Beyond Words with Jennifer Hernandez

What if the way we try to help is actually making things harder?

In this episode of The Sucky Sisterhood Podcast, Peyton sits down with Jennifer Hernandez, a Care Ministry Director and loss mom who is passionate about walking with people through grief in honest and meaningful ways.

Together, they talk about:

• The importance of self-awareness when supporting someone in grief
• How well-intentioned care can sometimes cause harm
• What it looks like to show up with presence instead of pressure

Jennifer shares from both her personal experience of losing her son, Charlie, and her work in ministry, where she supports individuals and families in difficult seasons. She offers practical and thoughtful insight into how we can better care for others without unintentionally placing our own emotions or expectations onto them.

This conversation is a powerful reminder that support doesn’t require perfection, but it does require humility, awareness, and a willingness to truly see the person in front of you.

🔗 Connect with Jennifer Hernandez

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/storiesfromjen
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storiesfromjen

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Sucky Sisterhood Podcast by Gathering Hope. I'm Peyton Lauderdale, host of the podcast and co-founder of Gathering Hope. Alongside Carol Vantyne, our co-founder and producer of this podcast, we're so glad you're here. This season is centered around the work we do through our Beyond Words workshop, where we equip healthcare professionals, ministry leaders, and others in the community to better support women who've experienced miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. Over time, we realize that while there are many conversations about how to care for lost moms, there are far fewer that acknowledge the experience of those providing that care. One of our deepest hopes for this season is to help bridge that gap. In each episode, we're sitting down with people who walk closely with lost moms in some of their hardest moments. From medical professionals to counselors to ministry leaders, we're creating space for honest conversations about what that compassionate care can really look like. For some of our guests, this work is not only professional, but it's personal. And we want to acknowledge and honor that too. Each of these conversations has been a learning opportunity for us. They've reminded us of the importance of staying curious and listening well, and our hope is to bring understanding, perspective, and a more human side to these roles. Before we dive in, I want to take a moment to say this. We've come to deeply appreciate the weight that people in these roles carry. They're often present in moments that are incredibly tender and devastating, and that's not something that's always seen or acknowledged. So this season we want to be a space where people who walk alongside lost moms are honored too. Whether you're a lost mom yourself or someone who cares about lost moms, we're really glad you're here. Before we begin today's conversation, we want to start by sharing a story from a lost mom. These stories shared by women in our community reflect real experiences in some of the most difficult moments of their lives, and they bring awareness to things that often go unseen or are misunderstood. And while many of these moments are hard, we also invited our listeners to highlight the times when someone showed up with care, compassion, or left an impact in a meaningful way.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

When we lost Kane, we had actually been living in New York for about two years and moved home shortly after to be back home in Texas with family and friends. Our home church, which was in paradise at the time, sent us the sweet card in the mail, just, you know, acknowledging our loss, offering condolences, signed by all the pastors and staff. But what really helped me at that time was someone inviting me to the Grief Share class that was led at our church in the evenings by a sweet older lady. Her name's Martha. And I completely stepped out of my comfort zone and I started attending those classes. And at the time, Gathering Hope didn't exist. This was well before Gathering Hope started. And Grief Share was kind of like my gathering hope. I remember the very first time we met, just being able to talk with other people that had lost loved ones. It wasn't specific to losing a baby, but just to lose anyone that you know you love. Being in a room full of people that were experiencing grief and loss and heartache and being able to open up and talk. But not only that, but to also have it be rooted in scripture was extremely helpful to me. I always felt like I tried to, you know, keep it all together and act like I was okay for everyone because people were worried about me. And whenever I went to grief share classes, my guard could just be let down, my tears could fall, I wasn't judged, it was a safe place. And that is something that truly helped me very, very early on in my loss. And I'm extremely grateful that our church offered that and that someone invited me to come.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Moments like that are why these conversations matter. Behind every role, every title, every interaction, there's a real person walking through something incredibly vulnerable. And today we're going to talk about what it looks like to step into those moments with care.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Today, Peyton is joined by Jennifer Hernandez, a ministry leader who helps create spaces of care and support within the church for women walking through difficult seasons. In this conversation, they talk about what it looks like to support lost moms and a faith community and how churches can care in ways that feel safe and meaningful.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

Jen, welcome to the Sucky Sisterhood Podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today. Um, if you would just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about who you are, and then what drew you into ministry.

