By Emily Rowden
Mommy to Alice Ada – stillborn in 2020
Malcolm – Aug 2021 to March 2022 – Mitochondrial Disease
and rainbow baby Ada – 2026
In September 2020, we lost our daughter, Alice Ada, to stillbirth at 28 weeks. Malcolm, or Mac, was our planned rainbow baby, born in August 2021. When he was 9 weeks old, he contracted RSV, which ultimately led doctors to discover that he had severe hypertrophic cardiomyopathy caused by an extremely rare mitochondrial mutation. We spent the months that followed doing everything we could to care for him while living with the reality of his terminal diagnosis. On March 2, 2022, we held Mac in a garden at sunset while he took his last breaths.
On Angels’ Wings offered a easy and perfect way to memorialize Mac. They captured irreplaceable memories for us during his life and continued finding ways to support our family after our losses.
I’ve previously shared Mac’s full story, which you can read here:
Malcolm: Vessel for Love
You can also watch our family share our story on Youtube.
I participated in OAW’s Grief Recovery Program in the summer of 2022 because I had nothing to lose. One of the things about grief is it’s hard to find resources that help, especially in smaller communities. I felt like I would have tried anything that offered the possibility of some hope. The Grief Recovery Program was offered to me by an organization that has been there for me in our most difficult moments, so I trusted them to be a reliable resource for my healing.
OAW Founder, Michelle Cramer, led me through the program; it was very manageable. I was able to go a step at a time through my grief recovery and work through it with someone who was caring, empathetic and understanding of my situation. Relationships and grief are both so complicated, and the program helped me process my grief in bite size pieces. Michelle shared a lot about her own Grief Recovery Program experience and made me comfortable enough to share the good, bad and ugly. It was painful at times, but never overwhelming.
Since completing the program, I don’t struggle as much with getting caught up in some of the really complicated feelings of grief. It has cleared up much of the guilt that plagued memories of my children that I cherish most. I don’t feel I have to carry all of the baggage that comes with my loss.
I would absolutely recommend the program to others. It is a beautiful way to work through an important relationship that doesn’t look the same way it did before. It gives you the space to feel and process the range of emotions that come with loss.
Providing grief recovery is the very sweet cherry-on-top of the services OAW offers. OAW touches a very niche group of families who are experiencing things that sometimes make us feel so isolated from our peers and the rest of the world. OAW has been part of my life since 2020 and has offered ongoing support since the moment I began services with them.
They are an extremely trusted resource that is very close to my heart, and it is almost overwhelming to consider how many other families have been touched by them. The impact they have made for many people with so few other readily available resources is profound.
