Fire in the Belly

from Anna

Back in October of '07, I posted the following piece to my blog. At the time, a friend was dealing with healing after a miscarriage and she was thankful to learn about this project and the article from Mothering. After reading Amber's recent post Blessings of a Miscarriage, I was reminded of it and thought I'd share it again... 

"The following appears in the latest (Nov/Dec '07) issue of Mothering magazine, in the letters to the editor- I added links to the article referenced and to the website for the letter writer's art, as well as a photo of the project:

burning woman

In June 2000, I had a miscarriage. My husband and I were upset, but not knowing what else to do, I returned to work two days after my emergency D&C. My larger community has no process to acknowledge the loss and grief over the death of a child not born. The common response was "It wasn't supposed to be...," but I knew that wasn't true for me. I knew life within my body, and then it was gone.

Over the next two years, my husband and I were blessed with two beautiful children. But the sadness in my heart and the heaviness in my abdomen never seemed to ease. In 2002, I read the article Solitary Sadness: The Need to Grieve Miscarriage (July/Aug 2002), and realized that I never had had the opportunity to grieve the loss of my first child.

Inspired by your article, and through the collaborative effort of may others affected by the loss of a child, we created Fire in the Belly, an art installation at Burning Man 2006 (www.fireinbelly.com). We created two temples with a 13-foot-tall statue of a pregnant woman between them. The temples were dedicated to parents who lost children during gestation or shortly after delivery. Attendees were invited to write on the installation and, over the course of a week, many did. At the end of the event, we burned the installation as a cathartic ritual.

KATHY SWERN, AKA GLIMMER San Jose, California" 

 

Comments

[Amber Magnolia]

Wow Anna, this gave me chills! How beautiful. Now I'm crying, just when I thought I had already dealt with it...

Thank you sister :-)