Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (37 page)

This book would not exist without the dedication of my co-editor, Brooke Warner, and publisher She Writes Press. Their commitment to bringing this compilation together and taking it out into the world is remarkable and should not be taken lightly. She Writes Press is a brave and beautiful publisher, and Brooke is a joy and an inspiration to work with on a daily basis.

This book would not exist without the film
Return to Zero
, which in itself would not have come into being without the bold “Magnificent Seven” investors who put up the equity necessary to make a quality film—one with world-class actors—about a subject matter that is so very difficult to tackle that it could not have been made inside today’s studio system. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. And to the
Return to Zero
community who, through our Kickstarter campaign and donations directly through our website, helped us to cover the costs to complete the film: Without each and every one of you, the film—and therefore this book—would not have come into the world.

I would like to thank four people without whom I could not have done any of this. To my wife, Kiley, who is my strength, and who I love and admire more than anyone on earth; to my daughter, Roxie, who lights the way for me with her spirit and love every day; to my son Cannon, whose energy both grounds and elevates all of us; and finally to my son Norbert, who would have been eight years old the year of this book’s publication—I would give every experience, every frame of the movie, every page of this book, everything away if I could just hold you in my arms for one more hour. You never breathed a breath of earth’s air into your lungs, never took a sip of its water on your own lips, but you will be forever loved and remembered as our firstborn, Roxie and Cannon’s older brother, and someone who, through his presence on this earth, has helped to change, heal, and break the silence forever. I’m so very proud of you, son, and I love you.

—Sean Hanish

F
irst and foremost I want to thank Sean Hanish for his commitment to his own story and passion, and for his enthusiasm and energy in partnering on this project. I also want to thank each and every person who submitted their work to be included in this book. The hardest part about working on it was making the selections. Thank you to Caitlyn Levin and Krissa Lagos, my team at She Writes Press, for everything they did to make this project a reality. To our proofreader, Carissa Bluestone, and our designers, Dede Cummings and Kiran Spees. This project has been a work of love, and She Writes Press is honored to be playing a role in birthing it into the world.

—Brooke Warner

Courtenay Baker
is a single mom of four: Milo (8), Violet (6) and twins Juliet and Willa (3). She miscarried her first and fourth pregnancies; the twins were conceived using fertility treatments. Courtenay has a degree in Secondary Speech and Theatre Education from the University of Northern Iowa. She manages a full-time job, a part-time job teaching tap dance lessons, the activities of her children, and she sometimes gets to blog at Soup: Midwestern Mama Cooking up Life in the Heartland.
http://www.iasoupmam.com

Jessica Schlabach Baldanzi
teaches writing and American Literature at Goshen College and blogs about comics and graphic novels at
goshencommons.org
. She also is a regular student at Spacious Heart Yoga, where all the instructors are awesome.

Heather Bell
’s work has been published in
Rattle
,
Grasslimb
,
Barnwood
,
Poets/Artists
,
Red Fez
,
Ampersand
and many other publications. She was nominated for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 Pushcart Prize from Rattle, won the New Letters 2009 Poetry Prize, and most recently was a finalist for the 2013 Consequence Prize in Poetry. Heather has also published four books. Any more details can be found here:
http://hrbell.wordpress.com/

Jane Blanchard
resides in Georgia. Her poetry has appeared in many venues in the United States, in Ireland, and in the United Kingdom.

Susan Blanco
is a wife, mother, and elementary school literacy specialist. She is also a volunteer group facilitator of the Peninsula chapter of HAND, Helping After Neonatal Death. This is her first professionally published piece.

Brandon Bodnar
lives with his wife, Anastasia, in Alexandria, VA. He served an enlistment as an Arabic Linguist in the U.S. Air Force, studied Computer Science at Iowa State University, and recently graduated from Cornell Law School.

Jessica Bomarito
is a writer and editor living in Michigan with her husband Dwayne, and children Logan and Savannah. Her daughter’s Tessa and Sabine were stillborn at 36 weeks following a complete abruption. They will always have a piece of her heart.

