Hey, welcome to episode 39, and welcome to October. It’s here, pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month, and I woke up like many of you to the news about Chrissy Teigan and John Legend who are, you know, really beautiful people who share a lot of their journey and they’ve shared their struggles with this pregnancy and.

Just finding out that their baby had passed away and seeing the pain in their faces on the pictures that they shared. Um, yeah, it really just touched my heart and I, I know that we are gonna send them all the love and be there for them as much as we can. It doesn’t really matter what your status in life is.

Losing a baby is just a really tough thing to go through, and so my heart goes out to them today. I want to talk about October and I titled this episode, how to Have the Best October Ever. Now, I know sometimes we might think, how am I supposed to do that? Like my baby died. Maybe it’s recent, or even if it’s been a while, you might just think, how could it be the best October ever?

But I want to just open up to the possibility that this is our life now, and we always have choices about. How we handle it and making it the best doesn’t mean it’s the happiest or the silliest or the most fun. It just means that we’re gonna take this month and we’re gonna make it what we want to make it and not the other way around, where we’re just like letting it happen to us.

That’s how we can really have our best month is when we’re paying attention to what we want and making things happen on purpose. So for many Angel moms, pregnancy and infant loss awareness month is a whole lot of things. It can bring up a lot of triggers. It can be really sad. It can be a time where you feel comfortable sharing your baby and sharing your story with your family and your friends in ways that you don’t normally, it can be a time that’s really busy.

A lot of people have a lot of things going on, and they are working, raising awareness, raising money, all kinds of things. And also, I’ll touch a little bit on the fact that Halloween is at the end of the month and Dia de los Muertos and those holidays can be meaningful and also a little bit triggering for angel moms.

So that’s gonna be at the end of the month, and we’ll talk a little bit more about that. Um, as it goes along, I remember my first pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. I was newly pregnant with my rainbow baby, and I lived in a little town in the middle of nowhere. So I was looking at the online community and looking at all that they were doing.

Like I said, there were walks, there were runs, there were T-shirt fundraisers. Um, there’s these prompts where like every day of the month you share a little bit about your story and so much more. Um, my favorite thing is the wave of light, which happens on the 15th. And at 7:00 PM no matter what time zone you’re in, you can light a candle and leave it on for an hour.

And if everybody does this, there’s an unbroken wave of light that will go all around the world. And I just think. It is such a beautiful, simple thing to do, and we do it every year. I light a candle for Lauren and then we added a candle for river, and we also do a candle for all the other babies. Gone too soon.

If you haven’t heard about that, it’s definitely a beautiful thing to do and I love seeing just like social media, light up with pictures of all those candles. And I wanted to tell you guys a little bit of the history. I decided to go there and find out what has created this month of Awareness and Remembrance Day, which is the 15th.

Really what happened is there are just so many losses and the statistics are really staggering when you put them all together. But the thing about baby loss is so many families grieve in silence and they don’t come to terms with their loss. So there are. People and organizations that really wanted to spread awareness, so we feel like we’re not alone.

In October, 1988, president Ronald Reagan proclaimed October as national Pregnancy and Infant loss awareness month, and he said, when a child loses his parent, they’re called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they’re called a widow or a widower. When parents lose their child, there isn’t a word to describe them.

This month recognizes a loss so many parents experienced across the United States and around the world. It’s also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, silver birth defect, SSIDs, and other causes. And I think the beautiful thing, as I read through all the history, the beautiful thing is that it was parents, right?

It was family members, it was aunts and. All kinds of people who came together and said, we need to remember these babies and we need to support all these families who are touched by pregnancy loss because it is so common, but we feel so alone. And there are just some heroes that made that happen. And then in different countries, like each country has gone through, and there are so many countries that observe either October as a loss awareness month.

Or the 15th. And I love seeing pictures of people who have talked to governments and different companies and had them even light up buildings in pink and blue, which are the colors. And I think it’s just, it’s such an incredible it in a time for us to come together on what President Reagan said. I know this quote is really shared a lot and.

