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Guest Post: Michele Benyo from Good Grief Parenting

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This Guest Post comes from Michele Benyo is a Certified Grief Recovery Specialist®, early childhood educator and parent coach, and the founder of Good Grief Parenting . I’m an educator at heart. I don’t say those words lightly. When I discover something that I enjoy I want to share my passion with others and lead them to look deeper—where the best pieces are—to discover things they may not see at first glance. Things they may not learn on their own, or from someone who doesn’t have the passion.  So when I became a mom, it wasn’t long before I knew I had to go back to the University to get my masters in Early Childhood Family Education and become a parent educator. I graduated two months before my second child was born, and a year later I began what to me was the best job in the world.  As an early childhood parent educator, I got to spend every day with parents—mostly moms and some dads—of children my children’s ages. I brought the information and resources on all topics regarding pare
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We Are Not Just Teachers - We Are Mothers First

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This guest post is a collaborative piece written by Jackie Mancinelli & Liz O’Donnell of Aaliyah in Action and PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy When I first read Liz’s story online, I could not stop staring at the accompanying photograph. In it, she cradled her daughter, Aaliyah. Instead of Liz looking overjoyed at meeting her daughter, she looked heartbroken. I recognized myself in that photograph because I have a very similar one from when I first met my son, Richard.  In 2016, I had an emergency C-section to deliver my son at just 33 weeks along. He was in distress, and the doctors decided that it was best to deliver him and allow the NICU team to work with him.  Once he was born, I expected to hear a cry, but instead I heard silence. And then murmurs between the doctor and midwife. I could hear snippets of their conversation: “lots of blood…” “not a placental abruption…” “placenta looks intact…” I could see a flurry of movement to my left as the NICU team took Richard. I screamed
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Have I Grieved Long Enough?

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      As I stood in front of my son's plaque, I looked at the Christmas decorations I had just put onto it. This was now the sixth holiday season without him. Six years without him opening presents by the tree on Christmas morning. Six years without holiday songs and hot chocolate and Christmas lights. Six years of wondering what our lives would look like if he were still here.      I now have two daughters that consume any additional time I have outside of work. The holiday season is spent baking cookies, making crafts, and looking at neighborhood light displays. We drink hot chocolate and watch Christmas movies together. We marvel at the magic of our Elf on a Shelf elves, Fonzo and Sparkle. My husband picks out their Christmas pajamas, and we stay up late wrapping their presents. Although I feel so unbelievably happy to have my rainbow daughters,  I still find myself at Richard's plaque, wishing I could do all of these same things with him.       Is six years long enough to g
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Guest Post: Lynn Polin from Kindred Beginnings

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This Guest Post comes from Lynn Polin, the Creator of Kindred Beginnings , a family-building support community. The Morning. It’s 7:47 AM and I’m in a sweat as I sit in traffic, my heart beating out of my chest because I have exactly 8 minutes to fight the car drop-off line, park and sign into the main office before I’m considered tardy.  This is exactly why I leave my house at 6:30 AM on a regular morning. But these days my mornings are far from regular. I left my house early this morning. 6:15 AM to be exact. I drove in the pitch black, parked in the same spot I always do and walked into the doctor’s office for my 7:00 AM morning monitoring appointment.  “Hi. I know I’m early but was hoping if I came early I can get out earlier and make it to work on time.” No such luck today. I didn’t get the 6:30 or even the 6:45 appointment. It was the 7. I had been up all night dreading the 7 because I knew my morning would be anything but zen. At 7:01 I’m still in the waiting room tapping my foo
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My Story of Pregnancy Loss and Hope

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My husband and I began dating early in high school. Even when we were that young, he talked about how much he wanted to be a dad. I figured that I would like to have kids, but it just felt so far away and too abstract for me to really consider. I could not picture myself as a mother. In 2014, I decided that I was finally ready to start a family. I had finished graduate school, studied abroad, had a strong career, and owned a home. Those seemed to be the difficult tasks, so I figured that getting pregnant would be so simple. And it was. We got pregnant almost immediately, and we proudly announced it to our families. No one told me that staying pregnant could be tricky.  We went to our 8-week appointment, and the baby appeared to be measuring behind with a slow heart rate. We were assured that my dates could simply be off, so we returned two weeks later for a follow-up ultrasound. We were informed that the baby had stopped growing, its heart had stopped, and that my pregnancy was “no lon
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An Open Letter to Who Would Have Been Richard's Kindergarten Teacher

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  Dear Kindergarten Teacher,  You are missing a little boy from your student list this year. He would have light brown hair, dark brown eyes, a nose like his father’s, and hands like his mother’s. He would be wearing a Batman t-shirt, often with a cape attached, zigzagging down the sidewalk, in a rush to fight bad guys.  There will be an empty cubby that should have his backpack and lunchbox haphazardly stuffed together. The lunchbox would likely always have some sort of sticky residue - grape jelly or applesauce, perhaps. But I know you would try your best to keep his things organized, reminding him to neatly place the papers in his backpack.  There will be an empty desk that should be labeled with his name: Richard. He would have a hard time writing his full name because it has so many letters. The “R” would likely be backwards, and the “a” would look more like an “o.” But I know that you would have been patient with him, hovering over his desk, encouraging him to practice some more.
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Why Does Start Healing Together Focus on Educators?

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By nature, the teaching profession is about self-sacrifice. Although our workweek is around 40 hours, we work far more than that. Between planning, grading, tutoring, mentoring, attending meetings, and completing paperwork (among so many other duties), it is impossible to get everything done within our contractual working time. Instead, we arrive early, leave late, and lose chunks of our weekend to work.  For my entire teaching career, this has been me. As much as I try to find a healthy balance between work and my personal life, I have yet to do so. As I work on Start Healing Together, I do a lot of reflecting on my personal experiences with grief, and it has made it abundantly clear why I have chosen to focus on educators.  My missed miscarriage I attended an evening appointment for an ultrasound to check on the growth of the baby. It was at this appointment that my husband and I were told that the pregnancy was no longer viable and that surgery was my next option. Despite knowing th
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