Facing Loss Within a Nest of Care
By Rikki Hinz
About one month before the Nest of Care Perinatal Grief and Loss training cohort began, I had the tremendously confusing and painful, ambiguous loss that is the loss of a child who is still alive. I cared for my young niece for a year as a solo kinship caregiver, and then was never allowed to see or speak to her again because of family circumstances. It was a loss that I was not planning on as a potential at all, a loss that seemed nearly impossible as an outcome to the situation.
As I suppose all loss feels- impossible.
Impossible that it happened.
Impossible to feel the enormity of the emotions that come with it.
Impossible to grapple with the demands of work and everyday life in the midst of it.
The morning after the ambiguous loss of my niece, I was scheduled for a work meeting to meet with the facilitators of the Nest of Care cohort. We met at Asphodel, a Place to Die. With my grief-ridden emotional hangover from the night before, I showed up to the meeting the best I could. Immediately, I was greeted by the space, and the warmth of the training facilitators Lashanna & Marquita put me at ease. The space could hold all that I was carrying that morning, and the people welcomed all of me in. It was a relief to be reminded that there are people and spaces doing the hard and tender work that is helping others carry grief and loss. My experience at Asphodel that morning carried me through the day, and made me want to try and bravely stick with this project amidst my grief to help this training come to fruition.
Then, 4 days before the Nest of Care cohort training began, I learned I was pregnant.
There I was reeling from an ambiguous loss, trying to find my footing while making logistical plans for this perinatal grief and loss training cohort, and then something that felt impossible happened again. I was pregnant despite having been on hormone replacement therapy for the last 2 years for early onset pre-menopause.
Just a few weeks pregnant and very much within the tenuous window of having a high risk of miscarriage, I attended all three days of the initial intensive weekend of the Nest of Care Perinatal Grief and Loss training. I was unsure of how I would cope with being confronted with the harsh realities of perinatal loss all while still freshly feeling all the feels from my ambiguous loss and while simultaneously trying to hold onto this baby- physically and emotionally.
When I walked into the room to start setting up with the facilitators, I was met with ease. It was so clear that they all “got it” and that the space created was going to intentionally hold the enormity of grief and loss, both physically and emotionally.
There was a grief and loss altar in the training space that participants were invited to bring items for. I brought something of my niece’s, and placed it carefully amongst the greenery on the altar. I brought my big bins of markers that my niece used to color with for the cohort participants to use during the training as a regulating activity. Watching the participants use these markers throughout the training, regulating themselves through coloring just as my niece had done with the very same markers, brought me comfort.
Together over the weekend and in the following monthly sessions, the facilitators and participants created a container, physically and emotionally, that could hold the once seemingly impossible enormity that is perinatal grief and loss. To witness everyone bravely facing perinatal loss head on, many of whom have also had their own personal experiences with it, gave me the strength to show up to each day of training. Over time, the training showed me all the possibilities that lie within grief and loss, and my feelings of impossibility began to shrink.
The cohort truly created a nest of care together, a sense of caring that was palpable in each follow up session. Although this training was not a support group space, it felt extremely supportive to me to witness all these professionals’ unwavering passion for supporting families grappling with perinatal grief and loss.
I’m 7 months pregnant now, and the Nest of Care training cohort will have its last session just a month before my due date. I feel grounded in knowing that there is a community of folks out there who are holding the spectrum of impossibilities and possibilities that come with perinatal grief and loss. It gives me peace of mind for myself, and for all parents who may be facing perinatal grief and loss, and the uncertainties that come with pregnancy and birth. I feel so grateful to the facilitators and participants for creating such a comforting Nest of Care, and I am so thankful that all of them are extending this nest of care to the families they support through their work.