SPEAKER_04 4:46

Absolutely. So thank you for having me. So my name is Jen. Um, I am the wife of Victor and the mother of two sweet little girls, not little, I guess, 14 and 10. I am in that season too. Um, and one heavenly baby, we have Charlie as well. So, what drew me into ministry work, I think it goes back a long time. I think when you go into ministry, it's not necessarily always what you think is gonna get you there. I never wanted to work for a church, in fact.

SPEAKER_00 5:20

I never wanted to start a nonprofit. I totally get I get that.

SPEAKER_04 5:23

Yes. So many years ago when my grandmother passed away, um, we had a fabulous social worker that just really helped us in navigating that loss. And so I just remember being like, death work is specifically where I feel like I am called to. Called to is not the words that I used, it just felt like drawn to. And so kind of moving forward through life, I ended up going to school to do social work. I'm still in school right now. But I was working for an HVAC company when this opportunity came about for working in care ministries. And I'm not gonna lie, I didn't know what care ministries even was. I think a lot of people don't realize that it's a ministry within their church sometimes. And so it was like an admin position that quickly turned into a director position. And God just kind of used my passion for specifically death work within our church, and it's been a really huge adventure. Um, I've been here a year and a half now and just could never imagine getting here from where it all started.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

So you mentioned that you are a lost mom as well, and thank you for sharing Charlie with us. How has that played into the work that you're doing today?

SPEAKER_04 6:35

So I didn't realize how much was going to go into it. Um I knew it was part of my story. I had been to a Gathering Hope conference. I felt confident in talking about Charlie, but it still wasn't something that I really um discussed much. And so I remember when I first started in Care Ministries, my advisor said, you need to go through grief share. If you're going to help take care of it, you need to go through it. Um, you need to understand what it's like. You need to grieve the people in our life. I had pretty recently lost my aunt at that point. And so I was going into it just, okay, I'm gonna dissect this. And it just kind of fell on me how much I still needed to unpack about our loss of Charlie. And I don't want to say anything bad about grief share because it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Phenomenal program. Yes. I just had this conversation yesterday. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 7:22

Did you? Yes. I love that they even talk about it in their videos, but I felt like it was kind of just glazed over within our group. And so it was something that we needed to dig into further. And as I started talking about it, just I remember it was on October 15th that we were in a grief share because it fell on a Tuesday. And I was like, guys, this is actually who I'm grieving. And it allowed all these other women to say, Oh, oh, we talk about that. And I remember some of the older women were like, Oh, I lost the baby like 50 years ago, you know? And I was like, man, I didn't have words to say. I didn't have anything to contribute to the conversation, but I said my baby's name and they got to say theirs. And that was just a really cool moment.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Yeah. I love when we get to be surprised by by lost moms, because the I think the word that you use is is almost like permission, right? And by being open and transparent ourselves, it opens the door for other people to do the same. And and I know that that is what is at the heart of grief share. I think there are the way that I put it to the the person I was talking to is in grief share, you're often grieving your memories with your person. And when you don't have the opportunities to create those memories, it's almost a different conversation. You know, you're grieving all the moments you wish you could have had with your person. And so, um, and that's just kind of where the conversation is a little bit different within gathering hope and the work that I know that you're doing where you work. Will you share a little bit about what you're doing there as well?

SPEAKER_04 9:01

Yeah. So during that experience, um, I kind of walked away and was like, what can we do? What can we create within our body? We're a growing church, and I had heard stories here and there of other lost moms, you know. For me particularly, my loss happened in 2019, and it all started on Palm Sunday when I was sitting in a church pew. And so I know the statistics, but also just from stories of all the women that are within our church, we need something. And it doesn't necessarily need to be something big, but we need to create an awareness where we're having the conversations. So it was on my heart, and I spoke with some of the pastors and I spoke with my favorite mentor, and she told me, like, give it a year, pray on it, just keep working on this. And so that's what I did. I love jumping into stuff, so it's really hard to like pull back. But during that time, I was uh we had somebody come and say, Hey, do we have a brief mom's group? And I was like, no, but do you want to be part of one? Um, so that's when I got to meet Rita, who has been an amazing um person to just share our stories with and to grow with. She is actually a nurse at the hospital that we miscarried at. And we had kind of a um hard story that just happened there. And so when she came forward and says, I'm working with doctors and nurses to change our culture of how we approach things. It was just such a God moment. It was like I clearly needed that year to have the right people brought in, tell their stories. Um, and then we had another mom come in who has spoken so much wisdom into our group. And so we meet quarterly. Okay. And we it's called known. And it's just really a gathering place. We kind of have a topic and we go over scripture and we just share. And half the time we come in with a plan, and more than half the time, we don't end up doing the plan. It just ends up being exactly what the Holy Spirit stores in us, you know. We also are trying to kind of cultivate just a way for um us to care for our other moms who might experience this type of loss. And so we have some of the bags from gathering hope that we're able to give out to moms as just a point of connection, just so they know that they're not alone.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Yeah, that's so important that they know they're not alone, even if they maybe don't necessarily engage in the group or, you know, and I love that you guys have you got your plan A, and then the Lord gives you plan B.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

