My Story of Pregnancy & Infant Loss, What is The Joyful Mourning & Your Favorite Episodes from Season 02 | Episode 090 with Ashlee Proffitt
Episode 90
This is a very special episode as it marks the 2 year birthday of this podcast. 2 years ago I launched this podcast out into the world. I am so grateful for the opportunity to weekly bring you tangible reminders that you are not alone in your grief and that you are loved deeply by a God who has not forgotten you or left you.
In this annual anniversary episode I want to spend a few minutes sharing why I started this podcast, the same why that kept me going when producing and publishing yet another episode felt nearly impossible, and a few clips from your favorite episodes over the past year.
I pray this episode does what each episode before it did, reminds you that you are not alone in your grief and you are more loved than you could ever imagine.
2 years. Can you believe it? It honestly feels a bit surreal. Years ago now I had the idea to do this podcast, to interview real women who have experienced the loss of a baby, sharing their grief journey, offering wisdom and hope -- a weekly reminder that you aren’t alone in this. But when I started actually planning, preparing and executing on that idea I wondered if anyone would tune in and if they did would it be helpful and hopeful. I wondered if it could truly meet you in the middle of your darkness and provide comfort in your brokenness.
I am still in awe that that is exactly what has happened.
God has used this seemingly simple and somewhat mundane platform, just normal women walking through brokenness, telling their stories, to provide comfort and healing and reminders of God’s goodness and nearness and grace in a moment when you need that reminder the most.
Over the past 2 years I have received countless messages about how this podcast has helped you. How it has done the very thing I set out to do -- to bring you joy in your mourning. To tell you that you aren’t alone. Your messages mean more to me than you could ever know. God uses your words and your encouragement to give me the strength to do this one more week and one more week. It’s uncanny that when this job feels the most impossible is when a kind message from one of you listeners will show up in my inbox or dm’s. To all those who have sent me a message over the past 2 years know this -- God used you in a mighty way to keep this podcast going. I’m so grateful for you.
In this special annual anniversary episode I wanted to share with you why I started this podcast. You. You are the reason I started this podcast. And you are the reason I kept it going for more than 90 episodes.
I know your grief. I know your hurt. I know your feelings of utter loneliness. I know the anger and the doubt and the paralyzing fear. I know the confusion and the sorrow and the bitterness that can settle in the crevices of your heart. I know the hurt and the brokenness and the sleepless nights and the tears that don’t seem to stop or the laugh that feels inappropriate. I know the words ‘there is no heart beat’. I know what it is to stare at a gravestone. I know because I’ve been there.
Why a Podcast?
And I started this podcast to remind you that you aren’t alone. There are women all over the world who are walking a journey that is eerily similar to the one you are walking and that brings comfort. Not in knowing that someone else is hurting. But a comfort in knowing that someone else understands. Because they have been there too. Someone else who can say “me too.” Someone else who can pray and you know they really will because they know, they understand, they’ve been there.
I started this podcast to share with you the voices of other women walking this journey, a simple way to remind you that you aren’t alone. But even more important than hearing their stories and being reminded that you aren’t walking this baby loss journey alone, I wanted you to hear them say ‘You are loved. You are not forgotten.” I wanted you to hear and be reminded that there is a God who works beauty from ashes. A God who heals. A God who is good amidst even the worst this world has to offer. A God who will never leave you. A God who says in Isaiah 43: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”
I wanted you to be reminded week after week that no matter how you feel about God his feelings toward you never change. If you are His child, when He looks at you He sees Jesus. That means that no amount of anger or doubt or confusion towards Him can ever change His love for you. That means that when you walk through the waters and the fire He will be right there with you. That means that even if no one around you understands or empathizes or even seemingly cares -- He does and He is right there with you. I wanted you to be reminded each and every week that you are truly never alone.
I wanted you to hear reminders of God’s goodness in the moments that God being good felt like a lie. I wanted you to hear stories of healing in the moments when you felt like your brokenness would be your end. I wanted you to hear the truth even in the moments when your heart was wondering if any of what you had believed to be true was real at all. I wanted you to hear that we can trust God and His goodness because of Jesus. I wanted our suffering to produce growth in us rather than destroy us. And I believe that in order for that to happen we have to be reminded often of God’s great love for us, as Tim Keller says in his book “Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering” -- To grow instead of be destroyed by our pain we must walk with God. And that means that we treat Him as there. That means we speak to him and pour our heart out to him. It means we trust Him. But ultimately “it means to see with the eyes of your heart how Jesus plunged into the fire for you when he went to the cross. This is what you need to know so you will trust him, stick with him and thus turn into purer gold in the heat. If you remember with grateful amazement that Jesus was thrown into the ultimate furnace for you, you can begin to sense him in your smaller furnaces with you.”
