Core Value Series: Loving People

By: Nick Carrington EPLA Editor

In the core value series, the editors of Hope Blooms seek to show the heart of the EPLA by describing our core values. We encourage you to remember the children we’ve lost and stand with families suffering from miscarriage.

Loving People
In the last post about core values, we discussed bearing burdens by addressing physical and day-to-day needs. But loss families obviously have more than physical needs after a miscarriage: they struggle through emotional turmoil as well. The EPLA also aims to address these emotional needs of loss families by loving them.

​Loss families often struggle with anger, confusion, frustration, and sorrow, unable to make sense of the tragedy. They feel the weight of losing a child, but the culture around them does not always affirm the magnitude of that loss. This disconnect can cause a hardening of the heart as families try to cope with their grief.

At the EPLA, we aspire to come alongside families by affirming their grief and validating their emotions. We understand that suffering families will feel and react differently, and the EPLA tries to meet the varying emotional needs of each one.

How Do We Love Others?
As individuals, we can love others by listening before we speak, responding empathetically, and showing respect for both the family and their lost child. We should not seek to “fix” the situation as if our words were magic. More often than not, loss families need someone to listen to their pain and cry alongside them. When we speak unwisely without listening, we trivialize the tragedy, twisting the knife a little more.

Grieving families may be concerned that others will forget about their miscarried little one, and emotionally, they are uplifted when others remember their son or daughter. In the immediate aftermath of a miscarriage, we can love families by affirming they have lost a child. As time passes, we can re-affirm this truth through gifts of remembrance, asking about the child around difficult seasons, and using the child’s name, if applicable.

Loss families have extensive and sometimes intensive emotional needs as they grieve a miscarriage. By being present, listening, and validating the pain of loss parents, we may provide oxygen to a family gasping for air. The EPLA encourages these kinds of responses and asks that we as a culture support the grieving through loving, nurturing, and respectful responses.

More often than not, loss families need someone to listen to their pain and cry alongside them.

​Nick Carrington is an Editor for the EPLA and Assistant Professor of Professional Writing at Cedarville University​​.