Ian Byrd
is husband to Alyssa and father of three beautiful children Liam (9), Henry (3) and Sydney Grace. Our story began on November 30, 2007 when we learned that Sydney had passed at 31 weeks due to a fully concealed placental abruption, probably in the middle of the night. Upon upgrading to a new fixer upper home in 2012, our first task was to beautify the barren backyard landscape with a cottonwood tree and place Sydney’s ashes back to the earth. It was a beautiful healing moment for us and the aptly named “Sydney Tree” is thriving and reaching for the heavens.

Since the stillbirth of her son in May of 2013, following a miscarriage a year and a half before,
Kate Camp
has been outspoken on matters of grief and pregnancy loss. She lives in Louisiana with her husband, daughter, and pets. Kate is a veterinarian by trade and writes for pure enjoyment.

Amy Cartwright
is 32 years old and lives with her husband John and two children Georgia (3) and Alfie (1) in Cheshire, England. After 2 early miscarriages her first daughter Lucy was stillborn at 37 weeks
after Amy went to the hospital with reduced movements and was told that there was no heartbeat. Amy was induced immediately and Lucy was born silently at 00.58am on 24th September 2009, weighing 6lb 13oz.

When
Lee Cavalli-Turner
’s son Albie died at 34 weeks and 5 days, his mum was left with not only a broken heart but also a gift she had never known existed. In the time that followed Albie’s death, due to IUGR, the smaller, everyday things in life appeared even more beautiful. Now, Lee rarely goes anywhere without her camera as capturing beautiful images is her way of showing Albie the world he never took a breath in.

Alexis Marie Chute
is an award-winning Canadian artist, photographer, and writer. She writes a blog called
Wanted, Chosen, Planned
about life after the loss of a child and has penned two books for bereaved parents. Alexis Marie uses her art to find healing and this work may be viewed on her website,
www.AlexisMarieChute.com
, or in one of her many international exhibitions.

Stacy Clark
is a freelance writer and the mother of two daughters, by birth and adoption. She has an MFA from Goddard College and her writings on adoptive parenting have appeared in numerous publications, including
Adoptive Families
,
Adoption Today
, and
The Pitkin Review.
Ever grateful to her daughter’s birthparents in China, she lives with her family in Florida.

Colleen Lutz Clemens
lives in Bucks County, PA, with her husband, daughter, and dogs. She teaches literature at Kutztown University. She is co-editor and contributor to
Philadelphia Reflections
,
Western Washington Reflections
, and
Western Pennsylvania Reflections
and has been published in several magazines, books, and journals. When she isn’t wrangling those in her charge, she is reading, writing, and knitting.

Born and raised in the Garden State,
Lainie Blum Cogan
is an alumna of Barnard College. She is a teacher, consultant, and aspiring writer.

Wendy Staley Colbert
’s personal essays have been featured in
Salon
,
The Feminist Wire
,
Whole Life Times, ParentMap
,
This Great Society
,
Writing in Public
,
Feel More Better
and
Writing Is My Drink
and in the anthologies
We Came to Say
, and
We Came Back to Say
. Her essay “Shopping for Breasts” will be featured in Kerry Cohen’s anthology, The Dressing Room, forthcoming from Seal Press in 2014. For more information, see
wendystaleycolbert.com
.

Judi
and
Star Corvinelli
reside in Brooklyn New York and have been happily married since 2006. The couple has always wanted to be parents and began their journey in 2011. Finally, their wish came true and Star became pregnant with their daughter Grace. In July of 2012, during a routine checkup, they found out that their daughter’s heart had stopped beating and she was born still at 24 weeks. Star, as a counselor expresses her self through words. Judi, an artist and musician created many pieces throughout the last year to express how she feels about the loss. The piece “Loving Grace” is one of the couple’s favorite and was created by Judi about a month after the loss of their daughter.

