By Kara L.C. Jones

Over they years, I've heard from hundreds, if not thousands, of people about the term "pregnancy loss". Now some people are offended by it. They feel they didn't lose or misplace anything, but rather they are facing the death of a child. So they refuse to use the term "pregnancy loss". Many others feel the term works for them, and they have no qualms whatsoever about using it. But on either side of the fence, there are passionate feelings.

Personally, I feel that if we can just put aside the language argument for moment -- just let everyone use whatever word they feel most comfortable using and stop being "right" or "wrong" -- then we would actually see that we are ALL trying to conceptualize the same sense of grief. Grief is grief is grief.

The quandry about this particular language came up again strongly this year because there was a push in the U.S. government to officially make October 15th National Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day. While the whole month has been officially an awareness month since President Regan's day, it wasn't until September of 2006 that October 15th was actually made into the DAY of awareness. Though I did not see the passing of the resolution on C-SPAN that day, I have heard it was very emotional. There is a transcript of the day posted online at the official website, October15th.com/transcription.htm

Those who are comfortable with the term "loss" are good to go with the month and day being official now. Those who are not comfortable with it, I have seen have already begun using other terms to just talk about the same time periods. I've seen "Pregnancy & Infant Death Awareness" or "Child Death Awareness." Whatever works for you personally, just go with it. The point is AWARENESS which I think can be accomplished regardless where you land on the language issue.

I'd personally like to thank ALL of you for all you are doing. The work to raise awareness about death, dying, grief, loss, and learning to live after the death of a love one -- ALL of it is important. Thank you for doing what you do in memory of those you love!l

Resources

PregnancyLossRibbons.com - great site from Emily Wilberg who has contributed articles here at Kota Loss Journal about Scrapbooking and Family Traditions.

About the Author

Kara has been using poetry and other expressive arts tools on the grief journey since the death of her son in 1999. Her poetic and non-fiction works have been included in publications such as New Works Review, PoetsWest, Real Henna, Shared Heart Foundation's "Meant To Be", LightHearts Publication's "Soul Trek", MISSing Angels Newsletter, American Tanka, Mother Tongue Ink's We'Moon, Honored Babies, Cup of Comfort series, and more. She is a Carnegie Mellon graduate who co-founded KotaPress with her husband Hawk Jones. Her books "Mrs. Duck and the Woman" as well as "Flash of Life" have both been released thru KotaPress. She is currently in an apprenticeship working toward Master level of Reiki. And she founded HennaHealing.com where she is exploring the ancient art of henna and its uses for ritual and healing.
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