My 2 cents on it, and I’ll offer it to you and take it or leave it. But I think the reason there isn’t a word for losing a child is because we are still mothers and fathers. Like we’re not different. Just our babies aren’t here with us, they aren’t in our arms. We aren’t raising them day to day, but we are still their mother and their father.

And honestly, I don’t need another word for it because I know my place and. I just think that it’s okay that we’re just moms and dads and just our babies aren’t with us. Now, the roots of this awareness month are beautiful and created in love and support, but also this month can be really overwhelming emotionally for a lot of people just because you’re reminded a lot of your baby.

It can be physically exhausting if you have taken on a project and you’re just running all over the place, being busy trying to hit some huge goals. Yeah, it can just be a little bit exhausting. Well, I gotta tell you about two ways that I wanna help you make this October just a little bit lighter and a little bit better.

Even if your grief is very close to the surface, that’s okay. We’re all here participating to whatever level we want. In an awareness month that we kind of wish didn’t exist, but since it does, let’s take our love and our experiences and do the best we can. So the first way I wanna help you, if you have a big event coming up, but you’ve kind of procrastinated.

And I’ll be honest, I kind of procrastinated putting this out there, but it’s here now. If you wanna jump on it, go for it. I am doing strategy sessions. For people who are trying to hit a goal, like you’re trying to hit a fundraising goal, you’re trying to, um, have a lot of people come to a walk or run a virtual event, right?

A lot of covid has made a lot of these events virtual and it can seem really challenging to put yourself out there and to ask people to participate and to get them to follow through. So I’ve got a few spots for strategy sessions and it’s gonna be 90 minutes. It’s $199 and we are gonna go all through and make an exact plan for you with your goals, what you need to do each day.

We’re gonna break it down, we’re gonna get it on your schedule, and I’m gonna also help you with your mindset, like being afraid to put yourself out there, being worried. Nobody’s gonna show up. All of those things that really hold us back from hitting a big goal. And I know that is an investment, but honestly, you will 10 x your experience if you have a coach helping you through that.

So if you’re feeling frazzled or like you took on way too much, definitely contact me on Instagram or email amy@smoothstonescoaching.com and I will hook you up there. Now the other one is for everyone. It’s a special giveaway for all the people listening to this podcast right now. So you guys, I had to do something special for you because if you didn’t know, this is actually the first birthday of my podcast coming up.

I launched it on purpose, right around pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day. So I wanna give you a gift and thank you for being here. And this giveaway is gonna be pretty simple. The prize is a hundred dollars Amazon gift card, and I might also throw in a few other prizes here and there. So watch out for those.

And all you need to do is write a review on the podcast. Take a screenshot of it and email me again. It’s Amy a m y@smoothstonescoaching.com. To make it even better, you get three extra entries into the drawing if you share about the podcast, wherever you want to share. It could be on social media. It could be just telling someone and just also screenshot that and let people know.

Just say, what has the podcast done to help you? How do you think it can help other people? And if you share it and let them know that we’re doing lots of giveaways this month. Then you get three extra entries. Okay? So I hope that’ll be really fun. And you gotta follow me on Instagram too, because I’m giving away some really, really cute stuff, and you guys can totally enter for that too.

Um, it’s just this a hundred dollars Amazon gift card is just exclusively for my podcast listeners. I really wanted to celebrate the podcast first birthday because one year ago I was submitting my first episodes to iTunes, and it’s just so fun to see what’s happened in a year. I love my clients and I have gotten to talk to and interview some of the most amazing guests ever, and it’s been challenging, but mostly what I want you guys to know is that.

You are the reason I do this. Each one of you individually, I think about you. I think about your babies, and I pray that my words and these tools will help relieve some of your suffering and give you hope for your future because I believe in you so much, even when you don’t believe in yourself. But when you do start believing in yourself, that’s when the magic is really gonna happen.