Yeah, which was always the plan. We just were silly enough to think we had one.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

Yes. Yeah. Uh no truer words have ever been said yet. Um so if I if I had to guess, not a lot of people understand what it's like being in care ministry, you know, interacting with people experiencing loss all the time. But specifically when you think about lost moms and the fact that you are a lost mom, if you could offer just a glimpse into your side of the room, what it's like for you in the ministry side of things, what do you think people need to know about that? What is it like for you?

SPEAKER_04 12:07

Specifically when I'm and when I meet another lost mom.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 12:10

You know, there's that sinking feeling when you hear the conversation turn and you just know, right? There's certain things that are said and you just know where it's headed. Um, I remember first sitting with my first lost mom and just thinking, like, what do I say? What do I say? There's gotta be a word to say. There is no word to say. And this is so true in not only ministry, but when you're talking with your neighbor or your best friend or whoever it is, there is no right word to say. And so um from the ministry side, it's honestly, I just start praying as intensely as I can at that moment, hoping God's gonna give me either the words, the touch, whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, church is really just community, just as well, you know? It's a whole bunch of people trying to do the work of God but falling short of it every single time.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Yeah. As you think about how difficult that is for you to walk with lost moms, what's next for you? So, you know, mom has gone home. How are you handling that either from a like a well-being point of view, you know, or spiritually? Yeah. Yeah. What does that look like for you to carry that weight and then walk in your walk as well?

SPEAKER_04 13:25

Yeah. So that's just in care ministries in general. I remember coming into it being like, I am called to this because I'm such an empathetic person, right? It takes somebody who can carry all your stuff with you. Like, I'm just gonna truck along with you. And then I remember having panic attacks because I carried everybody's stuff. And it wasn't, I think you said this at the last conference. It's not ours to carry. We don't get that right. And I at first I was like, well, that's kind of harsh.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Because it's it's their story, right?

SPEAKER_04 13:55

It is, it's so their story. And I wouldn't want somebody walking away from me telling mine and then being like, man, woe is me. I'm carrying this. And so that's been the it's a boundary that you have to make sure that you're saying, I'm not gonna cross this. And if I'm not gonna cross it for myself, I'm not gonna cross it for you. Um one, I can't help you if I'm so lost in my grief. But also, again, it's it's not my story to carry. So that's been one really important thing, but also just staying involved in the world, taking that quiet time. There's a book that talks about office hours, and so we plan specific hours where we've got to get grounded again before you can go forward with somebody else. You have to wash everything that you have taken on, you know, connect with God, say the prayer, maybe listen to some music, whatever it is, before you can go on to your next one. Because otherwise you will take it into your next appointment.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah. And and you're right. It is we we can't, you know, it's that whole air mask philosophy, right? Like we have to we have to take care of ourselves. And I would imagine that applies for you too, especially um, you know, given the the heaviness of the work that you're doing. Um what do you think matters most in how spiritual or pastoral care is offered during moments with lost moms? Like, what are some of those things that make a bigger difference than people might expect? Just sitting there. As that are really a common theme as I've done these interviews, but say more.

