Years ago, I wrote an essay titled Omission and it was focused on the trials and tribulations of raising children, and how in some ways they are quite literally, assholes.  I wrote about the beauty of motherhood, and how this commonality is in fact  a band of sisterhood going a journey of becoming and/or being a mother. However, the sisterhood of the motherhood often omits true facts about some of the pitfalls of raising children.

And the truth is that in the English language there is no word for one who loses a child, and as mothers we omit this truth.

I find inspiration in the everyday, some inspiration are good and some are bad–but leads toward goodness.  There are experiences that I’ve observed people go through that I cannot find words to even remotely express.

The majority of the photographs that I feature on The Echo Muse is by one talented photographer, Rachel Marney. I wrote about how she took the family photographs in The Snow Storm and The Golden Hour.  Her photographs capture the depth, and beauty of the everyday.

One would not have guessed that just recently she and her husband, Scott, lost their only daughter from complications of Spina Bifida. There are no words to express this loss.

None.

Yet, Rachel finds a way to express every bit of this loss in her journal which she has now shared in her writings in Dear Avie – A Memoir.  

She does not omit from the grief that a mother suffers from when she loses her child.

Her daily writings expresses her journey into the many memories of Avie’s beautiful life, and the lessons that Avie had left behind.

To me, Rachel has been one of the most profound muses who inspires, and demonstrates how a life suffering from a tremendous heartbreak slowly heals, and through creativity, bears a beautiful scar of a true survivor.