Angel – Day 37

Dare to Tell – Day 37

Stephanie’s Story

Angel

It was a really bad chapter. I had started a business with some partners and my family was heavily invested. The dealings had been strange for some time between partners and shareholders prompting my father and I to request a meeting with our company’s CFO. In the meeting we learned that our shares had “disappeared” in a restructuring of the company. I lost 8 years of work. I had a gut feeling that it had been going on for quite some time. When we confronted it, all the details came into the light of day.

I finally confronted the individual responsible only 2 months after losing my child. Losing my son was the worst nightmare that had come true. Once my worst fear was realized, the dreaded confrontation was no longer as scary. It had to be done. After the worst had happened I realized, ‘you don’t get to treat me like that anymore’ and was finally empowered to stand up for myself.

I could no longer allow my fear take over. I had to control my being complicit and allowing myself be degraded and dehumanized.

My son was born premature and placed in the neo-natal intensive care unit in the children’s hospital. For 11 days he was doing great; all the brain scans were good, his lungs were developing well; he was gaining weight. On day 12, they called and said “get here as soon as you can.” He’d taken a turn and they didn’t know why.

When we showed up at the hospital it was clear something was really, really amiss. The hallways and private rooms were all full of grieving families. It was the top day for death of babies; they had never had such a record number die all at once.

I kept asking what’s going on. I immediately suspected that something had been administered to the babies. They have such weak immune systems, it wouldn’t take much. They told us we had to make plans to remove the body immediately. We didn’t want an autopsy, he’d suffered enough. We had him cremated.

I wish they had kept him until the test results were back.

Seven days later the hospital didn’t call as promised with test results. Three weeks later I called and asked for the results. They had to have the doctor call me back. He told me that all of the tests for natural causes came back negative.

I pleaded with him “If you know something please tell me” he said, “I can’t reveal other patients information.” This was a nightmare. I was left with the only option for cause of death being a human medical error. He asked what we did with the body since it would be needed for further testing. But there was no body to conduct more tests on. Not to have the details was brutal.

Losing my baby was such a profound eye opener, a big bang experience of my life, a tremendous explosion that allowed me put everything else that was wrong in my life into place.

It made me say, I’m tired of living in fear.

I needed to take things seriously. I was in business with friends and I wasn’t taking the proper legal steps. From the onset I hurt myself. I was so worried about honoring other people, they would say “we have more experience, you’re young you don’t really know.”

I never trusted the small voice inside. My gut had told me that things were wrong and I was afraid to listen. Learning to honor that voice, my voice, was a huge part of the journey. I always heard it but I didn’t have the courage until my child died. I can’t believe I had to go through this to stop ignoring what was inside all along.

I tried to put the focus on how I could go forward in a more positive way. It wasn’t easy at all. All of my base human desires and instincts kicked in to fight and defend but when you realize there is not going to be any corroboration, there was no one to listen, the doors were shut, then you have to move on. I was angry for quite a while; for a year maybe two, I would get overwhelmed by how sad and angry I was with so much loss and hurt in such a short time.

A year later my daughter was born and we have an older son; that helped me wake up every day and go forward. I tried to see everything from my son’s perspective – to see things new and fresh, to enter his space. Children are so oblivious, my son found joy in everything!

My husband was tremendous at clarifying matters, staying clear-headed and on the high road; so we could look forward not back. We didn’t want to use all our savings to get involved in legal battles. More importantly, we didn’t want that energy in our life.

I feel I’ve had this experience for a really huge reason, so I could finally learn to move on from stuck places, and that’s liberating.

I had forgotten who I was, what my gifts were that I came to share and contribute to the world. It had gotten lost in the daily grind. I had to get back into alignment with the natural creative processes, my background as an artist; to learn to connect with joy again.

Having such painful experiences helped me wake up to the miserable situation I was in. The human response is to fight when you’ve been wronged rather than let go and realize there is a bigger existence that you are meant to step into. Breaking through the fear has been a huge gift. And I will always be grateful for the tiny messenger-angel I had for only 12 days, who helped me achieve that breakthrough.

 – Stephanie Mullani is the creator of Natural Girl Diary, a resource for Joyful Natural Living http://www.naturalgirldiary.com