Finding Happiness — In Grief
In 2013 we gave birth to our first daughter — it was a silent birth. She never cried, she never sniffled, never fluttered her eyes, in fact, she never took a breath. Anahera Leja Wilkinson was born sleeping at 1:17pm on the 3rd June 2013 to proud parents, proud grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunties, nieces, nephews, close friends and an extended family of over 11,000 people around the globe.
We discovered at 20 weeks that our baby was a girl and ‘incompatible with life’. She has a 40% chance to make full term, and if she does make it all the way she will have a life expectancy of 2–14 days.
When it comes to grieving the loss of a child, for those of us who are prewarned the first grieving starts here. We grieve for the child we imagined we were going to have. I imagined a full life for my baby, one with play dates and horses, with school and family holidays, with travel, love and a family of her own. That child was gone— instead, we have a baby destined to die young — we have an angel baby.
I have heard it said that losing a child is the deepest grief a person can experience. I don’t know if that is true as my life is not over yet, I hope that there there is nothing deeper, I am not sure I could cope. What I do know is that losing your child is a grief you never get over, or move on from — you move forward with it.
Recently, I decided to tell the story of Anahera’s life to a Women’s Leadership chapter within my organisation. It was her story but it was shared to talk about how the deepest grief can also bring joy, happiness, love.
In thinking on this over the past few days, I thought of my Finding Happiness series of blogs, and how it is important to recount how much love and happiness Anahera in her short life, whole and complete, brought to her family and the many who knew her though never meet her. I started a blog on Facebook Letters for Anahera , and through it Anahera touched the hearts of many people around the world.
This is the tribute video I put together for the talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvJhVV9RUSA
More Information
Trisomy 21 (Down’s syndrome);
Trisomy 13 (Patau Syndrome);
Trisomy 18 (Edward’s syndrome).
