Healing together

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This article was published 16/10/2023 (692 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kathryn Flatt and Malinda Lee share a painful connection.

Both are bereaved mothers who lost children during pregnancy and struggled to find adequate mental-health care to cope with their grief.

“I had a pretty traumatic experience,” says Flatt, whose son Oliver died in 2018 when she was six months pregnant. “We left the hospital with a beautiful painted box, but no support.”

Lee’s experience was similar. Her son Roy died two years ago, hours before a scheduled C-section. Staff at the hospital were caring and attentive, but it was near impossible to find grief counselling in Winnipeg that specialized in pregnancy loss.

It was also difficult to broach the topic with friends and loved ones.

“Sometimes you feel like you have to keep it in, like a dirty little secret, because you don’t want to burden others,” Lee says. “Most of the people I know, their babies have never died. They can be kind and wonderful, but they don’t understand that specific pain.”

After suffering in isolation, Lee and Flatt met during the Dragonfly Support Program’s inaugural group therapy session. The Women’s Health Clinic (WHC) program offers counselling services and peer support for people impacted by miscarriage, pregnancy termination or the death of an infant.

“It was so nice to share with people who actually knew what you were going through,” Lee says. “It took away that sense of loneliness.”

The Dragonfly program received provincial funding and launched in 2021, following years of WHC lobbying to try and fill the gap that exists for these kinds of mental-health services.

“One in four people experience pregnancy or infant loss in their lifetime,” says Sarah Morand, a Dragonfly counsellor. “There’s such a huge need out there because it’s an experience that is often stigmatized or not talked about or silenced … especially with early pregnancy loss.”

That stigma, Morand says, stems from living in a society where death and reproduction have historically been treated as equally taboo topics of discussion.

The death of a child is also characterized as “out-of-order grief,” she says, making it more traumatic or jarring than the death of someone who has lived a full life.

Flatt believes it’s harder for outsiders to empathize with what can often be an invisible struggle.

“What people don’t see, they don’t understand,” says Flatt, who lost seven other pregnancies before giving birth to a “miracle baby” this year. “They’re not seeing the fight it took to get there or however long you carried your child … whether they’re lost at four weeks or 40 weeks.”

Talking to peers can help lift the veil, Morand says. “There can be a lot of validation and support in sharing those similar experiences.”

Lee experienced the power of sharing first-hand within her own family. It’s a revelation that’s inspired her to become an advocate.

“I’m Chinese Canadian and … infant loss is in our family, but we never talked about it,” she says, adding that both of her grandmothers lost children in infancy. After Roy’s death, Lee also learned of a cousin who died as a baby.

“I want to break the silence on the stigma, not just (within) my culture, but for everyone.”

Lee and Flatt bonded in the Dragonfly program. When the weekly sessions ended, the pair, along with several other participants, decided to start their own sharing circle to keep the connection going. They called the group ORE — A Place of Tender Love and Compassion, in honour of their sons. (ORE stands for Oliver, Roy and Elliot, the names of the founding members’ late babies.)

“Ore symbolizes strength, as well as precious metals that are within, so it was kind of perfect,” Lee says of the name.

The group offers peer support through virtual meetings every two weeks, a group chat and in-person activities. Parents can add the names of their children to the group’s online “wall of love” and sign up to receive a yearly birthday card commemorating their child’s birth or death date.

“It’s an amazing feeling; it’s all the things you wish were available to you,” Flatt says. “It has taken such a raw, traumatic, sad experience and has allowed us to feel these immense pockets of joy.”

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. On Saturday, ORE is hosting its first community conference in collaboration with the Women’s Health Clinic.

Connecting with Compassion is a full-day affair, featuring talks by subject experts, group art projects, movement workshops and Indigenous teachings. The goal is to build community and offer bereaved individuals a safe space to explore different ways of processing their grief.

“Time doesn’t erase what happened,” Flatt says. “(We’re) trying to bring the community in to say: ‘Hey, this happens… let’s talk about it and let’s heal from it together.”

At the moment, Dragonfly remains the only formalized counselling program dedicated to pregnancy and infant loss in Manitoba. While staff offer training for health-care providers across the province to better address this kind of loss, demand for service remains high.

Peer support groups, such as ORE, are an important part of the puzzle.

“It fills a need of creating a space built by community for community,” says Morand, who will be leading a journalling workshop on Saturday.

Lee is hopeful the Connecting with Compassion conference will become an annual event.

“We want to make it bigger and more accessible,” she says.

For Lee, working with ORE and creating space for other parents has been a meaningful way of honouring her son’s memory.

“It definitely makes me feel connected to him,” she says. “Roy was my only baby, so I’m mothering him the best I can from afar.”

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

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