And because I’ve been there and walked this grief journey I know that a grieving heart needs a reminder of those truths often. And it couldn’t be just my voice each week — no, you needed to hear from all kinds of women in all kinds of places experiencing all kinds of loss -- telling their story and sharing their struggles and reminding us all of these important truths.
That is why I started the podcast and those are the reasons that kept me going, week after week.
It has been my joy to come alongside you for two years now — to bring light to your darkness, and healing to your broken heart.
In today’s episode I am so excited to share with you the top 10 episodes from season 2 and favorite moments from each of those episodes. But before we do that I thought it would be helpful to reintroduce myself and share with you my story and the heart behind this podcast — I decided that the annual anniversary episode was the perfect occasion for reintroductions.
A Re-Introduction
Hi friend, I’m Ashlee. I’m a wife and a mama. I have 6 children. 4 living here on earth, 1 in heaven from miscarriage and 1 in heaven from sudden infant death. For over 11 years I have had the honor of walking alongside women who are grieving the loss of a baby -- reminding hurting women of those truths I was just talking about.
The Joyful Mourning is not about me or even about my loss, about my miscarriage or my son Aaden, but those stories of loss is why I am here, why I founded The Morning, why I have such compassion and empathy for grieving, broken mothers and why I started this podcast in the first place. So, I would love to tell you about my son Aaden if that’s ok.
My Story of Infant Loss
In the spring of 2008 I buckled my 6 month old son in his car seat and drove to the nearest drugstore. I had suspicions that the nauseous feeling I couldn’t shake was more than a little stomach bug. My suspicions were correct. I was almost through my first trimester when I found out I was pregnant with my second son. And while the thought of having 2 babies well under 2 years old utterly overwhelmed me at first, the fear quickly gave way to excitement. Especially when we found out this baby was a boy. Two boys. So close in age. I dreamed they would be best friends forever. This would be my third pregnancy. Our first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage around 9 weeks on my first wedding anniversary. I think after you are exposed to the reality of baby loss, no matter the specific details or how far along- any naive notions of bringing children into the world evaporate. And yet even knowing the risky nature of having a baby, of the statistics surrounding baby loss, having already lost one baby, my heart grew attached to this baby. Rightfully so, a woman’s heart is instantly divided the moment she finds out there is a baby, forever changed by his or her life - no matter the length of their days.
On October 8, 2008 Aaden Sage Proffitt came quickly into the world. And he brought our family instant joy. He lived 39 days. And for 39 days I was a mama to a newborn and a tiny toddler. My days consisted of feedings and laundry and diaper changes. Maybe it’s nostalgia and maybe it’s because I only had those 39 days but I look back at those 39 days and remember them as pure bliss, I’m sure it was hard but I don’t remember it being so, only joy — an absolute gift from God.
In the early hours of the morning on November 15, I woke up later than the previous few weeks. And I woke up on my own — not with a baby boy’s cries of hunger. I ran down the hallway to where he was sleeping only to find my perfectly healthy baby boy lifeless. The moments following can only be described as hell. A 911 call and CPR and EMTs and desperate calls to every single person in my husband’s phone begging every one of them to pray for a miracle.
An ambulance drove my baby boy away where doctors and nurses tried in vain to bring him back to life -- while we huddled together in a cold hospital waiting room with friends and family, all of us still in pajamas. Everyone in that room was praying, loud, messy, desperate prayers. Except for me. I sat in silence. Stunned. I don’t even remember crying in that moment. And then my husband walked in and shook his head no. God had answered our prayers, but He had answered with a no. My son would not live.
My husband led me back to the room where my lifeless son lay. I was told I couldn’t hold him and to this day I can’t understand why I decided to follow the rules in that moment — of all moments. I wish I had scooped him up and held him and given him one last kiss, and stared at his fingers and his toes, memorizing his tiny perfect body — instead I walked away. I fell to the cold hospital floor outside the room. In that moment I just couldn’t bear the thought of my last memory of him being a lifeless one, a cold, blue one. I wanted to erase that I had ever seen him like that. I wish someone wiser than me, someone more familiar with death and grief, would have grabbed me and said “don’t look away, take him in, look past the death and see the life that God gave, look at him, isn’t he beautiful.”
