It’s been six months since “Real Housewives of Orange County” star Kara Keough’s newborn son passed away shortly after childbirth due to medical complications.
Keough is sharing her grieving process in an emotional essay, posted on the “Good Morning America” website.
In April, Keough shared the sad news to her Instagram followers about newborn son McCoy.
As Keough writes, the time that has passed has done little to dull the pain, and addresses other women who’ve lost children.
“To My Fellow Loss Mom,” she writes. “I wish there was something else I could call you, something else I could call myself. ‘Angel Mom’ feels too fluffy, and ‘Bereaved Mother’ sounds like we should be wearing black lace and howling on our knees in a stone church somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, we’re absolutely still howling. But we’re doing it in yoga pants. Lululemons just do a better job of hiding our postpartum bellies and helping us avoid questions like, ‘When are you due?’ or worse, “How’s the baby?!’”
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She continues: “We blame ourselves, not because we did anything to harm our children, but because we’re their mothers, and protecting them is our most sacred duty,” she continued. “People say the wrong things and people say right things that feel wrong. … Talk of ‘God’s plan,’ ‘your strength,’ and the ‘I haven’t stopped crying for you’ are right things that feel wrong. Some days the right thing is a friend pulling you out of bed and handing you a cup of coffee. Other days, the right thing is just staying in bed and feeling it all.”
She also ruminates on the nature of grief. “If not wasted, grief can be an incredible gift,” she adds. “After the initial haze, the lens through which we see the world sharpens our view. It’s almost like that first victorious gulp of air after being underwater too long, so much more treasured than the sip before. In grief, the spirit of the Earth somehow reveals herself to us. Sunsets are technicolour, wind is euphoric, and rain is an echoing chorus of our hearts. Rainbows and butterflies seem to show up just for us just when we need them most.”
She compares grief to “going on a bear hunt: We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we have to go through it,” adding, “We ask ourselves, ‘Where are we supposed to put all this love, all this love that we had reserved for them?’ The answer becomes so clear: all around us, of course, and into them, still. Most importantly — and with no hesitations — we must put the love back into ourselves once again. Terry Tempest Williams insists, ‘Grief dares us to love once more.'”
Keough concludes: “So, to grief, we respond, ‘You triple dog dare me?'”
