A space to grieve: New Ulm moms connect for monument to infertility and loss
Ann Vote experienced three miscarriages over the course of four years. Each time, she was devastated.
“The journey of grief that you go on, nobody can prepare you for,” she said. “Those miscarriages and the grief I didn’t even know could exist in me, hit me right in the face.”
She and her husband couldn’t talk about their loss for months, she said, and each handled their grief differently.
“We did not talk about it after the day that we lost our last one,” Vote, 37, said. “We did not talk for eight months about that loss, about what that baby could have been.”
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But this summer, she heard about a project taking root in her hometown of New Ulm: A group of women who had experienced similar loss had come together to build a dedicated space in the New Ulm Cemetery for people navigating infertility, miscarriages, infant loss and stillbirths can go to grieve and reflect.
It was exactly what Vote had needed, years before, as she navigated an all too common, and often isolating, loss.
“I have cried my tears in the car, and in the shower, and out on a walk,” she said. “And, I’ve had all these feelings and emotions and all this stuff come up. But, there’s nowhere for me to feel like this is my space, or a safe space.”
When a fellow mom heard about Vote’s experience, she quietly reached out to let her know of the memorial effort. That’s how she met Paige Hawkins, 32, of Mankato, and Lynn Fink, 40, of New Ulm. Both women, like many in the group, brought their own stories of loss to the project and found solace in their shared grief. It was an informal group at first, and steadily grew to 23 members.
Pregnancy loss, Fink said, doesn’t often bring with it the public rituals of mourning that other loss might. There’s no funeral, no gravesite. And the grief, she said, is often something you have to navigate alone. She experienced that firsthand, through miscarriages, infertility and after her infant son died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Fink said she struggled, at first, finding people who might understand.
“We didn’t really feel like there was that support system in any way, shape or form, besides just having your family there,” Fink said. “But, without them knowing what to say or do, it’s kind of hard”
But a friend in New Ulm who had also experienced a loss connected with the group of mothers now working to build the memorial.
“I know that these girls, they’ve been through similar stuff. I know they’re going to know how I’m feeling,” she said.
Hawkins had a similar experience. Having a support system with her husband and family was important after her son Wyatt was stillborn at 29 weeks.
“We were planning not only for a birth, but also a death, all at the same time,” after learning that her baby’s chances of survival were slim, she said. “That was a very traumatic thing.”
Being surrounded by other women who’d had similar experiences, she said, made her healing even stronger.
“It’s hard for some people who have not gone through loss like any of this that they don’t know what to say,” she said. “There’s those golden rules. If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. But, they also think if you don’t have anything to say and they are uncomfortable, they just don’t want to talk about it. When you have people in your life that do talk about it because they have gone through these experiences, it’s even better, and a lot more of a comfort.”
The purpose of the memorial was to give space to those who may need support and community as they navigate their loss, Fink said.
“Grief is like the ocean,” she said. “There are really big waves and there are some really small ones. And it just kind of depends on which one’s going to hit. ... There’s some days where it’s crystal clear and it’s flat and you can go on with your day. And then, there are other days where it’s a huge storm, and you never know what it’s going to be like.”
Never alone
By spring 2021, the New Ulm Cemetery will have a stone patio, benches, plants and a stone statue of a woman holding an angel baby. Families will be able to purchase engraved stone pavers as a permanent memorial to their loved one.
Grief experts say that having a place to visit and remember can aid in the healing process not just for grieving mothers, but for partners, siblings and grandparents. It offers people who are quietly grieving a place to feel less alone.
A memorial space brings people together, and also connects them to others who know the pain of losing a child, said Candy McVicar, founder of the Missing Grace Foundation, a Rogers, Minn., nonprofit that provides resources for families and health care providers around child loss, stillbirth, miscarriage and infertility.
“Having a place to gather, to go with your family to the statue like this will be extremely beneficial,” McVicar said. “We all want to see our baby’s name somewhere. We all want a place to remember them together. We all want to be able to feel that the community supports us and that’s representative of that.”
Sarah Longacre isn’t involved in the New Ulm project, but she says creating a space where mothers and families can visit to process their emotions is a powerful thing.
She is a founder and birth doula at the nonprofit Blooma Minneapolis, a wellness center for new and expecting mothers, where she also provides support to women going through miscarriage and pregnancy loss. That work is rooted in her own experience of losing a daughter, Sophia Love.
“I love the idea of the monument having all the names and thinking that my child might be playing with one of these children,” she said. “I have the space of knowing that I’m not the only one who had to leave the hospital without a child in my arms.”
Vote was drawn to the memorial project because she knows that there are others who get it —who have experienced grief like hers — and she knows that there will be others in the future who will need support of people who understand, as she did. She hopes their group of moms can create a spot where people who need it can find comfort in a beautiful place. She hopes it will remind them that their child isn’t forgotten, and they’re not alone.
“I know there’s others,” she said. “I don’t have to hide that this is a piece of me. I get to share, this is a piece of me.”