To me the rose is a symbol of life, its beauty, uniqueness - its blooms - but also the sorrow and painfulness -its thorns

I keep roses as reminders of the short lives of our sons that have died. It is every parents worst nightmare to have to face the death of their own child. The death of a child during pregnancy or after birth is a devastating loss. The loss is compounded by the loss of dreams and the future. All the plans that had been made for the family you were to become.
The death of a baby by miscarriage, stillbirth or neonatal death, does not hold the same regard in society as the death of an older child or adult whose life and memory is permitted. With these tiny lives the memories are often limited to the pregnancy. The most wonderful thing a person can do is remember of acknowledge these precious lives lost, to us.

Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones says "We have lived; our moments are important. This is what it is to be a writer: to be the carrier of details that make up history ..." This is what has prompted me to write. I have always written, although now I am more passionate about it. I have lived, the things that have happened to me are important, as are the people in my life - those living and those that live in my memory. This is my history.