This is a Personal Touch a chance to check in with ordinary people making an extraordinary difference in the world. I’m Rebecca Cressman and today our guest is Lori Paulsen. Lori has written a couple of books about a very personal experience of hers. Lori, welcome, it is so nice to have you with us on a Personal Touch.
A: Thank you for having me.
Q: I mentioned that you have written a couple of books. Let’s talk about why you are telling your family story, and you are telling it in two beautiful ways: One to an audience of children and another to an audience of adults, because your journey has everything to do with an angel and a child that you lost. Tell us a little bit about that journey please.
A: We had the pleasure of carrying a little boy who we found out at about sixteen week’s gestation that his defects were so bad that he was incapable of living life outside of the womb. Our journey started obviously; we were thrilled for this pregnancy and thrilled to be expecting a son finally, and when we received the devastating news, of course, we experienced a lot of grief.
Q: I bet it was and I appreciate that you continue to talk about it. And yet you share this experience of grief, because when you were diagnosed with the pregnancy of a child that would not be able to survive after he was born, you were put in contact with an organization called Angel Watch. Help us to understand what Angel Watch does?
A: Angel Watch is an unbelievable program; it is run by two women who are incredible. Their goal is to help families where there has been a terminal diagnosis of an unborn child. They go into the home and they help families come up with a birth plan. They also help to act as a liaison between the hospital staff and the wishes of the mother and family in their birth plan. And then they are unbelievable; they provide grief counseling during and after the pregnancy and they do an incredible work. They came into our home to offer guidance only one time because they were being shut down due to lack of funding at that time. They have since been funded by IAC, but when they visited us it was a one time only visit. And at the time we were actually doing pretty good as a family. We had decided to apply a new principle to our grief that helped us to find joy.
Q: And so they were probably surprised—I mean, imagine their role for those of us who have not endured the grief of losing a child—having someone walk into your home and hold your hand through that process has got to be extraordinarily helpful. But their job is one that is very tender and very bittersweet; too, as they help and encourage a family through knowing that, that family is going to lose a child. So when they were meeting with you they found out that you already had a plan of your own. And this one was quite different than what was typically advised, right? It used to be that they would advise families that were about to lose an unborn child to not get attached to that child because they thought that, that would worsen the grieving process?
A: Yes in the medical community, and I don’t know precisely about Angel Watch, they would mostly help families get through the grief. But there was a definite trend in the medical community at the time for doctors to say, “Don’t bond with your baby; it will make the loss that much harder.” Research has shown in the last few years that actually parents who did bond with their baby and who opened up their hearts to experiencing that child, years later, twenty years later, it showed that those were the mothers and the families who had experienced the most significant recovery and the best healing. And those who had not bonded with their babies were still in a state of remorse and regret.
Q: So you didn’t really have that research at the tip of your fingers when your family made that pivotal decision on how you were going to love the unborn child that was in your family and in your womb at the time. Tell me a bit about how you came to the decision to celebrate his life and to go ahead and share his journey with us in the books?
A: You know you are right, I didn’t have that research. I just had a gut instinct. I also had an experience from the earlier part of my life that actually propelled me to making the decisions we made as a family. And I feel like I need to share just a brief moment of that earlier experience in order to put into context why we decided to make our decision with our son. I had been married for eight years and during this marriage I experienced tremendous emotional abuse, if you will, that ultimately stripped me of my sense of worth. And I won’t detail the experience, but I will say that my confidence as a person and a woman fell to nothing. I was struck with great depression and resentment, with confusion and anger—meeting with victimization and grief for the failures and the perception that I had been told for years, that I wasn’t capable of being an adequate person. There was one particular night when for the first time in my life I felt a sense of being forsaken in spirit and I guess I hit rock bottom. I had always been very prayerful and faithful as a woman, but at this time I felt abandoned by God. One night I was lying in a fetal position in my bed and I wondered if He was really watching over me and if He really loved me, and if He did, how could he allow me to experience such horrific pain? And that night as I pleaded with Him I became tutored by Him. And He basically said to me, “You know Lori, you are before two paths right now. You could be on the path of ugliness and letting adversity beat you, or you could jump onto the path that allows you to be blessed by adversity. But I was told that it was my choice and I knew at that time that only I could decide which path I wanted for my future and where I wanted to be. And I did a lot of wrestling that night. I chose to beat the adversity and be blessed in it and through it and my life ended up being beautiful and amazing. So years later when I was faced with the trial of burying my newborn baby, I found once again those ugly feelings of ‘why me syndrome’ and depression and resentment creeping in one day. And I was not only grieving for the thought of not knowing my son, but also grieving for him that he would never get the opportunity and privilege to be able to live on this glorious earth and experience life with us and our family. As I harbored those growing resentments, I instantaneously recognized this ugly path from my prior experience earlier in life and I knew I again had to make a choice of which path I was going to walk. But I wasn’t sure how to go about it. I didn’t know how to find joy in a death of a child. One day I went for a walk on a beautiful fall day and a maple leaf had fallen at the base of the trees that lined our street and at the sugar house. As I picked up the leaf, joy began to penetrate my heart. Eventually my approach scared a bird and as it went into flight before me, without thinking I said out loud to my son in my womb, “Little Lars did you see the bird?” And in this moment I had an epiphany for I realized that we did not have to wait for our son to be born to experience life with him. I realized his earth life was now inside of me and I decided we could love our son into the world by celebrating his life with us now, and vicariously through me in my womb.
Q: What a powerful moment, what a powerful moment!
A: Yes!