SPEAKER_04 15:26

Yeah. Here's the thing. And and I I would take it a step further, even beyond pastoral care and things like that. We are quick to want to find meaning. And I I I think that's beautiful. I do think there is meaning. God will make meaning. It does not mean that God created these problems, it did not mean that God took our babies, it does not mean that he did all this so he could shake our little globe up and then let the pieces fall. But he takes what is broken, he takes the ashes and he builds something beautiful. However, we're quick to want to find that meaning because it's the way to healing, right? It's the way to hope. So I think what's really important is letting those mamas just sit and find their meaning in their time. My loss was in 2019. I didn't find meaning until I sat in that grave chair room in 2024. It's a really long time. Would I would have loved to have found meaning back then? Absolutely. Um And I don't think that Charlie died because that meaning needed to be found.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

But Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

Yeah, I just think it's it's a it's a coping way that we kind of all go about things. We want to find a way to make it all better, but you can't lead a mom into that. She's gotta find it. The Lord has got to lead her, and we don't control that timeline as much as we want to.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Yeah, we definitely don't. And sometimes, you know, it's like a one step forward, two steps back, and or sometimes we we take a little roller coaster loop, like it's not linear, it's not time-bound, and that can be really hard.

SPEAKER_04 16:59

Yeah. I love the concept of like the the big circle of grief, right? And then our over time it gets a little smaller, but it doesn't stop existing. It just maybe doesn't bounce as often, right? But when it does, it's still just as painful, you know?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Um, so yeah, you mentioned finding meaning, and that can be like when someone is really fresh in their loss, that can be a really painful concept to grasp. Like, what meaning could I possibly pull from this? But what surfaced out of that grief share for you that shifted?

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Um I think it was really understanding. I didn't feel like I needed to necessarily tell Charlie's story all the time. I felt like that was a private part of me. You didn't necessarily I'm a kind of private person in a lot of ways. And so when I just had that just overcoming feeling that, okay, I just need to say this. And then to be met in a space with men and women who had not experienced that kind of loss with a sense of community. Um, and and just like you said, you know, the the enemy tries to meet us in places of comparison. And so I didn't want to say it at that time because I'm sitting right next to a woman who lost her spouse of 60 years. And I could never imagine that loss. And I here I am holding on to this loss. And but when we are in spaces where God is present and community is is just committed to loving one another, we get to say things that maybe don't make sense in our heads, but once they come out, they get to make sense. Getting to say it out loud and then having other people that I realized they were probably having that exact same thought in their heads. And then they felt the need to share it with me. And so I mean, I just kind of keep coming back to how do we make the church better at this? We keep talking about it.

unknown 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:55

That's all it is. Because for so many years we didn't talk about it. And so I hate to say that it's ours to to carry as lost moms, but when we start saying it, others feel heard just as well.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Amen. Oh, that's so well said. As you think about, you know, it's not necessarily our job to do it, but some of us are out there doing it, just like you and me. When you think about interactions with lost moms and lost dads in the church, when you think about even well-intentioned things, right? What are some things that can unintentionally make these interactions harder?

unknown 19:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:30

And I guess that's really going back to that meaning portion as well. There's two things that we constantly search after when we hear a story of loss. And this is this is true across so many. Um a big portion of my job is I do celebrations of life. So kind of the funerals for people and things like that. And the most well intended person will say, Well, how or but here's the bright side. And so that's two ways. We just get stuck in what gives us peace is control. What gives us peace is meaning. And and I get it, we are so human. I want to hear of a tragic story and I want to understand the why of it so that I can tell myself that it would never happen to me.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 20:16

Yeah, right. And really, at the end of the day, the statistic says it could happen to me. Life is going to happen to me. And we don't have control, only he does. And so it's like ripping that control out of our hands. And so I think those are the two most well-intentioned things. I don't think most people in a church say things to cause harm.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Um, so let's chat through some of the, you know, it it's unintentional, but what are some of those things that you might have heard?

SPEAKER_04 20:50

So I think it's really important to come at it from a place of awareness of also where you are on your journey, especially as another lost mom, or or really any situation of care. Even like when you're walking into a hospital with somebody and and it stirs something inside of you, and you're like, this isn't the time for me to to be trying to help and and sit with this person. Because there's definitely opportunities where it serves something inside of us so deeply that the person we are trying to care about ends up having to care for us.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 21:24

Ends up having to put their grief in a backseat to console us. And there's nothing more embarrassing as a care provider, but also nothing worse as somebody who is trying to actually I I remember this during my loss. I remember around that time I had experience loss and somebody in my office had experienced loss of their cat. I took it.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

You guys know where this is going, but I'm like, yeah, they're the same.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

They're the same.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

You're the nicest person I know.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

I was not nice when I left that and when I got in my car, it was not nice. But you know, it's yeah, when we're when we don't have a self-awareness of where we're sitting at in our grief, we can do more harm than good. But those those I think are really trained out of education and just saying things, you know.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Yeah, it that podcasts like this, people like you, you know, and I think it it happens um not just you know from a platform, but also those one-on-one interactions where, you know, you mentioned being in community and sometimes community can be hard and yeah, and we have to say things that are difficult to say, like, you know, I I think I understand where you're coming from on that, but let me, I need to tell you why that's painful and hard. And here's how we could do that differently next time.

