Happy New Year!

The New Year always inspires me. The opportunity to bring back a small amount of order in my life and focus is rewarding.  Often, I become sidetracked, but anything I accomplish toward order and focus, I consider a bonus!

My personal challenge in 2017 is, “What can I do?”  It is a small question with mostly wonderful consequences, asked of anyone that may cross your path. In a short amount of time I have been amazed at the overwhelmingly positive response to this simple question.

Recently, I asked my friends, aka. quilters, for help with a charity project. They said, “yes” and we are now supporting Western New York Perinatal Bereavement Network. Their mission is to assist the community in meeting the needs of people facing perinatal death, the death of a baby from miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth or early infant death. As the mother of three healthy children, I can only imagine the love these families have for their babies and cannot even begin to imagine the grief of these families, when for whatever reason their precious babies are taken.

There is a small group of us that meet and work on items requested by WNY Perinatal Bereavement Network to provide to their families; tiny burial gowns, burial pouches, and small memorial envelopes. When we first came together to work on this project, we shed tears. It was difficult to think of the loss and the grief of these precious parents. We work to create tiny items of beauty to help in some small way.  We use items that have been mostly donated like: wedding gowns we cut into the small envelopes, gowns, and pouches to be sewn, along with beads and ribbons.

“To the Child in my Heart
Precious, tiny, sweet little one,
You will always be to me
So perfect, pure and innocent,
Just as you were meant to be.
We dreamed of you and your life
And all that it could be.
We waited and longed for you to come
And join our family.
We never had the chance to play,
To laugh, to rock, to wiggle
We long to hold you, touch you now
And listen to you giggle.
I’ll always be your mother,
He’ll always be your dad,
You’ll always be our child-
The child that we had.
But now you’re gone…
But yet you’re here.
We’ll sense you everywhere.
You are our sorrow,
And our joy.
There’s love in every tear.
Just know our love
goes deep and strong
We’ll forget you never-
The child we had, but never had,
And yet we’ll have forever.

The Forget Me Not
”

What can I do? I ask you to consider this as one of your challenges for 2017. See what a difference it will make in the world around you and in your own self!