Clara: Wave of Light 2012

As part of Pregnancy and Infant Loss awareness month, October 15th saw an international Wave of Light around the globe in memory of all the little ones gone too soon from our lives. People were asked to light candles at 7pm and leave them burning for one hour in the hope that, as different timezones hit the 7pm mark, a continuous wave of light would move around the world. This also coincided with CarlyMarie's 'Capture Your Grief' photography project where Day 15's subject was this event.

We took part in this event last year in memory of Molly and had a lovely night with our family, lighting candles and trying (but spectacularly failing) to set off a lantern.

Wave of Light 2012 has completely blew me away. Hundreds of people advertised the event on social networking sites and the response was fantastic.

This year we remembered both Molly and Grace and also two little stars we never got to meet. I change my profile picture and cover photo on Facebook. The amount of family and friends who also shared these pictures and used them as their own profile/cover photos for the event was overwhelming. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful support network who continue to keep the memory of our girls alive.

We bought personalised Wave of Light candle holders from The Memory Tree and lit these out in the garden at my parents' house along with a numerous collection of tea-lights spelling out the girls' names (thankfully the wind all but disappeared and we managed to get them all lit for photos). My dad and niece also made homemade butterflies which had a candle attached to the back.

This year we also managed to successfully release some lanterns. One of the lanterns did not just have Molly and Grace's names on but the names of lots of other little ones gone too soon. I felt so sad writing all these names - far too many, and yet only a tiny tiny number of them. These names included those of my Aunt who was stillborn at 40 weeks over 50 years ago and children and babies of friends new and old.

As we released the lantern, shooting stars appeared in the sky. A wee sign perhaps? I like to think so.

Later on that night, we returned home and I logged onto Facebook. I was faced with over 100 notifications! So many of our friends and family had lit candles for the girls and posted these pictures for us to see. The girls were also remembered by lots of other mummies who were lighting candles in honour of their own children.

The response to Wave of Light this year has been amazing and overwhelming and I am grateful to everyone who took the time to think of our girls.

I have shared many of our photos in this post and I would now like to share some more from some of the girls I have met on this journey…

In memory of Melody Caitlyn and her friends:

In memory of Ayla Tia Baker:

Dedicated to Ayla Hope Reading:

In memory of Emily Smith born sleeping 14/2/11 and Beth Smith born sleeping 5/9/11 and remembering all our angels:

In memory of Ruaridh:

In memory of Holly:

In memory of Max Charles:

In memory of Olivia Louise Million,
Mummy & Daddy miss you so much princess,
What we would give for just one more kiss and cuddle,
Love you always & forever xxxxxx

In memory of our lovely little Laura, 20/04/2012-22/04/2012:

If anyone else would like to submit their photos for inclusion in this post, please email them to lossthroughthelookingglass@gmail.com and I will update the post to include them.