SPEAKER_04 22:51

Yeah. I wish I would have highlighted it's in my Bible somewhere, but I remember a few months back, I was highlighting all the places where Jesus said, Do not be afraid. And I got to this uh point. Jesus looked at someone and instead of saying, Do not be afraid, it says he paused, he looked at them with love, and then he said something really difficult. Um, and I think that that's a really key and important thing for us to also remember. Like we get to we can look at somebody that we totally love. They're saying something that's off the wall. We need to see exactly who they are. Look at them with love and then redirect them to the truth because we're not helping them along. We're just gonna help them hurt somebody else if we don't. But it is possible to tell somebody the truth by first looking at them with love and then serving to them what they need to hear.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yeah. Yeah, that is so, so well said, especially when you're like, we're not, we're not actually by not addressing it, we're not being helpful to them.

SPEAKER_04 23:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Or anyone else that they interact with.

SPEAKER_04 23:51

How would they have gotten educated if they didn't hear it from somebody? And honestly, a lot of people would be like, My gosh, I didn't know I was causing harm.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

You know, that's the thing about the church. We again, we're just a bunch of people try trying to do life and we're gonna fall short sometimes. And so we've seen the church evolve over time and learn its lessons and things like that. And so this is how we get there. It's messy.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yeah. But looking at them with love first, yes, is so key too. Like it helps them to listen better.

unknown 24:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:25

It also forces us to calm down our nervous system, which can be a little hard when you get triggered.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Yes, too. Yes, yes, so so wise. Let's let's shift gears a little bit. And can you share an example of where you've seen care done really well? Like something that's that felt really, really meaningful.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

Yeah. So um, in my church, I've gotten to witness a church that does not try to move along grief and does not try to just like sugarcoat it. It's been really refreshing to hear of a lot of churches who are doing better at literally just sitting in it with people. We do candlelight services. We do twice a year right now. So we do at Christmas time, we do a candlelight service. And then in October, we're doing another candlelight service. And so just the acknowledgement, I get to acknowledge my my kids here on earth all the time, and nobody says anything. I probably do it too much, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Same. My entire feed is just my kids, basically.

SPEAKER_04 25:27

Yeah. I mean, that's my personality right now. It's fine. But why don't we also give the opportunity to to talk about our heavenly children just as well? And so that has been um a beautiful thing to get to witness is kind of a change in, hey, grief doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna be there forever. But we do have to acknowledge this because it's part of your story too.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Yeah, yeah. I think giving people a space to acknowledge the fullness of themselves helps the entire church.

SPEAKER_04 25:57

Yeah, it does. Yeah, because again, it's giving permission to feel something that's really deep and really vulnerable. And I don't know about you, but I've shared something vulnerable and then just kind of gotten like a stare back and it's like that was a mistake. So I think being willable to sit in really vulnerable spaces, that's that's that can be the church's superpower, you know. Could be if we're if we're willing to sit there. God sits in some really dark places with us sometimes. So we gotta be willing to do it too.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yeah, yeah. Really love, I love that you uh touched on that. It could be the church's superpower. I think it is. Uh-huh. I think I think it really is. And places where it's not yet the the potential is there. There's so much hope for um, you know, out of conversations like this. Um there's so there's so much more awareness. I I feel very hopeful for the future of the church and um, you know, just conversations in general about loss. We have a long way to go, right? But but there is so much hope for the future. And I'm I'm really grateful for that.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

What's been really cool has been even out of our group known, like we're really tiny little group, and this woman came in from another church and she sat there and she was like, I think I need this at my church, and it spread. So she created something at her church. I'm like, could we just cover Johnson County, Tarrant County, like all these with just little, little places of just little havens. They don't have to be anything big, they don't have to be national, they could be for three people, you know.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

