended up choosing to go in for a DNC surgery where they remove the baby and it’s not pretty. We’ll just say that we waited till my husband got home at the end of the week.

I went in and had this surgery. It ended up going really, really badly. And I lost a lot of blood. I had to stay in the hospital. Um, there was a lot of. It was really scary. I’d say traumatic to say the least. I won’t go into the whole story because we’re talking about forgiveness today. But what happened was one of the reasons I chose to have that surgery was so that we could find out the gender so that we could find out what happened so we could have information because I didn’t get to meet my baby.

I didn’t get to hold my baby. I didn’t get to dress them. I didn’t get to find out if they’re a boy or girl. Um, I didn’t get any information or any connection or any, you know, information for moving forward if we did want to try again, which I wasn’t sure, you know, of course, at that point, I had no idea if we would try again or not, but I wanted to know what happened.

And so the hospital sends that off to the lab and I wait and I wait and I wait. And one day I get a call from my doctor and she starts with Amy. I’m really, really sorry. And I’m like, Oh, great. And I’m thinking, Oh, it’s the results. We’ve been waiting so long, um, and she says, I’m so sorry, Amy, they put the wrong label on the remains.

And we weren’t able to test them. We didn’t get any answers. And I remember just holding back the tears and like, not even knowing what to say, just being so stunned and basically just getting off the phone as fast as I could, because I could not talk to her. Um, and I was just so upset and it felt like such a big blow.

Like losing the baby was intensely hard. Losing a ton of blood during surgery was intensely hard. Trying to recover from that while trying to figure out grief. Again. was intensely hard. Knowing that there was nothing I was going to find out. Knowing that I, I really wanted to know the gender because I wanted to pick a name and I wanted to be able to like, I don’t know, just connect with the baby.

And it felt like it would be easier knowing if it was a boy or a girl. Um, and even for my kids, like to know if it was a brother or sister. And it just felt like such a blow and I was so upset, like so mad and in that shock, I didn’t say, okay, what happens next? What do they do with the remains? Where are they?

What happens? And of course I didn’t. But looking back, like later, much, much later, I was like, Oh my gosh, why didn’t I do that? And so I blamed myself a lot in that loss. Maybe not as much for the loss, but for the choices that I made. And so I blamed myself for doing surgery instead of delivering. Um, they didn’t really give me the option.

That’s the thing. They never really gave me the option of delivering, but in my service as a volunteer, I have helped people who have delivered 14 week babies like multiple, multiple times. And so when I’ve seen those babies and helps those families, I thought, why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I? And I know in my mind, I thought my choices were between have the miscarriage at home by myself with like my toddler, my rainbow baby, um, and my other kids.

And it sounded really terrifying because I was a little, like I was in second trimester or have surgery. They, they just didn’t offer me a ton of options. And I didn’t want to wait and I didn’t want to wonder and not know when it was going to happen. So I chose surgery. And then I thought I was mad and blamed them.

So I was mad at kind of the hospital, the doctor, um, all the things, the lab, whoever made a mistake. Um, I was really upset. And then I was upset at myself that I, you know, somehow. It didn’t make sense, but I probably blamed myself for that too. You know, that I was the one who chose that. I was the one who sent the remains away.

And then the fact that I didn’t ask if I could have them, I didn’t think about burying them. I didn’t think about, do they cremate them? Like, is there anything basically what my mind told me when I finally kind of, um, was processing through all of this was that they probably just put it in medical waste and threw it away.

And so the thought that I carried with me for such a long time was I threw my baby in the garbage. I’m a terrible mother. Like, I did not protect my baby. I made this choice that wasn’t the best thing for my child. And of course, as parents, we just want to do the best thing for our child. And I felt like I didn’t.

I didn’t do that. And there was so many losses around that choice with my health, um, with my grieving process, with not having anything tangible for that baby. And for, you know, really thinking about the, The nitty gritty gross details of what it looks like to have a surgery and to send, um, that away. And I just could not forgive myself.

I was so angry at myself. I was so angry at the doctors and the hospital. I was so angry. And I was not angry with Lauren. I had a lot of peace, even though I was so sad, like so, so sad, but I really struggled and I really struggled for years. So when I tell River’s story or my experience of the loss of that baby, who we named River because we never did get a gender.

And so we picked a nice nature, gender neutral name.

It’s a story of a lot of pain and a lot of anger and a lot of suffering. And I know now that that was just what I needed to do. And I help my clients every day to hopefully not add as much suffering as I did, but that’s what I needed to do. I needed to suffer and I needed to be angry and I needed to have a lot of questions and I needed to be mad at myself and I needed to blame myself for two and a half years.

So we lost River in May. Let me see, May, 2016. And it was probably fall of 2018. Um, I had found coaching and I had a great community and I knew this grief coach who was really, really amazing. And I reached out to her and I said, coach, I am ready to forgive myself. I have to let go of this pain because I want to help other loss parents and I don’t think I can if I can’t prove that it can be done, that you could hate yourself and blame yourself and be angry for years and carry that with you and then put it down and I just felt something inside of myself.

So for you, as you’re listening, there is no right time. You just choose because if you look at my story, it’s like one loss, I was able to just choose really quickly and move forward with peace and like feel powerful in that choice and another loss. It took me a long time, and I suffered a lot, but I also got to a point where I was like, okay, I’m tired, like I’m tired of carrying this pain, I’m tired of carrying this blame, and I want to let it go, and I didn’t know how, but I actually believed that I could, I think I did at that point think I could put this down, and that’s what I want for you as we wrap this up, okay?

And if you have any questions, like, I am a really open book, obviously. I share a lot about my story, so I am happy to talk to you further, like, email me, hit me up on Instagram, whatever, um, you would like to do, but I want you to think. Number one, do you believe that you can forgive yourself? And do you want to, you can ask yourself if you feel ready, but a lot of people don’t know what that is.

Like how do I know if I’m ready to forgive myself? What if it doesn’t matter? You don’t even have to be ready. I would say the most powerful thing is making the choice that you want to, and working on believing that you can. So if I can be that lighthouse out in the distance saying, Amy went through two devastating losses with like secondary losses along the way and so many things and she found a way to forgive herself and to stop blaming herself because I can tell you now when I was able to work with a coach, dump all my garbage thoughts, like all these awful thoughts and things I was telling myself, like what a terrible mother I was to River and how many terrible choices I had made.

When I was able to just speak that out loud, to journal it, to be honest. To have someone help me really dig into why was I still suffering so much? Then I was able to let it go. And I can tell you personally, it felt so good and so cathartic and just a lot of people come to me and what they want is relief.

Relief isn’t a feeling. Relief is the absence of a feeling. So if you’re feeling awful, if you’re suffering, if you’ve got this weight, if you’ve got this anger and this blame and this guilt that is eating you alive, that’s eating you from the inside out, that’s blocking your heart from living the life you want to live, then it’s time and you can do this.

It’s a lot easier with help. That’s what I want to do for you. So that’s my story. I’m going to keep talking about blame the next few weeks and I’ve got a really exciting offer for you coming up if you’re feeling that whisper that you’re ready to let go of this pain. You don’t have to know how yet. I got you covered.

I want you to know that this wasn’t your fault. And you can have relief. It’s right around the corner. It’s the time for you. And I can’t wait to show you how. So stay tuned, reach out. We got some big things coming. I’ll see you next time.