“I’m sorry. There is no heartbeat.” One week away from her due date, Jackie Gibson and her husband, Jonny, heard those words cut through the silence of the room in the hospital. Their daughter, Leila, died before she was born. In You Are Still a Mother,[1] Jackie Gibson quotes those crushing words several times as she chronicles navigating her grief.
The Gibsons know, and knew at the time of Leila’s death, the Good Shepherd, the Man of Sorrows, who knows our grief and suffering. He, his person and work, form the basis for the hope mentioned in the subtitle. Yet the book is utterly honest. There is no shortcut through grief. It continues. Jackie writes:
I am not the same person I was before Leila died. The trauma of my devastating loss has etched itself onto my heart and body. Grief has taken up residence in my heart and is now my companion for life. Sometimes its presence is loud and clanging, and other times it is tucked away and so quiet that I forget for a moment that it is there. But grief is there. And whenever I feel that pang in my heart, I remember that Leila’s death has changed me. (54)
Wisely she wishes that debriefing in the hospital had included information about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
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