Franchesca Cox
is a creative soul, dream-chaser, wife, and mom. Since her loss, she is in a passionate pursuit to not only live life but squeeze every last drop out of it. She writes a blog,
Small Bird Studios
, and has authored a book,
Celebrating Pregnancy Again
, for bereaved moms who find themselves expecting again.

Barbara Crooker
’s work has appeared in journals such as:
Nimrod
,
The
G
reen Mountains Review, The Valparaiso Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, Tar River Review,
and anthologies, such as
The Bedford Introduction to Literature.
Her books are
Radiance
, winner
of the Word Press First Book Award (2005) and finalist for the 2006 Paterson Poetry Prize;
Line Dance
(Word Press, 2008), winner of the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence;
More
(C&R Press, 2010); and
Gold
(Poeima Poetry Series, Cascade Books, 2013). Her first child, a daughter, was stillborn in 1971.

Amy Dahlenburg
is a 31 year old married mum of 7 children, only two are here on earth with her though. She has endured 4 miscarriages and one stillbirth. Her stillborn son’s name is Noah. Amy’s life turned upside down when he died, and to cope she took up photography as therapy. It’s now her life’s passion and she hopes to bless others with this gift that has blessed her and provided much healing. Amy’s two earthly children, Charlotte and Josiah, give her a little bit of healing everyday and a lot of comfort as she continues to grieve her other children that were too precious for this earth.

Erica Danega
is a mom of three, Damon and Reese here on earth and their big brother Seth, an angel. She lives in Central New York with her loving husband Brent and their children. She’s a life long dreamer who loves to create new and beautiful things. Erica blogs about her experience with the seasons of loss and her quest to be inspired by the beauty of the simple moments of life. Follow her journey at
www.mysonflower.com
.

Heather Lynne Davis
received her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University and has published poems in journals such as
Cream City Review
,
Gargoyle
,
Poet Lore
, and many others. Her book
The Lost Tribe of Us
received the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She works in the international public health field as a communications manager and lives in Virginia with her husband, the poet Jose Padua, and their two children.

Janet Lynn Davis
, a former technical writer/editor and communications specialist, lives with her husband in a rustic area north of
Houston, Texas. Her poetry, both free verse and tanka, has appeared in numerous online and print venues over the past several years. Currently, she is serving as the vice president of the Tanka Society of America; she also maintains a poetry blog called
twigs&stones
.

Paul De Leon
and his wife live in San Antonio, Texas with their three living children. One week away from delivering their fourth, their daughter’s heart suddenly stopped beating. They delivered a stillborn baby on March 5
^th
, 2011 and have since decided to take the story of thier loss and help as many others as they possibly can.

Marina DelVecchio
is a writer and college professor in writing, literature, and Women’s Studies. Writing mainly about feminism and violence against women, her work has been published by the
Huffington Post, Her Circle Ezine, BlogHer
, and anthologized in CenGage Learning’s
Media and Violence against Women.
She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte and writing about her childhood experiences with homelessness, orphanages, and her mother’s prostitution in a memoir titled
Hanging Loosely from the Darkness
.

Patricia Dreyfus
studied writing at University of California Long Beach, University of California, Irvine, Iowa Summer Writing Festival, A Room of Her Own Retreat, and in San Miguel Allende. She belongs to The Writing Well, The Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, Academy off American Poets and PEN. She has been published in the
LA Times
,
Travelers’ Tales
, and
The Best Travel Writing
. She was a finalist for the Anderbo Poetry Prize and has won numerous other poetry awards.

Brooke Taylor Duckworth
is a wife, mom, and professor of literature in St. Louis, Missouri. She started her blog “By the Brooke” before starting a family, and after the death of her first child, Eliza, it became an unexpected lifeline for processing her grief and connecting with
other bereaved parents, many of whom are now dear friends. These days she’s busy keeping up with her high-energy husband, David, and daughter, Caroline, while teaching, writing, embarking on various DIY projects, and carrying Eliza in her heart. Brooke blogs at
http://bythebrooke.blogspot.com
.