My heart went out to Gary Barlow and his wife Dawn when I heard how their baby Poppy had been stillborn. In my work as a therapist with women who have lost babies to miscarriage and stillbirth, I know there are intense feelings of loss around what might have been – the dreams that have been so cruelly taken away – mixed with intense gratitude for the blessings they do have.

A friend of mine recently miscarried her baby. She is a young, healthy woman, who already has a child, so she is baffled why she miscarried. She said: “When I heard about women who had miscarried, I used to think of it as matter of fact. But now experiencing it myself, it is a whole different world. It’s almost like I now belong to a club, where there are so many of us but no-one talks about it and women suffer in silence. Now I think: was there a spirit? Where has it gone? What was God’s reason to take my child away from me?”

I wish I had an answer. The way I chose to respond to her pain was in creative writing, via a poem:

To the twinkle that blinked Continue reading →