October 15 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. For me, this day will always be about one little girl. My Everlee Rose.

Thirteen years ago, I became a mother to a beautiful baby girl. I got to hold her for 45 minutes. And then I had to begin learning how to live in a world without her.

There are no words to describe what it feels like to leave a hospital without your baby. To have spent months imagining your life together, only to find yourself going home with empty arms and a lifetime of love with nowhere to go.

I didn’t get to bring Everlee home. I didn’t get to watch her take her first steps, hear her laugh, celebrate her birthdays, or watch her grow into the person she was meant to become. I didn’t get to discover her personality, her favourite things, or what kind of big sister she would have been. There are so many versions of our life that exist only in my imagination. So many memories we should have made that will never be.

And yet, she is still part of my everyday life.

Losing Everlee wasn’t just something that happened to me. It changed the lens through which I see the world.

It changed how I experience milestones, how I think about the future, how I understand grief, and how deeply I feel the fragility of life. It changed the way I mother. It changed the way I love. It changed who I am.

Life kept moving. I went back to work. I laughed again. I welcomed three beautiful children into my life, two boys and a girl, and experienced the joy of watching them grow. I built a life filled with love, laughter, chaos, and all the beautiful, ordinary moments I once wondered if I would ever experience again.

But moving forward has never meant moving on from Everlee.

I am a mother of four. Three of my children are here with me, and one is not. My children bring me more joy than I could ever put into words, but their presence doesn’t erase her absence. I can be deeply grateful for the life I have and still ache for the life I should have shared with Everlee. Both things can be true. They always will be.

Everlee would be thirteen years old. I wonder who she would be, what would make her laugh, what her voice would sound like, and what her relationship with her brothers and sister would look like. I wonder what it would feel like to watch her walk through the door.

I will never know those things. Thirteen years later, that still hurts.

And this is exactly why we need to keep talking about pregnancy and infant loss.

One in four pregnancies ends in loss. One in 200 pregnancies ends in stillbirth. These are not just statistics. Behind every number is a baby, a family, a future that will never unfold as imagined, and people who must learn to carry a kind of grief they never expected to know.

What makes this even harder to accept is that stillbirth rates in the Western world have seen no statistically significant improvement in more than 50 years. We have been living with this reality for generations, and we still have so much work to do.

Pregnancy and infant loss is not uncommon. But talking about it often is.

We talk about pregnancy announcements, due dates, nursery preparations, and the excitement of bringing a baby home. We don’t always talk about what happens when that future disappears. We don’t talk enough about the parents who leave the hospital without their baby, the families who grieve in silence, or the fact that this loss doesn’t end when the funeral is over or the world expects you to be okay again.

I know many of the people who will read this will connect with it personally. Some of you have walked this road yourselves. Some of you may have experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss that you’ve never felt comfortable sharing. Some of you may be carrying a grief that very few people in your life even know exists.

I see you. I know that this is not simply an experience you move past. It becomes part of how you see the world. It follows you into ordinary moments, changes how you experience milestones, and reminds you of everything that can be lost even when life looks perfectly normal from the outside.

I also know how much it means when someone remembers. When someone says your baby’s name. When someone acknowledges that your child existed, that they mattered, and that they will always be part of your family.

I created EverleeRose.com to give my daughter a place in this world and to share our story with others who might need to know they aren’t alone. I cannot give Everlee the life she deserved, but I can continue to tell her story. I can make space for conversations that are uncomfortable but necessary. And I can remind people that the babies we lose are not forgotten just because the world keeps moving.

Today, I will remember Everlee. I will remember the 45 minutes I had with her and the lifetime of love that has followed. I will remember the future we lost, the daughter I never got to know, and the mother I became because of her.

And to my girl, Everlee Rose: I wish more than anything that I could be celebrating your thirteenth birthday instead of imagining what it might have looked like. I wish I could watch you grow up, hear your voice, and see your face among your siblings. I wish I could hold you one more time.

I would give anything for more time.

But 45 minutes was enough to make me your mother, and thirteen years has done nothing to diminish the love I have for you.

You were here. You matter. You are loved. You are missed.

You are my daughter, and you always will be.

Always and forever, my Everlee Rose. ❤️

#PregnancyAndInfantLossAwarenessDay #StillbirthAwareness #EverleeRose