Q: So how did you bring that in with your children because you already had three children, right, when you were carrying Lars?
A: Right, right. Yes.
Q: And they had to prepare themselves for the potential loss of their little brother. And so that moment became pivotal in the way that your family addressed Lars’ life?
A: Absolutely. They were feeling a lot of just sadness, and as a mother I wanted to provide for my children comfort and peace instead of sadness. And it was hard to balance meeting their needs with also meeting my own emotional needs. Obviously this epiphany moment for me… I went home and I told the children, “Hey! Your little Lars’ life is now and would you like to teach your brother the things you love about the world and the things you enjoy eating?” And they all got very excited and started to plan, and all of a sudden the focus changed in our family. It went from spending our energy and time in grief and hopelessness and mourning and the, “what if,” to a change in perspective and finding joy and creating memories and even adding humor to the situation.
Q: So did your older children then start coming up with their own ideas on the types of things they wanted their little brother to experience?
A: Absolutely, yes, it was incredible! We went sleigh riding. We jumped into a cold mountain lake, and we hiked to the top of a mountain peak to watch a sunset. Sometimes they just did simple things with their little brother like read him a favorite book or play Ring Around the Rosie. They had me try different kinds of food. One time alone with him, I knelt in a pile of freshly fallen snow to show him and analyze the beautiful delicate features of a snow crystal and it was a very sacred moment. We ran the whole gamut.
Q: Your emotions sure; you still knew that you were going to have to let this little one go. And yet you were trying to balance that with celebrating the life that he had no matter how that life was defined. That moment for you and your children and for Lars became not only a pivotal moment for your family, but one for other families who would later be benefited by the Angel Watch program. So they learned, the Angel Watch volunteers and the coordinators, they learned from you and they are now introducing that to other parents who are going to receive the same diagnosis?
A: Right. We were surprised to find out that Angel Watch after hearing our story and learning what we did with our child and watching the great benefits that arose from, I guess, such a philosophy of what we did, they decided to incorporate this program into Angel Watch. They now teach families: If parents elect to let the pregnancy go on naturally and not terminate the pregnancy—if they decide to go to the end, they go in and they say, “Hey there can be joy in this journey, and you can create memories with this child and you won’t have to wait until the end. The life can be celebrated now. And so families across the Wasatch Front have incorporated this idea. It is so humbling to have heard and to have witnessed the marvelous reception that it has become in peoples lives.
Q: And to think that when they receive that information, that difficult, painful diagnosis, they have a choice where they can develop a birth plan for that child that fulfills their needs to love and celebrate their life and to celebrate his life, or her life, depending on the gender of the unborn child. You have been so beautiful sharing your personal story with us, Lori. But I know that you have also, because you have spoken to groups of individuals who have had similar experiences and you have shared your stories, you have also done that in terms of books—two different books. In two different books you have written your story, one called Chap Sticks in Heaven for children and the other for adults called Catch a Falling Star. And as you were writing these stories, what were you trying to capture? What have you learned from this experience, overall, that you wanted other families to be able to take home as well?
A: First of all in writing the children’s book; the whole idea was to be able to introduce this concept of families, and for children to be able to view pictures and gather ideas themselves through our own story. It was specifically written also to act as a facilitator in opening up dialog between a parent and a child. For example, many questions are asked to the reader throughout the book, and the story is told in the voice of my daughter Olivia. After the diagnosis, after she finds out that her little brother is going to die, there is a beautiful picture of her standing in a rain jacket with an umbrella, but there is no rain. It is a beautiful sunny day. And the type says, “Even though the sun is shining outside and the color of the fall leaves are beautiful, my heart feels like it is raining with dark clouds wrapped around it. Does your heart ever feel this way?” So at this point, hopefully, it would make pause to say to their child, “How’s your heart feeling?” And the rest of the book explains caskets and cemeteries, but it also allows the children to giggle as they hear about some of the things we did with our son. Ultimately at the very end, and the reason why it is called Chap Sticks in Heaven, is because our children decided to add an object to their brother’s special bed or his casket to represent either themselves or an activity that they had done with their brother that they loved. And Olivia put in three of her favorite chap sticks to send to heaven with her brother.
Q: And the book Catch a Fallen Star, written for adults, the message—is it also looking for an opportunity to have adults have that dialogue or were you searching for something else?
A: No actually the book started out… It was first intended for just a market of parents who are in the same situation. But as it fell together, I realized that I had a great life experience of overcoming adversity and finding joy in a journey of trials and life. And this book as it made the journey, I feel like it has become a book about overcoming adversity and finding the true you during adversity, and discovering the blessings that adversity can often bring. I think that God has the power to tutor and teach and bless us the most when we are experiencing our roughest moments if we allow Him to. And so the book does talk about the journey with little Lars, but it also talks about how carrying little Lars helped me overcome and release some great shackles of bondage, if I could use that term, to bring me back home, and to who I really am as a person and as a woman.
Q: And those books, both, are not yet published. They are written, they are ready to go and you may choose to self publish them which would be fantastic and of course anyone who wants to support you in that will follow the information that we have online so that we can support you and have the stories of Catch a Falling Star, Chap Sticks In Heaven, and the stories of Lars Paulsen shared into the lives of others. Lori Paulsen, thank you so much for joining us on this week’s edition of a Personal Touch.
A: Thank you so much; it is an honor and an opportunity.
Q: I appreciate your honesty as well. We want to invite you to join us next week to find out who else is making a difference in our world like Lori, with a Personal Touch.
End of interview.
