How a New Tattoo Helped Me Process My Grief & Gave Me Closure

As if losing my child — feeling like my body failed me and the complete and utter devastation that accompanies all of that was not enough — there was no goodbye. Just a baby growing in my body that I loved more than everything, and then, just as quickly, empty arms, an implosion of my entire existence and untenable numbness, but never forgetting.

I never got to hold my baby. As most women who’ve experienced a pregnancy loss can attest, one of the hardest things about miscarrying is that in some cases, such as mine, aside from the unthinkable things some people say to you, there was never a baby that I got to hold and say goodbye to.

Not that that would have made it any better or that I would have felt any less terrible, but it would have given me much needed closure. You can’t truly begin to heal until you can let go, and it feels impossible to let go of something you never had a tangible hold of.

Miscarrying is very lonely. Honestly, as a mother you’re left feeling slightly crazy because you loved this baby so hard and you knew that baby and felt it grow inside you, even when no one else knew he was there. Then, in an instant, he is no longer. Everyone else gets to move on, put it behind them, but not that mom. That’s where I was stuck for a long time.

I knew that I was a mom to three children. I am a mom of three children. Thanks to changing hormones, morning sickness, and the sheer knowledge that he was growing inside me, he was real to me from the moment I knew he existed. I’d done it twice before. I recognized all of it, like a familiar friend and I knew what to expect next ... the arrival of our baby.

I was excited and terrified just like both times before, but it never came to fruition. It just ended, as quickly as it had begun. Well, that’s not completely true. It was traumatic. The only thing I was left with was my inconsolable grief.

When my obstetrician informed me that my baby no longer had a heartbeat at 11 weeks and five days, I was in disbelief. How could this be happening? I saw the ultrasound; aside from the missing heartbeat, he was perfect in every way. My pregnancy was completely normal. There was no cramping, there was no bleeding, there was no pain to sound the alarm.

There was just a perfect baby, slight brown spotting (as with both previous pregnancies), and the doctor telling me that my baby was dead, followed by disbelief, howling, sobbing, and the sound of my blood running through my body which, at that point, infuriated me because how dare I live when my baby wasn’t? How dare I have the audacity to go on when he couldn’t?

I remained stuck in that lonely, devastated, grief- and anger- filled place for years. Pushing down my sadness, ignoring my fury with no outlet and no way of getting closure. I was simply existing, going through the motion of living. How was I ever supposed to get to the end of the pain and devastation without a way to process and say goodbye to my child?

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I knew that I would never get to hold him, kiss his forehead, feel his tiny hands around my neck, or walk him into the first day of kindergarten. I’d never get to see him play soccer with my dad or get spoiled by my mom. My husband would never get to have a son, and my daughters would never get to have a little brother. There was so much I would never get to do with my third baby, including getting to say goodbye.

I’d never even get to have a single photo with all our children in it. That simple thing — a photo, that we all take for granted and have a million and one of our children — I would never get even one, and it broke my heart into more pieces than you could imagine. My miscarriage was the wound that kept getting ripped open, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop the pain.

Then, I got an idea. Two of my brothers are tattoo artists. The same two brothers came to the hospital on the morning I had my D&E and spent hours in the waiting room with my husband as I went through the hardest thing a mother can go through.

I asked them to help me say goodbye and, simultaneously, give me something tangible to mark the existence of my son. They willingly obliged, eager to do anything they could to salve my heart. I was given the greatest, most compassionate and kind gift anyone could have ever offered, something I was sure was impossible, I was given closure — or at least the closest thing to it in this situation.

On what should have been my son’s fifth birthday, I was given a tattoo by my brother of my entire family: two big birds on a branch, two smaller birds on that same branch, and one tiny bird flying away in the distance toward the heavens. For me, it is my first, last, and only complete family photo in existence, and every single time I look down at my wrist, I smile knowing he existed in my world if even just for a little while.