Grieving Parents Support Network

Find ways for healthy grieving

May We All Heal 2017 – Mothering a Love so Big

 Mothering a LOVE so big  transcends time and space, even death.

Welcome

I’m honoured to have you join May ‘We All Heal 2017 – Mothering* a Love so Big’, our mindfulness based conscious way to give your heart and soul the space to focus on grieving and healing.

This is the 3rd time we will be running May We All Heal (MWAH). You can read more about its origin here.
Thank yourself for being here. Even if you’ve been part of MWAH previously, take a few minutes to read about this year’s event, the possible alternatives to choose from and the most important details.

This year’s event – Mothering a LOVE so big

The topic for MWAH 2017 is ‘Mothering a LOVE so big’. Mothering a baby** or child** that is not physically present can be challenging, because it is not the norm. We encourage you to reflect on what this means for you, and how you want to mother your child, no matter what the world around you might think.

It is also about mothering ourself, the post-loss self. Clearly, most of us have no experience doing this mothering or being a mother following the loss of a child or children. This is what we want to practise and what we will focus on specifically this year.

MWAH - Mothering a love so big - 2017 prompts

May We All Heal 2017

Prompts

The program contains 31 prompts, one for each day in May. This year the women who co-created the process chose to provide simple, single words which leave room for your personal creative interpretation. Rather than thinking too much about the individual topics, I suggest you allow them to take you to where you need to go.

Alternative ways

You can also choose a more personalised way to embrace grieving and healing for yourself, for example:
– Choose your own prompts, if you feel the ones we suggest do not relate to you or your experience.
– Focus on hand-lettering daily for 31 days, following the prompts.
– Write your child’s name in 31 different ways, embedding the prompt in your reflections.
– Write 31 names of children of your fellow mothers-in-loss. You might like to check out #lovesobig hashtag on Instagram (IG) and Facebook (FB) to get an idea of what this could look like.

Share & Hashtags

Sadly we don’t need a village to raise our child, because he or she has died.
Instead, we need a community of like-hearted parents who support us through the mothering/fathering* of our child, the child we won’t get to bring up in real life. Please help spread the word about MWAH. Tell your support group and others you know who might benefit from this. You can do this by sharing the event on Facebook or tagging your friends in IG posts about the project.

Please use the following hashtags when sharing: #MayWeAllHeal and #MWAH2017. This also allows you to find other MWAH participants. Share on your personal IG and FB or share on the May We All Heal page. The event page is a temporary page and due to FB’s rules it can only span over a two week period.
On the May We All Heal page I will create a post each day with the prompt as the title. You are invited to add your reflections (image or words) as a comment.

Some important details

The MWAH 2017 map

Add yourself to our MWAH map of the world. This way we can see all the people who are attending and where they are located. Who knows, maybe there is someone close to you?
Choose what kind of details you add. At a minimum, please add your city and your street and use your FB name.

Here is the map (click here) and the instructions:
1. use the search box to locate your city
2. click “add to map” on the marker that appears
3. edit and replace the name of your location with your own name (this is important!)
4. save
Any unnamed pins will be deleted.

Let people know what you’re doing

Go the the MWAH 2017 event page to find this image ‘Special Notice to Family & Friends’. It’s good to let them know what you are doing and how they can support you.

Pre-event tasks

There are a couple of short videos on theMWAH 2017 event page with some pre-event tasks. Check them out, as they will support you through the process.

What if…
…I can’t do every day?

Don’t worry about whether you can do this every single day or not. It’s not about how many days you give yourself the time to reflect. It’s about the fact that you do.

…I don’t have the companion book?

Choose a notebook that fits your needs, with respect to size and the paper quality (preferably without any lines or grids to allow free creative expression).

 

Please note

* Even though this event is addressed to ‘mothers’ and ‘mothering’ it applies similarly to ‘fathers’ and ‘fathering’. Given we are supporting each other through the month of May because of Mother’s day, I speak in the female version.

** ‘Child’ includes baby, babies, child and children, no matter the age or gestation they died.