We left the hospital without our son. And it was so bizarre. No fanfare, no help, no assistance. Just a cloud of despair and shock and silence and empty arms.
And even in those early moments God was near, He was working. See, He isn’t afraid of the pain nor is He apathetic towards it. He had let death in and that was a truth I would grapple with for years to come BUT He had never left us; He was right there. He was there while I was sleeping peacefully that night, even as my son was dying just a few feet from me, but He was never not in control; See He is never surprised, He is never powerless, and He is never callous to His children’s pain and suffering and broken hearts. In the Bible we see Jesus’ response to death in John chapter 11, when we see Him weep over the death of his friend Lazarus. He knew He was going to restore Lazarus, that in just a few moments He would raise him from the dead and yet He wept. Why? Because He felt the pain of death, He felt the pain of Lazarus’ sister Mary — His heart broke with her. He knew He would fix it all and yet He was broken with her. He grieved with her. He cried with her. Nothing has changed — He still knows that there will be a day when He will fix it all, that death will be no more and yet He sees our tears, He knows our grief, and He has compassion towards our hurting hearts.
He began healing our hearts the moment we knew our son was dead. He began orchestrating and working in such a way that we knew we were loved by Him, that we were not forgotten, that we were not alone, that He was near.
A Joyful Mourning
Finding joy amidst mourning, amidst pain and grief, isn’t about a fickle sort of happiness that is exhaustingly fleeting - rather, a joyful mourning comes from a heart that is fixed on God. A heart that knows, no matter how fickle it may feel, her God is not — He is steady, unchanging, trustworthy, and good. He will never leave her or forsake her. When she walks through the valley of darkness and death, He is right there with her. When she walks through the fire, He is there. When she walks through the flood, He is there. And His love for her never changes, it never grows weary.
A joyful mourning comes from a heart that is at peace, no matter the circumstances, because her eyes are on her God even amidst the pain -- Isaiah 26:3 says “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.”
A joyful mourning comes from a heart that is full of hope, knowing that this isn’t the end -- that God is still working and that one day He will fix all that has been broken.
But a joyful mourning is not natural — fixing our eyes and attention and worship on a God who could have prevented the pain is not natural, trusting in a future we cannot see or fully understand is not natural, giving way to fickle hearts that sway with the wind and every emotion is natural; that’s our default amidst grief. And that is why I’m here, that’s why The Joyful Mourning Podcast is here -- to remind you of God’s goodness, of His love for you, of His nearness and His presence. Because our hearts need to be reoriented a little more often amidst grief. We need reminders of hope and truth just a little more when our world feels like it’s crumbling.
So maybe your heart doesn’t feel joyful or peaceful or at rest today. Maybe your heart doesn’t feel a strong desire to trust God or put your hope in Him. That’s ok. I’m here to remind you, as a mama who has spent the better part of the last 11 years learning what it’s like to love and trust a God who allowed such pain. This is me telling you that finding joy amidst sorrow is about leaning in to a God whose love for you never changes. And that sometimes that leaning in isn’t pretty or put together and that’s ok— David’s prayers in the Psalms weren’t always pretty or put together and since they are in the Bible I’m going to go ahead and assume that’s ok. I’m here to remind you that He is good and He loves you and He desires for you to run to Him with your pain just like Mary ran to Jesus in John 11 — run to Him with your anger, your fear, your doubt, your confusion and ask Him to fix your heart on him and in doing so to give you a heart that is at peace, a heart that is joyful amidst the mourning.
Thank you for giving me space to share my story and the heart behind this podcast with you once again. I pray it does the very thing this podcast set out to do — remind you that you aren’t alone and that you are loved and that God can and will bring healing to your brokenness.
TOP 5 EPISODES FROM SEASON 02
Here are the top 5 episodes from Season 02 on The Joyful Mourning Podcast!
05. Episode 80 with my husband Aaron Proffitt
This episode was recorded around the time of our 15 wedding anniversary and we spent the time talking about all that we have learned about navigating the marriage relationship after the loss of a baby. We talk candidly about the challenges we faced, the mistakes we made, and what wisdom we would give to a couple just entering this grief journey. One of my favorite moments from this episode is when Aaron shares honestly about the way we handled grief early on. He says “we just didn’t give ourselves the grace and space to grieve differently.”
