The Wait and the Reward

​By: Maria Servold EPLA Editor

Last fall, on several cold, snowy days, a few members of the Early Pregnancy Loss Association’s executive committee went around the small town where we’re based and planted upwards of 300 purple tulip bulbs.

​The bulbs, generously donated by EPLA supporters, form several small memorial gardens around Hillsdale, Michigan, that we hope honor the memories of little ones lost to miscarriage.

​Outside a courthouse, in a children’s garden, and outside the birthing center of a hospital, the purple flowers are now blooming. We’ve placed small signs explaining the gardens in several of the planting locations, and we hope local families who see the signs and tulips take a moment to remember children they or others have lost.

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Planting flowers cannot bring back the babies we have lost, but it can give us a physical place to go to remember them and to honor them. The spirit of the bulb - planted with hope and expectation for the beauty to come - inspired our logo and reminds us that even if hope seems impossible right after a tragedy, it will eventually bloom. ​

​Maria Servold is an Editor at the EPLA, Assistant Director of the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American Journalism, and Lecturer in Journalism at Hillsdale College