We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rachael Mamigonian a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Rachael thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I am 21 weeks pregnant with our rainbow baby. I keep getting the same question from strangers, “Is this your first?” For a year and a half now, my husband and I have had to navigate similar questions. “How many kids do you have?” We could easily shut down these conversations, or give a roundabout answer that saves others from being uncomfortable. One thing I have learned about grief though is that our loved ones live on in our memories and we can hold space for them in conversations. We make a point to talk about the child we lost. Emsley was born prematurely at 33 weeks in August of 2021. We spent several days in the NICU with her before making the decision to remove life support due to a significant brain injury and vastly impaired quality of life. Since then, we have shared our story with thousands of people through my writing, sharing in support groups with other families, and speaking opportunities. What we have found through our heartbreak is a lifelong mission of highlighting awareness for loss parents and families.
Rachael, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I recently found an old box of childhood keepsakes in my parents’ basement. When digging through the piles of artwork and awards, I came across an autobiography that I wrote in 4th grade. I laughed when I read that 10-year-old me wanted to be an author one day. Here I was, living out my self fulfilling prophecy in the most unexpected way possible. Back then, I had every Nancy Drew book on my shelf and probably thought that I would write the next big mystery series. Little did I know that my stories wouldn’t be fiction. I ended up going to school to be an elementary teacher (my other answer to the “what do you want to be when you grow up” prompt). I studied Human Development and Family Studies and Early Childhood Education at Colorado State University. I fell in love with teaching reading and went on to get my Master’s in Literacy at University of Northern Colorado. I was a classroom teacher for a few years before starting my own tutoring business and specializing in Dyslexia. Even though my background has led me through a successful 10 years in education, it also helped to prepare my heart the very personal work that I do in sharing our grief journey. All of my classes on marriage, family systems, and psychology paired with higher level courses in the writing process and the literary world shaped me into who I am today; a teacher by nature with a very special mission. Children, whether mine or others’, always have been and always will be my whole world.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I have always been a sensitive soul who is a little on the anxious side. I admire my firefighter husband who isn’t afraid of anything. He hates the cliche that he is a “hero”, but he has always been mine. To me, he has always been the picture of strength and resilience. I never really thought that I had any of those qualities myself until I was completely calm with an epidural needle going into my back for an emergency C-section. In the days that followed between flight for life taking our daughter less than an hour after birth and talking with specialists about her diagnosis, my typical flight response became fight instead. My husband said that he felt like he was watching me respond to an emergency the way that he would on a call. Since then, I have had no choice but to demonstrate resilience. When you go through a deep loss, everyone tells you how strong you are. What they don’t see is that you are just doing everything that you can to survive. Long months of PTSD dragged on and on, all while we battled secondary infertility and fought to keep our marriage afloat. I can look back now on that dark time and appreciate where it has led us. When your life completely shatters, you have the choice to rebuild it from scratch and make it even better than before. It is the hardest thing we have ever done, but we know deep down that we are following our daughter where she leads us.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I can’t help but laugh at the image of the iconic Friends episode when I hear the word “pivot”, but it is defined in the dictionary as a central point. Last week in my Pregnancy and Parenting after Loss group, I talked about this exact idea that losing someone, especially a child, is like a fulcrum from which your life is forever changed. The moment that the axel seems to break and the earth stops spinning can be traced down an exact minute. For us, it was 11:44pm on August 9th, 2021 when our first baby came into the world and didn’t let out a cry. It was in that moment that an infinite crevasse began to cut straight through my heart. Our reference of time has become “before everything happened” and “after everything happened”. I look at old photos and barely recognize the past versions of ourselves. I had to learn about this new person that I had changed into. I had to get to know the new person that my husband became. For a long time, I resented the metaphorical big ugly crack in the story of our life. I wasn’t able to see it differently until a fellow teacher and friend, Catherine Giglio, posted a photo of one of her pieces of local artwork that she titled, “Rewrite”. The mixed media painting showed illegible writing with a colorful line running through the middle like a torn page. It spoke right to me, like my life was illustrated on the canvas. My perspective started to shift when I realized I could “rewrite” my narrative. A few months later, I came across a wrapped package with a note. She had gifted it to me. I now walk by this visual reminder every day and remember that the empty spaces can be filled with love.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rachmamo.blog
- Instagram: @rachmamo
Image Credits
“Rewrite”- Catherine Giglio other photos- Rachael Mamigonian