And that's Jen. I'm so glad you said that because you know, my my heart is always like, let's change as many lives as possible, right? Yes, yeah. And I think through a, you know, a podcast that you can easily share that that's possible. Absolutely. But I walked into a room of nine, I think eight or nine chaplains. And the Lord was so specific in that moment. And he said, Lives are changed in rooms like this. As much as I would love to be, and I know you too, right? I would love to be, I would love to have a huge conference where we had, you know, hundreds of doctors and nurses and pastors and like, you know, this idea that I have for like this big summit, right? And maybe that happens someday. I don't know. Someday, yes. But it is in rooms like this of like two or three or nine or ten, where people get to lean in in a deeper way than they could in a room full of hundreds of people. And they they really get to soak it in and they get to look at each other. Yes. And they get to listen in a way that they couldn't in a bigger room. And they get to not only listen, but they get to share. Yeah. And it's the these interactions that just can't happen in a bigger space. So you know, it's why we only we limit our tables at the gathering to six, right? Because if we uh we're in a room of 75, 80 women, but but we gotta keep those stories to a table of six or less. Yes. Because other uh we just get overwhelmed, right? Absolutely. And I just think those deeper conversations are where the real transformation happens.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Mm-hmm. Yes. I remember when we first created Noun, I was saying, you know, you get your promo plan and you try to figure out like what is our strategy and what do we want to accomplish? And I said, it's gonna be the most probably um boring goal of mine, but if we get one, that's the goal. And we end up with quite a few more. But I was like, mission accomplished, we can go home, guys. Like this was it.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 29:37

I'm not a good promo plan girl, clearly.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Um, what is one thing you wish people in general and even uh you know, fellow lost parents themselves? What is one thing you wish that they better understood about what it's like to walk with lost families as a ministry leader?

SPEAKER_04 29:55

So what it's like from on my part to walk with them.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Yeah. What what is that one thing that you want the outside world to know? What it's like to be you?

SPEAKER_04 30:03

It helps me find my meaning just as well. I get served way more than they do. Again, I didn't think that we would oh goodness. I didn't think that we would even talk about Charlie. I remember coming to church that very next week and not talking about Charlie. And so um when I get to talk with other families who are going through this, I feel their pain absolutely. But I know that my baby is with their babies and it doesn't make up for it by any means. But I get to find my meaning in Charlie's life. And while Charlie didn't get time here on earth to accomplish a lot, sure did accomplish a lot. And that's what it's like. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Jen, that's really powerful. As we close this episode, if someone listens and they only change one thing and how they care for a lost mom, what would you want it to be?

SPEAKER_04 30:55

Don't give them a timeline. I was thinking about when we compare it to other types of loss, right? So if a a woman were to lose her spouse early in life in her 20s, and she were to remarry and have another husband later on, we would never ask her to stop talking about her first husband. We would he would be a part of their story. He would be what creates even parts of their marriage because of the lessons she learned in it. And so for some moms, their story is having more babies. For me, it was not. And and either way, I'm not gonna stop talking about it, you know? And so I think it's really important that we don't give a timeline for these things. Like this is part of how they're going to parent their other children. It's part of who's going to make up their children when they have these conversations in their house. This is gonna be the person who's waiting for them when they get to heaven. This timeline is so infinite. And so, yeah, that's what I would think.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

And if our listeners want to follow or connect with you after this episode, how can they do that?

SPEAKER_04 31:59

I'm on Instagram and Facebook. I actually had to change my handle because the other day I was looking at it and I was like, that's still my maiden name, and I've been married for 14 years. So I think it's um at uh goodness, I need to plug that in. It uh stories with stories from Jen um is the handle.

SPEAKER_00 32:20

Awesome, awesome. Well, I know they're gonna want to connect with you further, and thank you so much for taking the time with me today.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Thank you for being a part of this conversation. At Gathering Hope, we believe that caring well for lost moms goes beyond words. It looks like presence, understanding, and a willingness to learn how to show up in meaningful ways. Through our Beyond Words workshop, we continue to equip individuals, ministries, and healthcare professionals to support grieving mothers with compassion and care. If something from this conversation stayed with you, we'd love for you to take a next step. You can share this episode with someone in your life who wants to care well. Follow along with Gathering Hope on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, or visit gatheringhope.org to learn more about our Beyond Words workshop and how we can bring it to your community. And as always, whether you're a lost mom or someone who cares about lost moms, we're so grateful you're here.