Drawing on their own loss, they offer themselves as companions to parents who struggle to deal with the end of an eagerly anticipated pregnancy or the death of a joyfully welcomed baby. Readers will find in Carrying Them with Us comfort and wisdom, a spiritual perspective, and practical guidance.
The authors also invite into this journey the caregivers--family, clergy and medical professionals, and friends--who accompany grieving parents.
The book is organized around five questions the authors have found central to many parents' unfolding story: (1) How can this have happened? (2) Why do I feel like this? (3) How do I keep going? (4) What do I make of life after this? And (5) Who am I becoming?
Engelstad and Malotky show readers a path from devastating sadness toward healing, a way for grieving parents to keep going and, one day, to embrace new life.
David Engelstad, an ELCA pastor, has dedicated twenty-four years of his ministry to long-term care and hospital chaplaincy. He has started and led support groups for pregnancy and newborn loss, Alzheimer's caregivers, multiple sclerosis patients, and grief/loss survivors.
Catherine Malotky, an ELCA pastor, has served the church for over thirty years as a teacher, parish pastor, writer, editor, and coach. She is a frequent retreat leader, teacher, and preacher around the upper Midwest and for two decades has authored the Amen column in the ELCA's Gather magazine.