04. Episode 82 with Lynnelle Peters
This episode was incredibly powerful, filled with such honest and tender conversation. During our time together we talked about many aspects of grief and baby loss, but I think the most important thing we discussed is Lynnelle’s experience with anxiety, ptsd and postpartum depression -- much of what she shares in regard to this topic she is bravely sharing publicly for the first time in the hopes of bringing awareness to mental health.
03. Episode 75 with Meg Walker
Meg has been on The Joyful Mourning Podcast several times and contributed to The Morning blog several times as well. She has become a dear friend over the years and I am forever grateful for the wisdom she shares. The conversation in this top 5 episode is really, really helpful and full of hopeful reminders that are vital for anyone who has experienced grief and is navigating life in the midst of the pandemic at hand. Something that is unfortunately still applicable to us today, 4 months after the airing of this episode. In this interview Meg talks about what it’s been like for her personally to navigate this season. She speaks candidly about the grief that this moment has stirred up in her as a loss mom and what it has looked like practically to live through those realities.
02. Episode 74 with The Counseling Collective
In this episode I interview Julie and Libby from The Counseling Collective and we talk about what it looks like to navigate the reality of a pandemic, while also living in a reality of loss and grief and trauma. Julie and Libby give helpful and hopeful thoughts about the emotions we are all feeling and practical tools for navigating these unfamiliar and unusual circumstances. They explained things in a way that brought comfort to my own anxious heart and I am sure it will do the same for you.
01. Episode 71 with maggie koch
Our top episode from season 2 of The Joyful Mourning Podcast is from our series on Returning to Work after baby loss. You all loved this series, in fact, 3 of the top 10 episodes were on returning to work. Most likely due to the fact that resuming normal life, especially going back to work, after experiencing the death of a baby is incredibly difficult. In this, your favorite episode from season 2, I talk with Maggie Koch about her experience of heading back to the hospital where she delivered her stillborn daughter to resume her work as an RN. Her interview is incredibly honest and tender and practically very helpful. She gives advice that is tangible and realistic and I am sure that if you are in a position where you will be heading back to work soon, this episode will be an enormous blessing.
Those were our top 5 most listened to episodes from season 2. Incredibly helpful episodes that cover such a wide range of topics.
I want to add 2 more episodes to this list. Both of these are very recent on the podcast and I am certain that if given enough time they would easily be in this top 5 list given how helpful their content is.
Bonus Episodes
01. Episode 87 & 88 with libby marler
This episode is an absolute must-listen as Libby, a trained counselor who specializes in maternal mental health as well as grief and loss, shares with us a general overview of what someone who has experienced the loss of a baby can expect in regards to grief. For many of us, we are unfamiliar with the grieving process and we are trying to discern what’s normal, what isn’t, what is expected of us, when should we seek outside help -- basically all the things and in this episode Libby breaks it all down for us. She shares invaluable expertise regarding baby loss and grief, including helpful steps to take to process through your grief in a way that is not burdensome or weighty but instead, very freeing.
While you’re at it, check out episode 88 where Libby joins me again to specifically talk about pregnancy after loss and how unresolved grief can affect a pregnancy. Both of those episodes will be linked in the show notes so make sure to check them out.
02. Episode 89 with Katelyn James Alsop
One of the hardest things I have ever experienced, apart from losing my son, is being pregnant again after his death. And many of you have communicated that you feel the same way. No matter your story of baby loss, pregnancy after loss can be incredibly difficult and incredibly scary as all the naive ideas of what pregnancy and the infant days will look like and be like have been stripped away. This conversation with Katelyn is honest and very candid about what it was like for both of us to be pregnant again after losing a baby.
Honestly, I think every episode is helpful because I believe every story is meaningful and impactful in it’s own way. I am incredibly grateful for every guest who shared their story, their expertise and their wisdom with me this past season. We are all better for it; so thank you.
To my listeners:
Thank you for joining me here today friend and celebrating another successful year of The Joyful Mourning Podcast. Thank you for tuning into this special annual anniversary episode. Thank you for subscribing and tuning in week after week. Thank you for leaving kind reviews and sharing with a friend who needs to be reminded of these truths amidst their grief. Thank you for inviting me into your grief journey and for letting me walk alongside you. And again, to all my guests who shared their stories here thank you. This podcast would not be here without you. Thank you for your honesty and transparency and love for other women who are hurting. Thank you for making this second year such a success. I am so grateful for all of you and am looking forward to many years to come.
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