So let’s set some intentions for October, and I’m gonna keep these pretty short and simple. But if you do them, I promise you will have the best month and you will make it what you want. So, whether or not you are participating in any events, this exercise is gonna be great for you. Let’s prep now to handle all the things we’re gonna encounter in this month, and you are going to be able to handle it so much better.

So first I want you to set your intentions. How do you think you’ll feel on November 1st, think about yourself one month in the future when you have accomplished your goals or shared your heart and your babies, or you’ve dealt with some triggers. I want you to imagine the best version of you, the one who showed up and had her own back and was kind to herself all month long.

The one who did the things that were scary or uncomfortable. And once you’ve got her in your mind, Ask her what goals she was able to accomplish and how she feels now, and then ask her what advice she would give you. Your future self is very wise, and using your imagination to help you is so helpful.

When we have something coming up that might be challenging, and this is the opposite of our default, which is to use our imagination to think the worst and just dread things that can happen. We also tend to just wait and see and not know how we’ll feel or how many t-shirts we’re gonna sell or whatever.

So that gives us a lot of anxiety because we just don’t know how anything is going to go. I hear this all the time, but I want you to recognize that I don’t know, is not a useful thought. So just ask yourself to imagine if you did know, just take a guess. Then the worst that can happen is you are wrong, and that’s okay.

Our imagination is wrong all the time. And when we recognize this, like when we can really see that these things happening outside of us can’t make us feel anything, once we set the intention and we decide what results we want. We use the self-coaching model for our own benefit. It really changes everything.

This exercise of imagining yourself in a month is gonna be so helpful for you, so I hope you’ll do it even if you just think about it. Think about how you want October to go and choose it now. Choose now on October 1st how you’re gonna feel. In the beginning of November. So the second is make goals. Then you wanna break down your goals into doable tasks, then schedule time to complete these tasks and put them on your calendar, and then you have to honor that calendar.

Procrastination creeps up for most of us, so having small tasks set up is gonna be so helpful if your goal is to just better allow your emotions. As you see lots of posts about loss awareness. You might set aside some time for journaling, for Quiet, for Working Out, whatever helps you center on your grief, make it simple and doable.

You don’t have to add a lot to what you already have going on, but making a goal to just allow emotions this month is gonna be amazing. Or if you’re organizing a big virtual event, you probably have already done a lot of prep work. How can you accomplish your goals and also take care of you so you don’t collapse on the couch for like a week after all of this is over, right?

Future you is emotionally and physically exhausted and like is just eating the ice cream on the couch. So you need to know your limits and make sure you are doing what you need to do. You’re delegating when necessary and you’re managing your mind around. Everything not going perfectly, and my last tip for today is to use this month as an opportunity to increase your self-confidence.

You can handle Halloween being sad for you. You can handle Halloween potentially being canceled for your living kids. You can talk about your baby and share your heart even when it feels hard and you don’t know how people will react. You can keep everything in your heart and know that that is 100% okay too.

It really is. Not everyone wants to participate in pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. Lots of people want to lock the door on Halloween. Can you decide now that you like your reasons for doing that, and does it feel like love for yourself? Then that is all you need. Self-confidence means saying no to things and not feeling guilty about it.

So decide today what you are willing to do and let the rest go. Halloween costumes, political debates, pregnancy and infant loss awareness month, or anything else you have coming up this month does not cause you to feel anything. Your thoughts about them do so. Set some intentions now and you will create the results you want.

Tap into your own future self. Make specific goals and cultivate your self confidence. That’s how you will have the best October you can, even without all your babies in your arms. I can’t wait to see what you guys are up to, and I hope you’ll follow me on Instagram at Amy Smooth Stones Coaching. Don’t forget to review the podcast and send your screenshots into me so that you can get entered in the drawing for the a hundred dollars Amazon gift card and then, Share an episode or share about the podcast for three extra entries.

I just wanted to give back. I wanted to bring a little light and a little fun, and so we’re just celebrating the podcast, celebrating pregnancy and infant loss awareness, and I want you guys to know that you are not alone. I am here with you anytime you need me, so have a great October. We’ll talk to you next time.